Solar Analytics Launches Meter-Free Consumption Monitoring

Now you can have solar analytics without buying a consumption meter.

The Consumer Data Right (CDR) isn’t something we’ve covered here yet, but it’s now the basis for a new product being launched by Solar Analytics: Integrated+, which the company describes as “consumption data without the meter”.

The potted version of the CDR is this (from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner):

“It allows you to ask for your data to be securely transferred to an accredited provider so you can investigate, compare and access services more easily”

Solar Analytics is now soft-launching Integrated+  solar and consumption monitoring, with head of business development Nigel Morris announcing it in a LinkedIn post.

Integrated+, available to customers on a standard Solar Analytics subscription ($6 – $10 per month) enables consumption data to be pulled from retail meters, Morris posted, across the NEM, after work by “the brilliant data science team at Solar Analytics.”

Crucially, it works without additional consumption metering:

“Solar Analytics integrates with eligible inverters by collecting solar generation data via API. Eligible solar owners can now add consumption data from the retail meter with Integrated+ and the wizards blend it seamlessly together.”

Morris said the company reckons Integrated+ will save solar owners $500 up-front, because they avoid buying and installing inverter consumption metering hardware¹.

It’s already been trialed in Victoria, Morris said.

Key features of Integrated+ include collecting data with five-minute granularity on 75% of sites; solar data is live while consumption data is a day behind; and it works on sites using Goodwe, GE, Fronius, Sungrow or LG inverters.

Where the CDR fits

The reason the CDR is important to Integrated+ is this: without this reform, Solar Analytics would not have access to any retail meter data.

Right now, the CDR only demands the “big three retailers”, Morris told SolarQuotes – but that covers 65% of energy customers in Australia.

To create Integrated+, Solar Analytics had to gain CDR accreditation, which places protection about both the privacy and the security of customer data.

The three retailers covered by the CDR are AGL, Origin, and Energy Australia; but by the end of the year, all retailers with more than 10,000 customers will have to comply.

Solar Analytics said that expansion will add another 20 retailers to the list, and cover around 99.3% of Australia’s electricity consumers.

Limitations

There are some limitations to the CDR, Morris told SolarQuotes in an email.

Chiefly, the data is available to solar owners but not to installers, since installers are third-parties and would have to get CDR accreditation.

“Secondly, retail meters currently only provide data once a day which is fine for quarterly billing, but less ideal for solar owners. This means although solar data is live, consumption data will always be historical and a day behind.”

That matters more to engineers and nerds than to most owners, he said.

There are, however, upsides to the solution too, Morris said.

“Because the retail data is the billing data, discrepancies caused by differences in latency or granularity are gone – the data will match perfectly. Secondly, because many retail meters separately measure controlled loads such as hot water systems, pool pumps and other major loads, this data will be available to owners early in 2024 allowing them gain more insight into energy consumption.”

Watch out for a detailed post on Solar Analytics Integrated+ – and whether it’s worth it – from Finn next week.