It's solar time

Well after getting my Sense monitor one of my neighbors had solar installed on her house even though the HOA here said it isn’t allowed and its in the HOA bylaws stating it isn’t allowed BUT come to find out that the HOA put this rule in without fully understanding the law and that they cannot ban solar from being installed on houses here in Virginia. The company that installed her solar sent the requests to the HOA for approval and sure enough they got it approved and now I just signed the paper work and I should have solar in the next 60 days if everything goes as planned. Looks like i will be buying that solar add on for my sense now.

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Nice! Solar is great with Sense, I enjoy hunting down some of the power usage but the really fun piece is seeing the real time solar production. Great time of the year for the solar install.

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@mike_gessner
Welcome to the Solar community! I love it - I initially bought Sense ONLY to monitor my solar production and total energy consumption. In 9+ months, a dozen or so reliable detections and 30+ smart plug/strip devices added.

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I assume these are devices for cutting zombie power users. I have one fairly old master/slave power strip and some insteon on/off switches I’m using to try and cut the always on. I still have a couple of hundred watts I’m having trouble tracking down (I’m down to about 450 watts, did find the silly Radon pump and it’s 80 watts → maybe I can hold my breath :slight_smile: ). I guess it’s just about time to start flipping circuit breakers.

What smart plug/strip devices are you using? I have a soundbar sub-woofer eating about 9 watts. Maybe I’ll tie this to the TV load (though it’ll probably take years to recover the cost of the smart switch).

I have been impressed with the current generation switching power supplies. Most are under a watt when they aren’t doing anything.

Yea, solar+sense is a kick. I love watching the solar come up in the morning. Then seeing how long it takes to balance out the overnight Tesla charging.

There were too many stupid clouds today (that’s the Tesla at 5:30am, my Solar rating is 6.4kW, that’s all I could fit on the south side roof):

PS: It’s federal law that HOA can’t block solar panel installation (same as OTA TV antennas).

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Love my Solar and Sense. My 10kw solar system using Enphase provides quite a bit of real-time info, but seeing it against the loads is just “satisfying”.

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I had some clouds today as well. We have an 8.25 KW system, also all that would fit. I love watching the production as well! You can clearly see where the Tesla finished charging last night then the charge tonight.

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