Background a bit. My Solar is on a separate Sub-panel. It also includes my Car charger, Deep well pump and several other drains on the sub-panel.
I see when the solar is generating there is a positive reading for solar generation. But when the drains are on this number gets smaller, sometimes even negative. When it’s negative the Solar bubble disappears. But the reading on the panel is still displayed (negative when no bubble on screen). At this time I am debating whether to install a second monitor in the sub-panel. Downside seems to be stronger than upside. I get a constant negative number when the sun is down at night so this might help me with things like seeing when the Garage door and the pressure pump.
It would be nice if when the negative value is displayed there would be a nice bubble (since you already know the negative value) showing this value so when I scan the performance meter I get an indication that there is some sort of activity.
Are your solar CT’s attached to the wires going from your main panel to the sub-panel? If so your “solar” readings will always be reduced during daylight by the loads on this panel and will go negative at night and any other time that the loads on this panel exceed the solar production.
My solar subpanel is connected to the clamps going to the Solar connection on the
Sense box.
I understand that when the sun is up the number is positive. If I am not generating
enough energy for the number to go positive the solar bubble dissapears.
It would be really nice if the Solar bubble just changed. to something like a dark gray bubble
and continued to give me the negative value in the bubble. The place for this is fairly obvious
as it is where you generate the bubble when postitive and dismisses the bubble when it goes negative.
the number on the reading goes negative when the sun goes down and
the solar panels quite generating. That’s because there is a small amount of
always on (Inverter backup and Car charger backup). The problem is
when the number goes negative the Solar bubble disappears making it
hard to monitor when the Garage door opens and closes as well as when
the Deep well pump run and the car charger starts and stops. These are things
that Sense claims they will not support information processing.
The garadge was built in 1980 with its own subpanel from the main (150’ away).
It had things like plugs for shop tools and lights and the Deep Well pump
along with the Pressure pump for water to the rest of the property.
In 2007 we started using the garage to park cars in.
In 2013 we installed the Solar panels near the Garage, obvious place
since we installed them on the South side of the property.
They ran through the garage Sub-panel. No one suggested any alternative.
In 2015 we purchased a Volt Plug In Hybrid and installed a charger
(connected to this same sub-panel)
I heard there was this thing called the Sense energy monitor which
could allow us to monitor our Solar array since our current installation
did not allow for this service.
Discovered I had two choices. Install in main panel (which we chose)
or install in the sub-panel and not be able to see how the other heavy
energy hogs were doing.
Since the installation was done at the main panel things are working fairly well,
except we can not get much of a report, status or bubble after sundown.
I tend to monitor things actively so whats on or off has to be kind of visual.
Bubbles or energy meter are both appropriate when displayed.
So as I stated above, I have chosen to put the system in the main panel.
Which would you choose?
That makes more sense. It’s definitely not an ideal setup for the Solar portion of the monitor, but I’ll pass on your feedback. I can imagine use cases other than yours where displaying negative production would matter.
Here is something that really would be nice, add to the display the Differential reading between consumption and solar production. If total consumption is more than solar production then show the third display value as a negative and if solar production is greater than consumption then show the third display as a positive value. The two displays now are just the consumption total and the solar production so add a third that shows the Differential. Now that would be nice and very easy to add.
I have a different configuration that would greatly benefit for displaying negative solar.
I have an integrated hybrid solar and battery controller. (Sol-ark 8K) which can feed the house from solar and/or battery. It also can recharge the battery from the grid.
When sending energy to the house the Solar bubble and meter display properly.
When pulling energy from the house the solar bubble is gone, the draw is in the Other bubble and the Solar meter shows the proper negative value.
What would be more useful is to keep the Solar bubble, change the color (red?) , show the negative value when selecting the bubble and subtract the solar from the Other bubble value.
An option to rename the Solar bubble to something like “Local energy” would be nice, but much lower priority.
I expect that hybrid solar/battery systems will become more common and used to shift solar usage in the home as the value of grid tie only production sold to the grid reduces to zero or below.
I noticed the negative solar. I assume because it is at the end of the day and my inverter has 0 on its display and the inverter must be drawing some electricity until it goes asleep until the morning
A couple years ago I asked for neg bubbles on my app. My solar is on a subpanal with car charger, deep well pump, pressure pump. I also have a generator on this subpanal. I see negative meter on the web but no neg on App🙃
I normally do not use my computer any more. All my usage is on my cell, with no neg. Also if I try to use web on cell it redirects to the cell app.
Hi @Lorac - I can understand the personal impact this feature has on your Sense use case, but Community feedback on this post has been extremely small compared to some of the other frequently requested features that require engineering and development work.
A reminder for those that would like to draw attention to a specific feature request or feel like it’s of value to you - please “like” the original post in the thread. This is how we manage the hundreds of different threads in the Community and see if things on our radar would be impactful to a large percentage of our user base.
Below are some wishlist feature requests that have received 100’s of likes, etc. You’ll notice a majority of the Top 5 (in the link below, click on “Likes” column header to sort by likes) have been addressed with features or updates to the product in the last few years and have hundreds of likes on them. We don’t guarantee that we’ll move forward on requests from the Product Wishlist, but it’s a very good way to get things on our radar.
I was addressing your question of why the initial request had not be updated in the previous two years, which was because there have been very few requests on this thread. There are over 450+ different wishlist requests in the forums.
Schneider-Electric is a partner and investor. The SquareD version of the Sense monitor is identical, just Wiser branded.
I missed the portion of this where you mentioned you’re able to see negative on Web, just not in the mobile app. I can look into why this is and follow-up with you via a message.