{"id":86442,"date":"2024-10-03T14:49:27","date_gmt":"2024-10-03T05:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=86442"},"modified":"2024-10-03T14:49:27","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T05:19:27","slug":"getting-monitoring-back-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/getting-monitoring-back-online\/","title":{"rendered":"When Solar Monitoring Fails: How a Simple Oversight Cost Thousands"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"electricity

A year’s consumption data with a solar power system that stopped dead<\/p><\/div>\n

Flicking through some photographs recently, I was reminded of a very expensive saga where thousands of dollars of electricity would have been saved with some free solar monitoring. Read on as we detail episode one of several expensive mistakes.<\/p>\n

I sometimes lament I’ve spent many hours at nursing homes, and there’s one in particular I’ve visited too many times. I’m sure the quality of care is good, but the quality of the solar has proven undoubtedly questionable.<\/p>\n

I’m proud I had nothing to do with its installation. However, I was the tradesman sent to diagnose faults and solve problems. I shouldn’t complain as it was a picturesque little town closer to my house than it was to the office, so often I would leave home and go straight there for a day’s… frustration.<\/p>\n

Solar Is Simply Reliable, Isn’t It?<\/h2>\n

Conceptually, there isn’t much to go wrong with a solar system. Panels are solid-state, and the wiring is simple. There are a lot of electronics inside an inverter, but they’re generally very reliable, as there are hardly any moving parts.<\/p>\n

In this particular instance, though, it was a commercial-sized system requiring a network protection unit (NPU). The fatal flaw was inside the NPU, a motor-driven circuit breaker. This carried all the energy from the system and was designed to isolate everything if faults were detected by the controller.<\/p>\n

\"Solar

You could easily enough argue each of those green columns is worth $2000<\/p><\/div>\n

When one small component failed inside the circuit breaker, the entire 100kW system went offline for months. Eventually, the accountants noticed the electricity bill looked suspiciously high, but not after they’d lost an entire summer’s worth of production.<\/p>\n

The worst part? They’d lost \u2153<\/strong> of the system 18 months earlier and didn’t notice this fault when it happened.<\/p>\n

Something So Simple<\/h2>\n

Diagnosing this system was pretty straightforward. There was DC voltage coming off the roof but no AC voltage to the three 27kW inverters.<\/p>\n

Working out the exact fault was following the bouncing ball using your multimeter.<\/p>\n

\"Network

The workings of an NPU aren’t complex, but this box can cost more than an inverter.<\/p><\/div>\n

The failed trip mechanism from inside the circuit breaker was about half the size of a box of matches, but the complexity of the whole motor drive arrangement made me realise combining functions wasn’t a refinement.<\/p>\n

Later model NPUs used a simple contactor and separate circuit breaker for reliability.<\/p>\n

Another Month’s Delay<\/h2>\n

You can’t buy spares for Terasaki industrial equipment at your local Hammerbarn, so by the time we had it ordered, freighted and fitted, another month’s worth of production was wasted.<\/p>\n

While it wasn’t ideal, all of the yield missing in the months prior would have been saved if the system was monitored and somebody had been charged with the responsibility of looking.<\/p>\n

\"Trip

This trip mechanism, discoloured by heat from an internal solenoid, “fails safe” and switches the system off.<\/p><\/div>\n

Automatic Alerts Are Priceless<\/h2>\n

Solar inverters offer their own native monitoring, alerts, and email notifications you can customise to suit your needs.<\/p>\n

Use them.<\/p>\n

With Fronius Solar Web, I can program it to ignore overvoltage alarms from my uncle’s SWER line system1<\/a><\/sup> because it’s the boy who cried wolf!<\/p>\n

However, a “fault 457\u2014zero production for 24 hours” comes straight to my primary email inbox.<\/p>\n

Independent services like Solar Analytics<\/a> can offer even more nuanced performance comparisons. I highly recommend them because they know what the weather is like in your district, even if they can’t detect a DC isolation or earth leakage error. For that kind of electrical fault, you still need the monitoring your inverter comes with.<\/p>\n

