new user UK 240V PH-N and Solar

[opentoideas]

Hi, I have just set up my Vue and then reading the FAQ above see that although the website tells me 240V PH-N is OK the FAQ tells me this will damage the units internal power supply.

I am hoping that the FAQ is out of date referring to an older model but could you confirm?

I also seem to be having an issue with Solar and totals :

if my main read current consumption as 3KW and my solar is generating 2KW (shows as -2KW which is what i would expect as its a generation not consumption?)

I would expect the total usage to be 1KW. 3KW usage – 2kw generated however it is combining these as loads with the total showing as total usage at 5KW.

 

is this something I have done wrong?

 

thank you for any help

 

 

[scrambler]

A couple of things that are important for solar setup.

• Did you mount the CTs on solar breakers in reverse from the load breakers (pointing in opposite direction)
• Did you turn off the solar breakers before powering the Vue and doing the setup, and make sure you had some significant loads on both grid legs.

If you missed either, you may need to redo the setup from scratch following the guidelines.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by scrambler.

[natbesh]

Also when setting up – make sure you have a large amount of usage on your sensors.
Turn off your solar & put a kettle on – make sure there’s at least 1kw in use on each power phase.

That fixed a few issues on here with setting up & direction.  Without usage it may mis-interpret the direction of flow.

[Emporia Support]

Hello @opentoideas

Thank you pointing out the outdated FAQ on voltage.   The Gen 2 supports 240v.   As for your solar readings please check the following.

• Please make sure your 200A sensor is installed between your utility meter and the solar input to your system.
• The black wire from the power harness is installed on a MCD for power and the white/blue/red wire from the wire is installed on the neutral bus.

If you did the install while the solar was ‘on’ please perform a WiFi Reset/Solar Set up on the app.  Making sure your breaker for the solar is off and you are within bluetooth range of the Gen 2 Vue.

• Tap the settings menu (three lines just below the Emporia logo), tap Manage Devices, Select Your Device,  tap the Reset WiFi/Solar Setup , choose the Emporia product you would like to reset, follow the prompts to reconnect to your WiFi or Solar Set up.

If you have any issues please reach out to the support team.

Gary

[opentoideas]

thank you for the replies

I will have a check but am fairly certain on direction of the CT’s and switched off solar when configuring as directed however this step didn’t seem necessary at the time however I believe that the comment :

“Please make sure your 200A sensor is installed between your utility meter and the solar input to your system.”

may be the relevant one….. there are 2 ways to wire in solar here in the UK and the most common is to feed into a MCB in the consumer unit however the second way is to split the supply from the meter to the consumer unit and this is how mine is done.

the result of that is that my 200A CT measures “only” consumption and the solar generated is measures on a separate 50A CT  I did this as most measuring systems are not bi-directional so this gave more accurate readings and I was under the impression that this would be the same with the Vue?

 

if I move the 200A CT to before the solar then this will need to recognise that consumption readings can be positive and negative and that the load will always be a sum of measured – generated.  would this not introduce error unnecessarily?? as things stand I am measuring the true demand of the house load directly and the true generated solar

 

Eg. if house demand is 1KW and solar is generating 3.5KW with the current setup both are measured directly and accurately however if I move the 200A CT to where it is measuring the amalgamated house and solar then while the solar CT would still read the correct 3.5KW the 200A CT  would be reading 2.5KW and would need to recognise that this is flowing in reverse (exporting to grid) and also that this is not the true demand and calculate the difference to give the correct 1KW of household consumption……

before I move things around is this truly the best way to do this?

Although the instructions mention fitting the CT’s directionally I was under the impression that they are only able to “read” the magnitude not direction of a current and had assumed the request for directionality was possibly related to accuracy?

 

sorry to add complication and I hope you can help me understand as I deliberately avoided going down the route of having the solar wired to the consumer unit  so that I could keep the household demand separate as this was at the time a nightmare to monitor with systems using CT’s so I am hesitant to negate that advantage to measure what is a unused value and then rely on software to figure things out when I can directly measure the correct value for consumption.

 

if this messes up calculated totals I can live with that as I would rather the measured values accurately reflect usage rather than relying on them being calculated.

 

I hope that makes sense – thanks

[scrambler]

My understanding is as follow.

The 200A CTs are directional, and do measure both direction/sign. The vue does assume they are located above everything, so if you have solar above them, the calculations in the app will be wrong, but individual, measurement should still be right, so you can do your own reconciliation in excel.

About:

“Although the instructions mention fitting the CT’s directionally I was under the impression that they are only able to “read” the magnitude not direction of a current and had assumed the request for directionality was possibly related to accuracy?”

All CTs, including the 50A CTs measure directionally. BUT for now the Software ignores the sign of the 50A CTs measurement, so they will only report one sign (unlike the 200A Cts). That is supposed to be fixed in a near future SW update.

This is why it IS important to Wire the Solar CTs in opposite direction, as this is what the SW assumes.

 

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by scrambler.

[opentoideas]

thank you for that explanation and the hope of future improvements to an already excellent device.

 

i think i will stay as is for the moment as UK consumer units barely have room for the wiring never mind a pile of CT’s

 

once i resolve that issue and start monitoring all of the circuits i may move the 200A CT but for now i can live with it reporting as it does.

 

i suppose it would be nice to use the 2 200A CT that i have to measure the combined and the house demand separately ie . one on either side of where the solar connects but i dont believe the software logic would approve of this with both being on the same phase so for now my unconventional setup suits my needs better but at the loss of some functionality

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