Renewable energy is the new partner of smart metering, compared with traditional energy resources. We have wind power, solar power, battery storage system in our daily life, but what kind of metering suits for solar system and what are they. let's learn them together:
1.A traditional utility meter was only used to measure your electricity consumption, running in one direction from your property to the power company. (Grid Consumption)
2.A PV meter is used to measure how much electricity your solar system generated. This is a one-directional meter, as you won’t be transferring power to your solar system.
It is the most accurate way to measure exactly how much usable electricity your system is generating, as monitoring it at the panel- or inverter-level won’t account for the small amounts of lost production as the energy flows from one component of your system to the next. (Generated Energy)
3.A consumption meter will tell you exactly how much electricity you’ve used, including electricity used directly from your solar system and electricity, pulled from the utility company. These are almost always a CT meter, regardless of the size of your building. (Total Consumption)
4.A-bi directional meter will tell you the import energy and export energy directly, in other word, it supports to measure the electricity you draw from the utility grid, they’re also measuring the electricity you transfer to the grid. Then you can choose forward+reverse energy, absolute value of "forward-reverse"
For whole solar system, IVY provides both AC metering and DC metering solutions as above picture. These PV meters support different measurement modes, and some of them supports Tariff, RS485 communication, battery etc.