Don’t Rely On Your Solar Retailer<\/h2>\n

As we’ve mentioned before<\/a>, solar retail companies have a fleet monitoring portal through which they can see your power system in action.<\/p>\n

Rest assured that this is not a privacy concern because nobody at your solar company will bother to look at your system until you call them to ask.<\/p>\n

\"solar

Unimportant alerts clog the system, drowning out real problems in the noise. Either way, it’s best to monitor your own system.<\/p><\/div>\n

When you <\/strong>raise a concern, remote monitoring will likely save a call-out fee. Your installer can log on and check the system remotely.<\/p>\n

They may be able to allay fears, identify faults, or even bring appropriate parts with them to rectify problems with one visit.<\/p>\n

Support Is Essential<\/h2>\n

A reliable installer will show you their monitoring and an interest in using it. What you don’t want is a sales company that goes broke and disappears with your warranty and your monitoring.<\/p>\n

If your installer has wound up, or you just can’t stand the sight of them anymore, moving your system to another company isn’t hard. Manufacturers usually have a process listed on their website, which you can follow yourself without having to use technical support.<\/p>\n

\"Solar

Less than 40% of this 1070-strong installer fleet is visible online<\/p><\/div>\n

Make Sure You’re Connected<\/h2>\n

For my favourite nursing home, the WiFi access was troublesome. Finding the right signal, with enough strength, whitelisted by the IT security team and yet not being trusted with the password was infuriating.<\/p>\n

Then, after half a day on the phone with tech support, it was finally proved that the comms card was no good. A replacement was ordered for another day. Thankfully, my iPad remembers passwords, so I didn’t have to deal with pensive staff while repeatedly entering all the network details.<\/p>\n

\"ABB

Remember when software on CDs was a thing? This one survives in a forgotten storeroom of the dementia wing.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you’ve changed your internet plan, router, retailer or NBN connection since your solar was done, there’s some chance that the inverter is no longer connected. Wi-fi works, but the best way to ensure reliable coverage is to use a data cable from your inverter straight into your internet router.<\/p>\n

Ensure the emails coming from your monitoring platform (like Solar Web, iSolar cloud, PV Master, Aurora vision, SEMS) are getting through and not ending up in spam filters.<\/p>\n

Unless your system has been installed with a strobe light or a buzzer, these email notifications are considered a legal responsibility<\/strong> so that you, the system operator, know if an earth fault has developed on your solar array.<\/p>\n

\"AS5033:2021

As modern solar moves to flexible export, demand response and emergency backstop control by the networks, having a WiFi connection becomes an economic imperative, not just merely a safety rule.<\/p><\/div>\n

Delinquency Costs Real Money<\/h2>\n

As electricity accounts are now being moved to demand charges, solar has a secondary benefit; reducing spikes in consumption. Generating energy behind the meter can avoid breaching demand thresholds, lowering your bills in a way not previously possible.<\/p>\n

In our nursing home example, the operators lost months of solar kilowatt-hours, which ended up being thousands of dollars in electricity they imported instead.<\/p>\n

