Solar production monitoring

[PNWSolarProducer]

I’ve only had my Vue Gen 2 running for a day, and need some help understanding how to monitor solar production. I didn’t understand the function of the setup procedure as it relates to solar, where I was told to disable solar production and turn on an appliance. What was the purpose of that exercise? At the moment, Vue is reporting solar production in excess of total consumption, which would be a miracle on a cloudy, February day in Seattle. At the moment (during nighttime), it thinks I’m consuming -3500 watts.

My old eGauge had a clamp around one of the solar feeds. Should I have one with Vue? And, if so, how would the system use it? eGauge produced a graph showing solar production as a separate value from total consumption, which I would be glad to be able to replicate with Vue. My main incentive in installing this system is to confirm that my solar system is functioning properly.

 

I thought the setup instructions were among the best I’ve ever read for a product, but solar appears to be a bit of an afterthought.

[djwakelee]

By chance, have you read the solar installation guide?  It is separate from the standard install manual.  Below is a link…

https://www.emporiaenergy.com/Gen%202%20Solar%20Supplement.pdf

And yes, you need dedicated clamps across your solar in order to monitor solar production.  Setup will try and figure this which circuit you have for solar, which is why it asks you to shut off solar and then turn on.  You will probably need to re-run setup when you get those clamps on.  You can also just change the circuit type to solar production by editing the settings, but best to re-run setup.

 

[PNWSolarProducer]

Thanks, I didn’t hit on the supplement when I browsed this site. Unfortunately, it does not explain in which direction the clamps should go on the solar feeds to the breakers, and the illustrations show clamps that are 90 degrees off from mine. I can’t even guess which direction would be correct.

[djwakelee]

Ultimately I believe it doesn’t matter since Emporia presently only takes an absolute value of the clamp readings – with solar as production and everything else as load (consumption).  But the arrows face toward to power flow.  So toward the load for circuits, or toward the panel for solar.  This is detailed on page 5 of that document, with an enlarged focus area for the solar clamps at the bottom of that page showing the K->L direction.

[scrambler]

The CTs around the solar wires are supposed to be in the reversed direction from the CTs on the drawing circuits.

The reason they want the solar off and some loads activated suing setup, it to clearly identify the two phases on all the load wires CTs, without the solar sending power in and confusing things.

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