Solar sense question

I have solar (grid tie-in), but understood that I wouldn’t benefit from sense solar because mine tie in at the pole rather than at the breaker box. Is this true? I’m beyond frustration with the monitor provided by the solar installation company.

If so, are there plans for sense to monitor this type of system in the future or is it beyond the scope?

Do you have a picture of your panel? From the sounds of it, you have power coming in from your pole. At the pole, your solar and utility lines meet, so your power coming in is a mix of solar and utility. Some of the solar goes back on the grid.

If that’s the case, it doesn’t seem like you’d have a place to put your solar leads…unless you have an inverter very close to your utility box. If you know where your inverter lines going out are, you might be able to hook a set of CTs on them - the solar ones are about 3’ long.

1 Like

My solar ties in at the bottom of my net meter, so I had to open up my meter box to install the CTs. I’m expecting some tongue lashing from my utility when they find it, but with smart meters all around, I hope they never come out!

Do you have a picture of your panel? From the sounds of it, you have power coming in from your pole. At the pole, your solar and utility lines meet, so your power coming in is a mix of solar and utility. Some of the solar goes back on the grid.

Yes, this is how I’m set up.

the inverter is about 250ft from the pole where the utility box is, which is another probably 50ft from the breaker box, inside.

I’ll get a picture tonight.

It may be worthwhile to me to get a separate solar monitoring system and just compare them manually. … thoughts?

Well that’s too bad. I haven’t looked in a while, but maybe there’s a cheaper option to harvest that solar data? Our inverter has an online system, but it only reads every 15min.

You may have trouble with it being so far away from your WiFi signal, though?

1 Like

That’s exactly what I’m thinking, but I’m not finding the basic solution I thought I could find. I have a monitor that came with my inverter, but it sucks. LOL. … Since I already have Sense, I just need a solar monitor and most of them want to come in packages. I’d love to hear peoples thoughts and recommendations for solar monitoring packages I can look at.

Hi.
Former (as of today) customer of “the other home energy monitoring product.” In my attic are the wires that go from my solar (grid tied) system to the electric pole. On the other system I spliced the solar transformer wires for additional length and connected them there. It worked really well!

However, the program only reflected half of the output of my pv system. I’m hoping to do the same with Sense. I just installed Sense and I’m hoping that someone from the company can advise on which wires/combination of wires to connect the transformers to do that the solar output is reflected correctly.

1 Like

@shane.cedarpark.tx,
Lots of good info on extending solar cables and Sense cable extensions here:

1 Like

“can advise on which wires/combination of wires to connect the transformers to do that the solar output is reflected correctly.”

Thanks for the link! I didn’t do a search for “extending cables” - only for “grid tied solar.” That let’s me know that the same tactic I used with Neurio will work with Sense in regards to extending the cables. I’ll try a few more searches.

Now, I just need advice on the wired part in this reply.

I think you are asking “how do I wire so I get the polarity and phase/leg correctly matched”. I think the answer is that all you have to do is make sure the 2 CTs (current clamps) for the solar, as well as the mains, are oriented in the same direction with respect to the origin of the solar power. Sense will figure out the rest during the signal check stage, and calibrate/adjust appropriately.

So extending the solar cable with a spliced cat 5e near 80 feet worked consistently? That’s great, I’m going to need to do the same thing to get my solar cables extended to my inverter. Thanks for the info!

Sidebar question: as we determine IF we install solar her, I have the Sense Solar monitors and I don’t want them to get lost - damaged. Is there any harm in plugging them into Sense and tucking them away in the base of the circuit panel until its time to use them?

I would leave them inside the bottom of your Breaker panel, but I wouldn’t hook them up.