I’d like to report they’ve learnt their lesson, but in our next update I’ll explain that just hasn’t happened. There are more tales of woe to come.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, you should check that the app is on your phone, then check your own solar monitoring; it could save you thousands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flicking through some photographs recently, I was reminded of a very expensive saga where thousands of dollars of electricity would have been saved with some free solar monitoring. Read on as we detail episode one of several expensive mistakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":86694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solar-installation","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhen Solar Fails: How a Simple Oversight Cost Thousands<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Discover how a simple monitoring failure left a 100kW solar system offline for months, costing thousands. 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He\u2019s a licensed electrician, builder, roofer and solar installer who for 14 years did jobs all over SA - residential, commercial, on-grid and off-grid. A true enthusiast with a skillset the typical solar installer might not have, his blogs are typically deep dives that draw on his decades of experience in the industry to educate and entertain. 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Solar Power System Capacities 77% of Australians using the SolarQuotes service in November selected 5-10 kW capacity as their desired system size range\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General Solar & Storage News"","block_context":{"text":"General Solar & Storage News","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/category\/solar-battery-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"SolarQuotes auSSII report - December 2022","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/aussii-solar-report-dec22.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/aussii-solar-report-dec22.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/aussii-solar-report-dec22.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/aussii-solar-report-dec22.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/aussii-solar-report-dec22.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":37820,"url":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/aussii-solar-march-20-mb1428\/","url_meta":{"origin":86442,"position":1},"title":"Australian Solar Systems Interest Index \u2013 March 2020","author":"Michael Bloch","date":"March 3, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"In our latest auSSII report we've added stats to answer the question everyone has been asking - what proportion of Australian solar buyers are interested in microinverters? OK, so not *everyone* is asking that - but Finn thought it would be an interesting addition to the report. If this is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General Solar & Storage News"","block_context":{"text":"General Solar & Storage News","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/category\/solar-battery-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Australian solar power report for February 2020","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/aussii-solar-report-february.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/aussii-solar-report-february.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/aussii-solar-report-february.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/aussii-solar-report-february.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/aussii-solar-report-february.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":57481,"url":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/aussii-solar-jan22-mb2298\/","url_meta":{"origin":86442,"position":2},"title":"Australian Solar Systems Interest Index: January 2022","author":"Michael Bloch","date":"January 3, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The silly season didn't stop Australian households from making a very smart move - getting quotes for solar panels. Find out what they were wanting in the January 2022 auSSII report. Solar Power System Capacity A little over 78% requesting quotes through SQ's service who had a system size in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General Solar & Storage News"","block_context":{"text":"General Solar & Storage News","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/category\/solar-battery-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"SolarQuotes auSSII report - January 2022","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/aussii-solar-report-january.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/aussii-solar-report-january.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/aussii-solar-report-january.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/aussii-solar-report-january.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/aussii-solar-report-january.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":30054,"url":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/aussii-solar-may19-mb1041\/","url_meta":{"origin":86442,"position":3},"title":"Australian Solar Systems Interest Index \u2013 May 2019","author":"Michael Bloch","date":"May 6, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"In this month's Australian Solar Systems Interest Index (auSSII) report, we've added some interesting new statistics relating to solar power system monitoring. While the state rebate freeze in Victoria announced on April 12 brought new residential solar purchasing interest to a grinding halt until July when the Solar Homes Package\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General Solar & Storage News"","block_context":{"text":"General Solar & Storage News","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/category\/solar-battery-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"auSSII solar report - May 2019","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/aussii-solar-report-april-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/aussii-solar-report-april-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/aussii-solar-report-april-1.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/aussii-solar-report-april-1.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/aussii-solar-report-april-1.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":32512,"url":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/aussii-solar-august-19-mb1159\/","url_meta":{"origin":86442,"position":4},"title":"Australian Solar Systems Interest Index \u2013 August 2019","author":"Michael Bloch","date":"August 5, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"The latest auSSII report provides a statistics snapshot of what Australian solar buyers were wanting in a solar power system during July 2019. PV System Sizing 69% of those who submitted their details for quotes through our service and had a system capacity in mind requested pricing details for a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General Solar & Storage News"","block_context":{"text":"General Solar & Storage News","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/category\/solar-battery-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"auSSII solar report - August 2019","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/aussii-solar-report-august.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/aussii-solar-report-august.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/aussii-solar-report-august.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/aussii-solar-report-august.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/aussii-solar-report-august.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":47381,"url":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/aussii-solar-february-21-mb1869\/","url_meta":{"origin":86442,"position":5},"title":"Australian Solar Systems Interest Index \u2013 February 2021","author":"Michael Bloch","date":"February 8, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"The start of 2021 saw many Australians hit the ground running in getting ready to install an energy bill busting solar power system. 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