AIBU to not understand my solar panels and smart meter?

[OllieTheCat]

Help, either I have totally misunderstood how solar panels work, or Utility Warehouse are happily charging us for the electricity we are generating.

I think our smart meter is recording all the electricity we are using in the house and not differentiating between what we draw from the grid and what we produce ourselves. Take our March bill for example, we were billed for 369 kWh. However, according to our solar app, total consumption in the house was 393 kWh ( appreciate it will not be exact) However, our panels generated 109.41, we took 117.8 from our storage battery and 165.56 from the grid. So we were charged for 369 kWh units, but should only be paying for 166 kWh??

Is my logic wrong as Utility Warehouse are adamant that the smart meter is operating correctly?

It does sound like something is wrong. On my SM where it recognises the panels it has a little sort of lightening signal which shows that the panels are working and covering all the leccy at that time. It looks like you have a fair few panels so there should be some times of day when the SM will show zero usage (everything coming from the panels. Does it do this?

I don't know if the smart meter is smart enough to know how much energy you generate yourself, the two systems would have to be linked together in some way. It could be you will get a rebate for your home generated electricity or it comes in separately as a feed in tariff. I know very little about it, hopefully an expert will arrive shortly.

There is also the smart meter and the home display which may show different things, ie, home display how much energy you are using so you can track and meter what you are being charged for. You might be able to google some of this!

You most likely won’t be using all the electricity you generate- are you selling the excess back to the grid?
The smart meter should be accurate for energy imported from grid and energy exported - that’s it.
It can’t tell what your battery is doing - except if you charge it from the grid using a cheaper night rate tariff for example.
In March in our house with solar panels and battery -our app shows: we used 950kwh (solar and from grid), we generated 560kwh (from solar), we imported 631kwh (from grid), we consumed 319kwh (of the 560kwh we generated from solar) and we exported 240kwh ( the rest of the 560 kWh we generated from solar). - I’ve rounded up/down but hopefully you get the gist.
To get the best out of a solar system with a battery you should probably be on a plan with a cheaper rate for some of the night and also has a good feed-in-tariff for electricity you export.

Thanks both. Our feed in tariff is pennies so doesn't offset and is with a different supplier to try to get a bit more. I'm not too worried about what we may sell into the grid....I just don't want to be paying for electricity we have generated!

One explanation that the energy team at Utility Warehouse gave me is that all electricity we generate goes to the grid and all electricity we need, we buy from them.....which doesn't make sense and no one would have solar panels if that was the case.

Thanks Earbuddy.

So in your example, were you billed for 631 kWh? Using your numbers, we would have been billed for 950 kWh. I am very tempted to swap everything to a new supplier and get a better feed-in-tariff and start again.

Yes we were billed for 631. However most of our imported electricity is at the cheaper night rate. We charge car and battery then and as much as possible run dishwasher and washing machine then too.

We have solar panels, battery, car charger. We're with octopus, on intelligent Go and outgoing octopus tarriffs.

We charge our battery and the car. at night on cheap rate electricity (7.14p per unit).

During the day the house runs first on electric generated by the solar panels, then on electric from the battery which we've paid night rate for. If the battery runs down then it's charged back up by the solar panels, if they're generating more than the house is using. If the battery is full then generated power is exported to the grid at 15p per unit. If the battery is empty and the panels aren't generating enough then we import power at day rate which is 28p/unit - this doesn't happen much from May onwards, it's mainly in the darker months and if we've had the oven on

We have three smart meters - gas, electricity coming into the house, and electricity being exported from the house to the grid.

Thanks everyone! Time to change to Octopus.