@derek-m  Thanks. I was wondering if a free fitted smart meter would give me the same info. Would it tell me how much I use and how much goes in and out. Spending another 5-600 quid on a new immersun needs careful consideration I think. 

Hi Tony G,

I have smart meters, but they only quantify import readings, not export.

If you follow the link below it shows a very reasonably priced electricity meter that will quantify your import and export kWh.

You could also use a similar unit to measure how much energy is going to your iboost.

Of course you would need to take readings to record how much you are using over a given time period, but much cheaper than an Immersun.

New member here. I have a 4kW Solar PV system facing SW, installed in Jan 2012 just before the FITs went down. Paid £8250 for 16 x SEG 250W panels and an Aurora Power One Inverter rated at 3.6kW O/P. So far produced 34.391MWh of electricity, did about 200kWh in October. Best Month ever was May last year with 643.44kWh produced.

I built my own solar diverter (think it was about £90) for feeding excess power into the emersion heater, from a design by Robin Emley. www.mk2pvrouter.co.uk

Would love to have a battery system, but really think a 4kW PV system would not be able to put sufficient spare power into one to be of any practical use. I estimate I use approx 75% of the total power generated from the data I have.

Solar PV was one of the best investments I made, paid back in about 3.5 years if you factor in what you didn't spend on Power, would have been quicker if the Solar PV diverter was installed earlier.

Attached is a graph of generation/usage of gas and electricity. Electricity usage was mostly flat throughout the year before installing Solar. Note the gas usage over summer drops to almost zero usage after PV Diverter was installed in March 2019.

Hi, my SolarEdge system has just finally gone live, just down the road from Thirsk, in North Yorkshire. The Electricians wired the panels in backwards, so it took an extra couple of weeks for the installers to work out why it wouldn't initialise. Anyway, this is my setup on my South facing roof:

12    JA Solar 320W Mono MBB Percium Half-Cell All Black MC4
12    SolarEdge P505 Optimiser MC4 High Current for Bi-Facial
1      SolarEdge 3680W Single Phase HD Wave Inverter (NO DISPLAY)

The salesman sold me the SolarEdge system on the individual panel monitoring, API access and App functionality - None of which I appear to have currently.

So I definitely need your help and advice on what to ask my installers to activate. I need to be very specific, so that I can make sure that I get everything that I need. So far, I think that I need them to make my account a sub-installer, give me Full Access to my system & activate the API, but is there anything else that I need to query/ask for?

On the plus side, my smart meter is telling me that my solar array is running the whole house and my ASHP, & that I'm currently pulling Zero Watts from the Grid, which is, to be honest, everything that I had hoped for.

@justinsb, that is so similar to our set up. We just have a few more panels. The JA solar panels are really good and the SolarEdge inverter and app are awesome too.

It's tragic, but I had to chuckle, that qualified professional installers could wire a system incorrectly. But I'm thrilled that it's up and running and generating power. 

@editor Have you got "Full Access" to your Solaredge app, ie can you drill right down to the efficiency of each panel? Also, have you played around with the API?

@justinsb, yes, we have full access to that. There's not much in it to be honest. See attached image.

I did play around with the API when we first got it and connected it to our My Home Farm website – apart from me, nobody really cared how much power our panels were producing. 

Are there any cool new things you can do via API? 

Posted by: @editor

@justinsb, that is so similar to our set up. We just have a few more panels. The JA solar panels are really good and the SolarEdge inverter and app are awesome too.

It's tragic, but I had to chuckle, that qualified professional installers could wire a system incorrectly. But I'm thrilled that it's up and running and generating power. 

I'm afraid that I would not describe them as 'qualified professional installers'.

Apparently, I'm making lots of progress...

I've been given full access to my SolarEdge system. To their credit, they bumped up my account access as soon as I asked, without a question - which was a really pleasant surprise, but then again, the office side of their business is really on the ball.

I've got the sub-contracted electricians back in again, ripping up carpets, lifting floorboards & running the cables (which should have been done nearly a month ago) to properly connect my ASHP electricity usage monitoring too, so by close of business today I expect to be able to see how much power my SolarEdge array generating, how much my ASHP is using, & most importantly, how much my Electricity supplier (it's British Gas, this week) will actually charge me.

@justinsb 

I'm speechless at the 'professional' service you are receiving. 🙄 

As the song goes: "Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right"...

They broke the meter. They went off to get a new one. Came back, tried to install it. Wrong meter. Back out to the suppliers to get the right one (hopefully).

@justinsb, that is ludicrous. If you'd like, I would be happy to publish an article on this subject if you're willing to document it.

My biggest cause for concern going forward regarding the installation of 600,000-1,000,000 heat pumps per year by 2028 is that 90% of them are going to be installed by installers that are winging it – in hindsight, our installation, despite us feeling good about it at the time, was also subpar, but we were lucky that our heat pump manufacturer (who subcontracted the installation out) has been prepared to keep assisting us to get things working as they should. But this is very much the exception from what I've seen on these forums and the countless emails I've received in the past two years.