how do i read my meter

[degsod]

The current house I am living in is on a rent to buy basis and we have 3 solar panels on the roof ands we have 2 electric meters. The normal one outside which the utility company reads and an Elster AS230 meter with GSM module. It cycles thought a number of displays, but I cannot work out which one tells me how much electricity is being generated. The housing association gets the feed in, and they are pretty useless when I asked for information on the system. When I purchase the property I will get the income from the feed in and I will be adding more panels.

Can anyone help me to understand how to read it? I have been looking on line and mostly says use the online software, but this is not much use to me.

 

[neilball]

Your external meter should be the billing meter and the internal meter will be the generation meter (which records all of the power generated by the array whether you use it or not). You can tell by looking at the flashing red led when it is dark, your billing meter will continue to flash as power is used, the generation meter will either not flash or show solid red.

If the external meter is a smart meter it may be set up to record the electricity imported (which you pay for on your bill), and the exported electricity (which could then be included in the FIT quarterly return on which the payments are made). In most cases the energy exported is not recorded so the industry has agreed to assume that 50% of what is generated is exported and export payments are made on this assumption.

If the external meter is not a smart meter then it may also alternate the display to show RED and the meter reading - RED stands for reverse energy detected, which would identify that you were running the meter backwards which would be signs of fraud unless you have on-site generation which could create the back flow of energy i.e. you are exporting power.

 

[degsod]

The external one is the billing meter and it is not a smart meter. The internal one shows a solid red night at night and flashes during the day. What I would like to know is which of the numbers is for energy generated and which for energy exported.

 

[neilball]

How many meter readings does the generation meter show? If it is only two then the higher meter reading will be generation, the lower would be exported, although I'd be surprised if it could do this unless it was also measuring the electricity imported too otherwise it would not account for the difference between import and export.

 

[degsod]

I will check tomorrow when I get back home, from memory it cycles through six different readings and I can force the readings by pressing the yellow button on the meter.

 

[neilball]

Well if there are 6 registers and they all record different info you'll have to find the details of what it has been programmed to display. Is this not included as part of the Home Buyers Pack? Do you know which MCS installer fitted the system as their records should also have this info.

 

[degsod]

No, there was no info in the home buyers pack and the builder and the Housing association are useless. I will get the different readings when I get home later tonight