Many of our customers use an energy monitoring device, such as the ‘OWL’ meter, to keep track of the electricity generated by their Solar PV system. A recent post on the OWL website explains why some customers may see a generation reading on their energy monitor, even when it is dark outside!
What is Phantom Power, and how does it affect my energy monitoring device?
The following post is from the ‘OWL’ meter website: “Phantom Power” is a “feature” of all PV Inverters. This is where it appears to an electricity (energy) monitoring device that the solar power is being generated even when it is dark! This Phantom Power is actually reactive power and does not register on the electricity meter. Unfortunately current clamp sensor technology that we (and others) use does not allow us to differentiate between reactive and real power, and hence the Phantom Power is detected in the same way as the true generated power is. Our Intuition-pv product uses the following approach to remove the measured Phantom Power from the recorded values:
- At midnight each night the Phantom Power is measured and noted (on a typical single inverter system this might be say 80 watts but can be significantly higher on systems fitted with multiple micro-inverters)
- Now for the next 24 hours this value is automatically deducted from each and every reading made.
This feature only works on Intuition-pv, so if you are monitoring with any of OWLs other energy monitoring products such as Intuition-lc you will see the Phantom Power overnight.
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