The new "smart" electric power meters ....

[fortyshooter]

Any of you had your power company switch your meter to these new units?

When I got my home solar power setup my power company switched out my old wheel type meter to a digital readout type and it was simple to read.
Say my meter displayed 000980 on March of 2021. On May 1 2021 the meter read 000386 which indicates how much power my system had generated to that day....meter going backwards with a lot of power credit and normally this continues until December.

Now this new Smart meter they installed couple days ago is totally different showing a line of numbers that indicate how much power the utility sent me and then another set pops up showing how much power I made and sent back at that particular time of reading.
Plus there is a transmitter inside the unit that sends the info to a transponder on the pole and back to the company....the end of meter readers!

I like my old meter with the one number of power used. Simple since as long as that number was smaller than the one in March I knew I owed nothing but the meter fee and loved seeing that number get smaller everyday!
If you don't have solar I guess it still has the one number of power used but sends the meter info to the pole.

[daytime dave]

That's a nice feeling I'm sure. People say drugs give them a nice feeling, I don't know. I would like to have the feeling you do when you see that your efforts are "turning back the meter".
A new meter is progress I guess. I take my hat off to you sir, you must have a nice solar array. If it's common knowledge here and I didn't know, forgive me.

[fortyshooter]

Well I called the power company and they sent me a email on how to read it. The first row of numbers that pop up indicate what you used from the grid like at night. The second set of numbers that come up represent how much power your solar made and the amount sent to the grid.
Just a different way of showing the numbers.
Yes my system has 24 panels and only time I get billed for power used is in late winter like Feb and March when hours of and angle of sun is low. Other than that I just pay the meter/hookup fee of 8 bucks for rest of year.

[Hatchdog]

Our power company installed a smart meter at my place last year. As mentioned there goes thousands of meter reading jobs. I miss our meter reader, he used to come up my driveway to the meter and if I was outside we would BS a bit.

[John E Davies]

Hatchdog, you need a better way to monitor your solar, what brand of controller and inverter did they install? Victron makes wonderful “smart” units that talk to each other and you can use the VictronConnect app to see all sorts of cool info, history and trends on your phone. If the stuff you have is not compatible you can install a Victron Smart Shunt which measures all the power going in and out at the battery ground connections. It is only available in a 500 amp version but 1000 and 2000 amp ones will be out this year. I have a partial Victron system in my RV, a residential one should be similar. Here is a sample of what it does:

4DA4B21A-6ACA-47A0-ADE9-02A7AEF02F36.jpeg (49.86 KiB) Viewed 567 times

FYI I installed a MPPT controller in place of the primitive PWM one, you can see that the current actually being delivered to the batteries is greater than the current coming out of the panels. It is way more efficient, especially for angled residential panels in winter, in “challenging” solar conditions. It is a great choice for RVs but flat-mounted panels will not be helped as much.

https://www.victronenergy.com/panel-sy ... ronconnect

John Davies
Spokane WA

[John E Davies]

Aren’t you connected to Avista? To the best of my knowledge they do not allow long term “banking” and any surplus from your roof array is reset to zero at the new year. That seems like a poor way to encourage residential solar. It does not make financial sense here in Spokane, electricity is too cheap right now. I would be interested if the equipment costs drop a lot more, even with the tax break it is a huge investment...

John Davies
Spokane WA

[Hatchdog]

Hey John,

Yes, I’m an Avista customer and they installed the smart meter. No solar here, I think you are thinking about fourth shooter who started this post. I am thinking about some solar power for my RV and if I do I’ll reach out to you for some advice. Thanks!

[fortyshooter]

My solar equipment is by Enphase and each panel has it's own microinverter. I have software on my computer that brings up the whole system show power production of each unit along with all increments of power produced and used. The company that installed the system monitors the system and each panel for any issues that might come up. last year I noticed 2 panels that were producing less and less power and they picked up on it too giving me a call. It was a glitch in the microinverter software that was common and they fixed it right from their office location which was cool!

Very happy with the system performance so far. Only months I got a small electricity bill were Feb. and March and that was about 45 bucks rest of the year I just pay the monthly meter fee to be hooked up to the utility. Now there are storage battery packs available that work along with the system that enable you to continue to use your solar power if the grid goes down. Keeping an eye on the cost of those to see if they trend down over time.