I’ve had my sense meter since Feb 2019 and started using sense solar in March 2019. My power meter readings from AEP and the sunny portal has always been within 1% of the accuracy …. I haven’t really looked at them until this bill which mine ends on the 26th
NET USEAGE (bill)
———AEP. Sense
Nov. 952. 951.6
Dec. 1137. 1135.3
Jan. 1046. 1039.7 (-0.6%)
Feb. 815. 942.6. (+15.7%)
Mar. 578. 671.2. (+16.3%)
Solar (month production)
—-—SMA. Sense
Dec 121.9. 121.2
Jan. 108.6 98.7
Feb. 169.8 122.1. (-28.1%)
March. 227.3. 160.3 (-29.8%) (till 3/28)
My usage metering isn’t following my production like I’m seeing in other post. Even if you subtract the difference in the solar you still don’t come out close to the net. Meaning If SMA was correct for March… then +57kWh is missing from sense. If I took 57 from sense’s March production of 671.2 - 57 = 614.2kwh then It’s still more than 36kwh (5.4%) off which means it’s not just solar thats reporting incorrectly.
I assume whatever happened … happened on Jan 27 which sense also has me producing wattage all night long even though it’s underreporting by almost 30%. At night it used to show -5 watts or so which shows that the inverter uses 5w to keep WiFi active and such…. Now it’s showing “+22w” as if my system is producing power. I’m defiantly seeing other that are reporting production as night.
check if your CT’s are completely closed. maybe put a zip tie around them before closing it up.
This looks like a (constant) miss reading of a CT (to me)
I don’t remember when I put my cover back on my panel. I went thru my photos didnt see anything that I happened to photo involving the panel but there is a possibility that Jan 26th (11:08pm is the first + wattage at night) is when I put my cover back on. The leads were laying in there flat so I don’t think the cover would have opened one of the CT’s but what I’m hoping was going on is that one of the CTs were against the a hot wire… this wire is a dedicated circuit for my fridge
I’m hoping that when I put the cover on it … it smashed the wire against the CT enough to cause interference. Maybe the one CT was reading part of the current from it. My fridge has been best detected device I have. It found the 2 lights, the ice maker, the water dispenser, the compressor , circulating fan and the defrost element. I’ll check in the morning and in a few, I’ll look to see if when the positive numbers at night was while fridge was doing something
Today sense solar shows 10.4kwh and SMA shows exactly 28% more (13.3)
This looks like pulling the solar CT’s away from against the line wires did fix the solar at night. It appears that it has probably fixed my being off by 28% but I wont know for sure because my SMA energy is an hour and 20 mins behind right now… but its looking like its probably has fixed everything because sense is currently showing more production (up to date) and the sma is behind.
So this did fix my solar… sma and sense now match! I assume this also fixes my net production It wasn’t the refrigerator circuit, it was this wire that runs my to a sub panel which I added when I added a story to my house. Here is how the CT’s were when I pulled the cover off.
The largest draw on that panel is that HVAC air handler which is around ~580watts, as it cycled, one of the CTs for the solar was reading some of the wattage from that sub panel feed. I tooled they some of the meter graphing which wasn’t all that obvious everywhere. But here you can see when it was. It’s only reading nighttime solar production when the hvac fan is running. So just that wire laying against the side was showing 28% less production, solar production at night and throwing everything off.
I still can’t believe how this was off exactly 28% the entire time. I would almost think this would just depend on how much power was used on that leg for the against the CT. I just my monthly SMA report that shows the entire month of March … which shows 240.62kWH
