Solar Generation Meter Emlite ECA2

[aesmith]

Hi,

We have solar panels, inverter and DC coupled battery. There's a "generation" meter Emlite ECA2 between the inverter and the house electrical system. The meter therefore registers everything coming out of the inverter whether that's direct solar generation or whether it's from the battery. Our meter just displays one register, as shown.

Data sheets for that model meter all either say it reads both import and export, or say it depends on configuration. I can't find anywhere that explains how to carry out that configuration. Does anyone know?

The reason I want to do this is we're going to start using off peak power to top up the battery during the Winter, and the meter as it stands won't account for that. We need to also measure power in the other direction, going to the inverter.

Ideally we'd have the version that shows import, export and net. If necessary that's what I will do. But it would be better if I could reconfigure the existing meter, to saying buying anything and reduce any chance of warranty issues from modifying the installation.

Thanks,

 

[flameport]

The inverter should already have all of the data you need, accessed either through it's app, web interface or whatever else it has got.

That meter was installed for compliance purposes only and is next to useless.

 

[aesmith]

Thanks. It's Solaredge and unfortunately it gets it's figures hopelessly confused by the battery, particularly if the battery is ever charged from the grid when both the meter and Solaredge count battery discharge as if it was solar production. If I don’t do so then the meter gives a correct value for production, give or take

Looking at the variables maintained by the appliances it's not clear how a net figure could be derived either. The inverter maintains a cumulative figure for AC Energy, it's not clear whether that's net or just counts output. AC Power goes positive for production and negative for import (either battery charge or inverter overhead), so I could integrate that to give net production, but that relies on running an external monitoring system collecting and processing that data. The battery maintains cumulative Energy Import and Energy Export, but import doesn't distinguish between charging from the grid or from solar.

All much more complex than just reading a meter.

The best solution is going to be replacing that meter with the "net" version, but if I could persuade th existing meter to act as they say it can then that would save cost and effort.

Does anyone know how to configure Emlite meters?

 

[ericmark]

A meter to show export was fitted to my solar system, but between being fitted about 18 months ago, and trying to change tariff, it seems the suppliers have changed their minds, and will no longer use the reading from the private meter, and now they all insist on a smart meter to pay you for export, which I suppose is fair enough really.

So I had a smart meter fitted, and went onto EV tariff, which is saving me a lot of money, I now charge the battery overnight, and this will take me to around 12 noon with around 40% to 60% battery left, then it will recharge often full by around 1:30 pm, then I start to export, until around 4 pm, and then slowly discharge the battery, the 6.4 kWh battery is just about enough to reach midnight on about ½ the days, this time of year, the battery saves us more than the solar panels, but as @flameport says, the solar software gives a far better overview of power exchanged, the export meter has no real use any more.

The software gives a reasonably good overview and only reason to use the smart meter, is the app now shows how much of each rate is used, plus can show in £rather than kWh, with standing charge, as shown or without. However, the smart meter app is a day or two in arrears so rather useless, and the IHD (in home display) in the main show zero, so a bit pointless.

 

[aesmith]

I'm not sure why it's hard to believe when I say the Solaredge app doesn't give accurate figures but here's an example. On that day we actually imported near to 19kW as I charged the battery overnight to ride out the price spike the following day.

You can see it's registered only the import that it thinks went to the house, not the energy used to charge the battery. Next day it registered 0.5kWh import which corresponds with the smart meter, but the balance, most of which came from the battery, is mostly shown as solar production.

 

[aesmith]

Back to meters this is what the data sheet for our existing meter says ..

"The meter provides measurement of active (kWh) energy in both import and export directions with registers shown on the large easy to read LCD display. The display features 8×3.5mm characters and can be configured to auto cycle
any of the available registers or remain static with only a single register viewable."

Mine works as described at the end, a single register viewable. I've emailed Emlite to see if they can or will provide information on how to reconfigure it. I have a suspicion it's not user configurable, but it doesn't quite make sense for it to be factory configured either.

Fall back is that I can get an Import/Export/Net meter for around £25 and should be an easy swap.

 

[plugwash]

https://eco-angels.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/emlite_eca2_100a_datasheet_10_6_2020.pdf

The meter features an optical port conforming to IEC 629056-21 allowing meter
readings to be collected electronically using a standard probe and software tool.
The port also allows configuration of the meter

So it looks like it can be reconfigured, but only with special tools.

 

[aesmith]

Thanks, the answer from Emlite is that it's not possible for me to change the configuration. They've recommended replaceme to with the Import/Export/Net variant. (In fact they said that it's mandatory and the installer should have fitted that model, but I think that really refers to batteries retrofitted to systems registered for FIT, which ours isn't)

 

[aesmith]

I fitted the replacement on Monday afternoon. As well as now giving me a proper Net reading it also shows how wildly optimistic the figures from the inverter are, even without charging from the grid. App give production from yesterday plus today up to 12:00 as 7.95kWh. Actual metered export 5.9, net 5.2.

Edit actually I'm getting confused trying to reconcile the readings, some of the solar production will have gone into the battery, and not yet been used. So probably not as over estimated as I first thought.