Solar system with a prepaid meter and grid tie limiter

2/3/2014

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

1 Comment

Andy Alpes

6/9/2016 05:02:53 pm

I recently installed a 3.6 Kw/hr system using your company `Exsolar`.

I wish to state that from the my first point of contact, to the completion of the installation I was impressed by the enthusiastic, professional dynamic team.

My system was installed with minimum fuss and disruption by a expert team that were courteous and professional. Great care was taken with the ascetics and I was consulted and advised throughout the installation.
I started saving energy immediately, the system performed as I had been advised it would and we immediately noticed a 50% reduction in electrical usage from Eskom.

The electrical monitoring system with the grid limiter is revolutionary and uses the latest technology to provided the client with a (web based) monitoring system which updates as much a every two seconds.
This is a major benefit to the client as you can instantly see how much power you are using and which or what your big electrical consumers are. This helps you utilise your solar production correctly to ensure you can harvest the maximum amount possible from it.
The real time web base system monitoring allows the installer to log into you system and check that the system is functioning correctly and to advise you how to gain the maximum yield out of your system.

We are extremely happy with our PV system and advise that we found `Exsolar` to have the most comprehensive and user friendly system available at present.

Best regards
Andrew Alpes

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