For each person, the most significant incitement in solar energy consumption is the financial benefit to the budget. Due to the flexibility of modern technologies, most solar panel companies offer several options for monitoring your PV system’s energy usage. This is especially important for the consumers who try to stay up to date with their monthly expenses and justify each cent paid for taxes.
Solar Panel Monitoring
So, what is solar panel monitoring? In short, it is the permanent control over the energy amount generated by your solar panel system. In other words, with PV system monitoring, you can always check how much energy your solar panels produce. The energy output can be provided either by microinverters/inverters and power optimizers or by special monitoring devices. With the help of apps, you can check out the data provided on your mobile phone or other devices at hand. As the information is transferred to cloud-based storage, access to the internet is all you need in this case.
Although the microinverter’s primary function is power conversion from DC to AC, it also measures the amount of solar panel energy output. As each solar panel is equipped with an individual microinverter, you can see the actual numbers of each solar panel separately. The case is different with one central string inverter, which shows the total power output of your whole solar panel system. This is the main difference between central inverters and microinverters unless you have power optimizers for each of your PV modules. Then the situation resembles the microinverter as each solar panel usually has its power optimizer. In all cases, the data input is the same: you get the amount of energy in kWh and power in kW based on a specific period (day, week, month, etc.). This information is demonstrated either on a graph or tablet, which can be downloaded on your device.
Benefits Of Monitoring Your PV System
PV system monitoring with microinverters is a considerable benefit. It provides you with up to date information regarding the power output of every solar panel that your solar system includes. It also keeps you informed about the quality performance of your photovoltaic modules. This means whenever one of your panels fails to perform fully, you will know about it at once. Based on this information, you can also make real-time calculations about your solar panel efficiency in different weather conditions. Many solar monitoring solutions allow you to create email alerts if there is any problem with your system that needs a particular service.
But above all, with solar panel monitoring, you can calculate your energy consumption and savings. This helps to correctly size a new solar installation, find problems in your solar system, to configure a power storage battery. The energy usage monitoring can help you diagnose the most suitable hours precisely for your house electricity device usage. To distinguish the time range when electricity is most cheap to use for house loads like washing machines, clothes dryers or dishwashers.
Types Of PV System Monitoring
As I already mentioned above, solar panel companies suggest different ways of your PV system monitoring. Apart from inverters and microinverters, there are special monitoring systems that consumers can add to their solar panel kits. The best-seller brands in the market are considered SolarEdge, SunPower, Enphase and Sense. What do we know about these smart home devices?
SolarEdge: if you are worried about your solar panel financing issues, this consumption device will be of great help. It provides a cloud-based platform to monitor your house power usage and to reduce your electricity bills. It comes with sensors and transmitters to provide real-time monitoring.
SunPower: SunPower Monitoring System (SMS) is not just transmitting data from your solar system to you. It gathers information from solar panels, analyzes them to provide you with as precise data as possible. In other words, it is smart enough to tell you how much energy your system should be producing. With SMS, you can: view energy data, monitor energy production, estimate your bill savings, estimate your reduced emissions. A monitoring server with the software is connected to the internet to display the required data. You will have your account and will be able to perform real-time monitoring of your solar system performance.
Enphase: this is another version for you to implement your solar system remote control. It provides a software solution to download and create your account via your email address along with a metering device. Once your account is activated, you can start system monitoring with only 15 minutes delay, which is typical in this case as it is received through the internet. All the necessary information regarding system performance is possible to receive due to the Envoy-S communicating gateway mounted in the house and metering installed inside the switchboard.
Sense: Sense Home Energy Monitor is one of the various options used for solar system remote control. It is available with web and mobile apps, providing you with all the necessary data.
The solutions mentioned above are quite available sources for house energy system remote control, which is why they will be for the benefit of your solar panel financing. This statement explains that they have comparably low cost, with a few months’ paybacks.
Author of a publication: Helen Kocharyan
