Monitoring Solar Production and Consumption
One of the significant advantages of a solar system is monitoring precisely how much energy is being generated, how much energy you consume, and any issues that may arise. Accessing this information remotely means you can always have a way to monitor your system. This also provides a way for our team to log in and troubleshoot any issues from our HQ and offer you extra peace of mind.
How does solar power monitoring work?
The monitoring system is coupled to the solar inverter, which is the brain of the entire system. Inverter companies provide their own patented built-in software. Still, it is also possible to invest in a 3rd party system that provides a more in-depth analysis of the health and performance of your system.
Monitoring can give you real-time and historical data on panel energy production, how much you are drawing and exporting to the grid, temperature of panels, impact of any shade, how much CO2 and other environmental savings.
Every part of the solar system has sensors to report this data back to the inverter and parse it as quickly understandable graphs or even options to export as recurring reports.
Most modern monitoring systems are WiFi-enabled and include apps, so all the information is updated near real-time and always accessible.
The benefits of solar monitoring systems
There are many benefits of monitoring your system, including the potential of saving hundreds of dollars a year and increasing your return on investment. Some of the most obvious advantages are:
Power production
Since monitoring provides information on power generation, you can be alerted when your panels are not producing as expected and take action. Having the ability to monitor for shade or panel degradation means you can address these issues as they arise.
Solar Self Consumption
To offset the drop in feed-in tariff prices, it is worth considering consuming of your generated power during the day rather than drawing from the grid. By using energy-intensive appliances like washing machines during the day, you can maximise your generated solar energy.
Energy bill fluctuations
If you experience a drastic change in billing, monitoring makes it easy to pinpoint any issues that may affect your system’s ability to generate power. A monitoring setup will detect any internal problems and provide you feedback.
Constant technological advancements in solar hardware mean the information accessible is continually improving. Monitoring systems also provide many benefits for those wishing to go completely off-grid and enable you to have full transparency of events in real-time or historically.
3rd Party Monitoring
A third-party monitoring system with a circuit or panel-level monitoring can offer more in-depth data and actionable information accessible in a user-friendly interface. This usually goes beyond the inverter’s built-in monitoring system. These 3rd party monitoring systems simplify the process of interpreting energy generation and consumption and presenting the data in more comprehensible way.