AGL Digital Meter and my current Solar System Consumption, Export and Import Monitoring

[ramesh]

I received a letter from AGL about the planned upgrade of my current Netmeter (Ausgrid supplied) with a digital meter in early July 2020. I am a bit concerned about this as I have seen negative comments about AGL's digital meters.

I have a SolarEdge inverter system with consumption monitoring,  export and import monitoring. This has been working well for the last two and half years. I am extremely concerned that the new digital meter installation by AGL will wreck this monitoring if the AGL nominated electrician screws up the SolarEDge side of things that monitors export, import and self consumption. If he does, I will land up paying the Solar installation company for fixing up AGL's mess and I want to avoid this.

Can people share their positive or negative experiences please?

[NeilC · Accepted solution]

Hi Ramesh,

As they say in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Universe, "DON'T PANIC".

AGL in this case is a retailer and do not manufacture meters.

There is an ongoing process to change ALL meters on managed networks to smart meters.

I can see on Austgrid's site that you must have a EDMI Mk7c meter currently.

Now your SolarEdge system has one or more sensors that monitor the amount of power you draw from the grid and export to the grid.

All power that enters or leaves your property by law must be monitored with an APPROVED METER, your SolarEdge system is not an approved system under the eyes of that law.

Now the benefit that you will have when you get your smart meter is that you will be able to see your daily usage on your MyUsage Web Application rather than having to wait for a bill to come in to check your usage.

You will be charged by your retailer the amount that appears on your bill (which I presume you are happy with now).

The smart meter will not change this. If you want to dispute a meter reading the costs can be very expensive and if no fault is found then YOU WILL PAY the full amount of the costs (up to $600 I believe).

With SolarEdge you have monitoring and I presume you have been doing your own meter readings to confirm that input and export are correct.

With a smart meter your meter WILL be read on the day listed on your bill, you do not have to give a meter reader access to the property any more.

I have recently had a look at billing, (remember I am not AGL but an interested / active community member), for someone using a SolarEdge system who was complaining that AGL was over charging him.

After analysing his data (supplied in the MyDatausage format)  my investigation showed that the 70kw for the quarter he was complaining about was not monitored by the SolarEdge system.

Still waiting to hear back from him.

Go ahead with your meter change, you may find that it may be because there is a known fault with your current meter and that is the reason they are changing it, another GOOD reason is that by not having to employ as many meter readers AGL can pass the savings back to you the consumer.

Leave a note in your meter box reminding the installer that you have a SolarEdge system! He or she may have installed the product before and may notice that the install is not correct and leave you a note or may refuse to install the new meter because of faulty wiring.

If the person who installed your SolarEdge system took some shortcuts in installing you may find that the system does not work correctly.  It is not the responsibility of AGL or their nominated installer to ensure that this THIRD PARTY product works after the install of the new meter.

Cheers

Neil

[ramesh]

Hello Neil

Thanks for taking the time to respond.👍

The current AusGrid meter is an EDMI ATLAS Mk10D. I paid an AusGrid certified installer to install this meter in Dec 2017 after then installation of my SolaEdge Solar system. I did a comparison of the SE app data against the AGL billing data and found it to be reasonably close. So no issues on the meter side or SE data monitoring side. 

I think AGL is doing a change of meters in my area to cut down meter reading costs (currently they have to pay AusGrid for the service). 

I will most likely go with the upgrade instead of opting out. 

Thanks for the clarifications you have provided. much appreciated

[NeilC · Accepted solution]

Ramesh,

You have lots of fancy gear attached to your Solar.

Date	Peak	Exported to Grid	Solar Gen	Used Solar	Peak Meter	Solar Meter
17May20	3.910	19.419	24.3	4.881	2490.306	9681.397

Here are my readings for Sunday (Yesterday) at Midnight.

The Meter readings I get by downloading a file from my Supplier that are available before 8 am the next morning.  Just have to decode it. (Takes less than a minute).

All data coming from an AGL Supplied meter and from the inverter that came with my Solar.

Cheers

Neil

[ramesh · Accepted solution]

Neil

Sure. Will check it out.

Thanks

[ramesh]

Hello Neil

How do you extract the data from the file downloaded - is it a manual process or you have any macros to do it. can you share the info pls? After AGL installed the comms version of the MK10 smart meter, I can now get the data (delayed by a day or two, but still ok). If it is a manual process , not to worry.

[NeilC · Accepted solution]

Ramesh,

I have written two programs to extract the data from the downloaded data file from AGL.

The first one converts the data from AGL into an industry standard NEM format file and the second creates USER DEFINED REPORTS (up to 36 for each day plus a Daily Total Report) from that file.

If you PM me I can send you a private email address that we can use.

If you have the Solar Edge installed correctly it should do all the monitoring for you.

So all you have to do is send me a copy of you MyUsageData and I can decode that and you can compare the AGL Data against your SolarEdge Data. If the SolarEdge Data matches the AGL Data then your Solar Edge is installed correctly.

I have decided that there is no interest in my two apps and even though I have been upgrading it (for my personal use) I have been wasting my efforts on it for other people to use.

I you are not willing to supply your data to me you can get a copy of a NEM format file from AGL from

https://refer.agl.com.au/forms/request-metering-data/

This may take take up to 10 Working days and if you are not very explicit in your request you may not get the data you really want.

Cheers

Neil

PS:

I did this for another user and found that his Solar Edge Equipment was not installed correctly and was not monitoring his complete system.

[ramesh]

Hi Neil - Thanks for the response. The good news is that the daily AGL usage data on the website and The SolarEdge App daily data are a very close match. I will still arrange to send my usage data extract from AGL soon. Will PM you. Thanks