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Ghosts in the Smart Meter perhaps?

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Toodles
(@toodles)
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Unusually for me but I have not been using the grid for power but relying on solar power whilst the buy / sell ratio has been less than favourable on Agile. When looking at my Octopus app ‘My Energy’ page, I notice that there are minute amounts of energy indicated as consumption whilst (as far as I know) we were using just the solar PV and / or battery supply. Now I am not concerned about the actual amount of energy shown on the chart as it only amounts to a squintillienth of a groat’s worth [or in technical terms, sod all] but nevertheless, I am curious as to whether this is normal ‘noise’ in the system or perhaps something like the phantom draw I heard about some time ago which affected some L&G smart meters with a Tesla Gateway attached. I am attaching images from which it can be seen that the ‘noise’ appears to be random though I have noticed that from day-to-day, there is a spike at 06:00 and wondered if some pulse intelligence is being employed at such times. Curiously yours, Toodles

IMG 0702
IMG 0701

 

Toodles, he heats his home with cold draughts and cooks his food with magnets.


   
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(@jamespa)
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Joined: 2 years ago
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My solar diverter achieves zero export plus/minus about 80W.  I imagine that any other technology, eg a battery or car charge controller, relying on measuring the import/export using a current transformer, also has a finite error band.  Are your blood just this?

4kW peak of solar PV since 2011; EV and a 1930s house which has been partially renovated to improve its efficiency. 7kW Vaillant heat pump.


   
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Toodles
(@toodles)
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@jamespa My ‘Blood”? Please elaborate. Regards, Toodles.

Toodles, he heats his home with cold draughts and cooks his food with magnets.


   
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Majordennisbloodnok
(@majordennisbloodnok)
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Joined: 3 years ago
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Posted by: @toodles

@jamespa My ‘Blood”? Please elaborate. Regards, Toodles.

🤔 That's why I turn autocorrupt off. That said, it drove my son mad when I asked him to message someone from my phone whilst I was driving since he relies on that feature heavily.

Coming back to your original question, though, I have an idea but really need to pose it as a question to find out if I'm speculating wildly or accidentally making sense. I know that hybrid inverters use the mains power to make sure the AC they kick out is in phase with the grid. In order to detect the grid's phase, do the inverters have to import any power even in tiny quantities? If they do, that might explain the bulk of your graphs. If not, someone with a bit of techie sense will be able to explain why not and I can learn something.

 

105 m2 bungalow in South East England
Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5 kW air source heat pump
18 x 360W solar panels
1 x 6 kW GroWatt battery and SPH5000 inverter
1 x Myenergi Zappi
1 x VW ID3
Raised beds for home-grown veg and chickens for eggs

"Semper in excretia; sumus solum profundum variat"


   
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Toodles
(@toodles)
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Topic starter  

@majordennisbloodnok Could well be the cause; I sometimes notice that the ‘grid’ supplies 0.1 kw for a few seconds even though before and after this brief interlude, the system might be exporting and not set to import anyway. A sort of ‘Hello Grid, are we in phase?’ handshake. I suspect that the Tesla app does not resolve very minute amounts so may show 0.1 kW by default at such times. Regards, Toodles.

Toodles, he heats his home with cold draughts and cooks his food with magnets.


   
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(@jamespa)
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Joined: 2 years ago
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@toodles blood is an autocorruption of blip!

4kW peak of solar PV since 2011; EV and a 1930s house which has been partially renovated to improve its efficiency. 7kW Vaillant heat pump.


   
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Toodles
(@toodles)
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Joined: 3 years ago
Posts: 1890
Topic starter  

@jamespa Oh! OK, Blippy good show! Regards, Toodles.

Toodles, he heats his home with cold draughts and cooks his food with magnets.


   
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