The use from the grid on the graph mirrors the solar generation

Very new user here. UK based. Emonpi. When I ask MySolar app to generate a graph, the use mirrors the solar generation reading until the use is greater than the generation.

Hi, welcome to the forum :slightly_smiling_face:

Which feeds have you configured in the app?

Just in case this is useful, that’s exactly what I see from my Solar iBoost. It uses all the spare power so my “use” lines up with my “solar” when it’s sunny, but then of course my use carries on when it’s not sunny.

Your graph looks like my graphs do.

Here’s an exciting example where the sun came and went plus my heat pump used loads of power every so often:

I can’t see where to configure feeds within the app (MySolar) but this is the feeds page in Emoncms:

Many thanks for your help, Tim

Hi Liz,

The button to alter the application configuration is up here in the top right corner:

If you need to change anything you can do it using the pencils on the right of this screen:

and then use “Launch App” to go back to using it with the new settings.

The names of the feeds are the ones in your feed list so it will have automatically started using the right ones by default.

At the moment, given what we know it doesn’t look wrong. It looks as though something is using your spare solar.

If it still feels wrong it might be best to describe your setup so we can help. For example, do you have an EV, an immersion, a battery or some sort of agreement with your energy company related to your solar panels. Perhaps it’s something else?

Thanks to you all for your time and help.

I don’t have an EV. No immersion, no battery and no agreement with my energy company.

I have Solar panels on the roof and a FIT agreement with a different energy company than the one that supplies our electricity.

In my original post, the image shows our use over night with underfloor heating coming on about 5am until 8am. From 10am until 2 pm, we were using only the devices that were on overnight and so I would have expected that the darker blue to be as low on the graph as it was between midnight and 4am.

Here is the configuration image from MySolar app (thanks David for the directions on how to find it):

Thanks for the extra info Liz.

The next reason we would investigate would be your clamps around the wires, but those seem like they are probably OK because your solar and usage do vary sometimes. Notably you don’t have your solar clamp on the use wire for example.

I’m going to have to let others dive in with theories about what to do next I’m afraid.

Certainly our solar clamp is on the solar wire. We followed the Type2 diagram from the instructions.
Thanks for your help so far.

@LIZJD
I don’t use the My Solar app, so I’ve no direct experience. But I think we’re looking for a misunderstanding.

Are you deriving the “Use” feed on the Inputs page of emonCMS, and if so, how?

The “Type 2” configuration uses a current transformer on the Grid infeed and one on the PV infeed, the maths of this arrangement (using our convention that power/energy into the home is positive) therefore is

Use = Grid Infeed +Solar Infeed.

The alternative “Type 1” measures the “use” directly with a current transformer direct on the feed into the consumer unit, so the maths in this case is a matter of rearranging the above to get

Grid Infeed = Use - Solar Infeed.

As you say you have your c.t’s in the “Type 2” positions, have you got the maths in the Input processing to give you the “Use” power & energy Feeds for the My Solar page to pick up?

Ah! That makes sense Robert. Thanks. The MySolar app optains its feed - Use and Solar - automatically from the EmonCMS and I can’t find a way to change that. I think I should use Solar and Inport instead.

If anyone knows how to do that in MySolar I would be grateful. Also, I would like the Solar area of the graph to be yellow. Anyone know how??

Many thanks to everyone for their interest and help. Much appreciated.

You have Import energy (kWh) but I can’t see Import power (kW), I’m afraid I can’t help because I’ve never used (only briefly played with) MySolar.

Except you can define a Feed for it to use. I suspect the route will be to create Feeds for both c.t. inputs if they don’t exist already, on one of those Inputs (probably the higher numbered c.t.) add the Feed for the other and log it to Use kW (3rd Feed), then turn this into use kWh (4th Feed) and pick up the latter two in MySolar. But I stress I haven’t done it and proved it.

There is a youtube video showing how to configure my solar app with one click that imports all the correct data from Emoncms into my solar app. Thats how I did mine, I configured my heatpump app manually which was easier.

That looks correct, you will be producing very little PV this time of year and your grid depending on use will always be greater, so your PV generation will supplement your grid use.

As Robert says, there looks to be a mistake in how the inputs have been configured. Can you show us the config for each input?

Hi Tim, Yes, of course. Here is Power 1

Here is Power 2

This is power1pluspower2 Which doesn’t seem to be set up

Thanks Liz, that looks consistent with the Type 2 description that Robert gave above.

  • Power 1 => ‘import’ and ‘import_kwh’
  • Power 2 => ‘solar’ and ‘solar_kwh’
  • Adding both gives ‘use’ and ‘use_kwh’

When import is negative (i.e. exporting) then ‘use’ will be lower than ‘solar’, and will be painted yellow:

image

Is your system able to export to the grid? If so, is the CT clamp correctly measuring that?

I went through similar challenges a while back setting this up with the solar and divert (immersion) options. One thing to be aware of is the app needs the default names “use” “solar” etc, even though It will allow you to enter other names!

I think you are doing this now, so this post may be of limited use, but I though to mention should you create some different names for testing etc.

1 Like