Controlled Load

[wattmatters]

How do people deal with Controlled Loads (hot water) that are not uploaded to PVO as they are not metered by their own consumption monitor?

This is the missing part of the energy consumption and cost data in my PVO tracking.

I have my PV output and consumption data uploading to PVO, but controlled load is a separate circuit not monitored by my Fronius smart meter (and is not fed any solar PV).

In my own spreadsheets I enter in total daily energy consumption as reported by the retailer, and assume the difference between that and the consumption captured by the Fronius smart meter is the controlled load. Typically it averages ~5.5kWh/day (2 people, norther NSW, 250 litre indoor electric tank), bit more in winter, bit less in summer.

Is there perhaps a way to post-hoc upload the retailer data so a controlled load value can be calculated?

[willisave]

I realise its not too helpful, but I dealt with mine by eliminating it, driving the HWS from the normal circuits, and setting its timer to come on in the middle of the day when the solar was producing most. Later (now) my feed-in tariff is higher than my off-peak tariff, I switched the timer to come on during off-peak times on my normal feed. Either way, PVO sees it as part of the normal house load.
(when we switched to the smart meter, AGL wanted to charge an extra metering fee to retain the HWS on controlled load, as they would have had to install a second new meter. The extra metering charge was higher than the extra powr cost between controlled-load rate and normal off-peak rate).

[wattmatters]

In my case:
Off-Peak tariff > FIT > Controlled Load tariff (including metering).

[B-Man]

i monitor mine with a CT clamp into my flukso (yes using flukso not the smart meter (3 phase ones were a little pricey) and upload it to the extended data tab and works fine.

i can’t see a reason why you can’t bulk upload the data to pvoutput if your looking to go the manual way.

my FIT > Controlled load tariff and even if it wasn’t i would still rather not use my power to heat the water as i would be paying peak tariff for probably half of my usage so still ends up worse off.

[jimdcollie]

Hi Wattsmaters, or perhaps you might like to look at this as you have a fronius inverter, https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/using-fronius-inverter-smart-meter-relay-make-solar-electric-hot-water/
this is what i did with my system with just the relay as i have no smart meter fitted,works great now use my 7.135 c fit to heat my hot water instead of 29 c from the grid, My relay was $200 installed ,and i think it paid for itself in the first 6 months jim

[wattmatters]

Thanks, am aware of it. It would cost me money to move my HW from controlled load to solar PV because my CL tariff is less than my FIT. Not to mention how expensive those relays are.

[wattmatters]

@B-Man

i can’t see a reason why you can’t bulk upload the data to pvoutput if your looking to go the manual way.

I can upload daily controlled load data (e.g. say monthly in arrears) but I don’t see where I can define a separate import load with a separate tariff.

@B-Man

and upload it to the extended data tab and works fine

Not sure I follow. Do you mean to one of v7 through v12?

I have some extended data already, one is temperature data from weather service, three (v9, v10 & v11) are assigned to voltage data for each phase. This means the extended data tab is showing voltage data, not energy data.

Where I want the controlled load data to appear is on the TOU tab as an extra stacked column:

and in the accompanying table as an extra column showing the controlled load:

At present the data shows peak, shoulder and off-peak data and costs, and also has my daily connection fee but it is missing my controlled load and controlled load costs.

I can manually upload the daily controlled load data, and enter in a controlled load tariff, but I don’t see where I can do that so it adds this missing consumption data to this chart and table.

[B-Man]

i don’t think there is an option to add it to TOU as its exactly what it says “time of use”. I don’t have TOU but was thinking of setting some times up so i could see how much power per day i use in the non sun shine parts of the day for when batteries start to become viable.

while the way i have it setup it doesnt show the hot water in the cost/day etc the hot water isn’t affected by the solar so being separate isn’t a big issue.

it would be nice to add the cost to the overall total to see if you made money or it cost money for that day, week, month, qtr etc but I do a manual spreadsheet that I record into weekly that tallies the weeks costs inc hot water and forecasts my power bill. and also now origin have the forecast bill feature in their website.

[wattmatters]

it would be nice to add the cost to the overall total to see if you made money or it cost money for that day, week, month, qtr etc but I do a manual spreadsheet that I record into weekly that tallies the weeks costs inc hot water and forecasts my power bill. and also now origin have the forecast bill feature in their website.

I have a detailed spreadsheet database with all the 5-min data plus the retailer data. It has quite detailed analysis and charting of all sorts of things including the exact daily cost/credit but if it can be done via PVO it would be a little easier to maintain since 95% of it is automated and the only manual work would be updating the daily controlled load data say once a week or month.

My spreadsheet also has a battery simulation model which helps me to realistically see what would happen if I had a battery, as well as assess the impacts of different billing plans.

The other view I’d like in PVO is one that sums based on quarterly billing periods. I have that in my own spreadsheet. e.g. for this billing period in the 64 days to date my bill is $99.80. I know that will fall to about $35 by time we hit end of period as my daily indicators at the moment are showing an average credit of around $1.80/day.