An exciting solar system project for a residential property with a pre-paid meter…
The challenge, as in many residential and commercial establishments, is to design a system that would be able to work with a prepaid meter.
Pre-paid electricity meters do not see the direction of the current, so when the customer has a solar system that is at any stage overproducing the power and starts to push back to the grid, the pre-paid meter sees that as a standard electricity usage and bills one for the energy the PV systems produces.
To avoid this situation, the ExSolar team connected the Fronius solar grid inverter to our very own Smart Energy Controller (Grid Tie Limiter), that has the ability to either re-direct the overproduced energy to specific appliance (like a geyser or a pool pump) or limit the production of the PV panels to meet the energy consumption needs of the client.
The system consisted of the following:

• 12 x 300W solar panels and aluminium mounting structures
• 1 x Fronius 35V-1 Solar Grid Inverter (3.710kW)
• 1 x Smart Energy Controller (Energy Monitor for grid tie limiting) with an Energy Monitor WiFi Module
• Solar cable, connectors DC fuses,  breakers
• Saddles, cable ties, insulating flashing, silicon sealant, raw bolts, mains isolator, bus bar cable