Help graphing net electric use w/PV?

[beers.jo...@gmail.com]

Would any S67 person be willing to help me graph my net electric consumption? No hurry, but perhaps S67 members with solar electric on their homes would be interested as well?

• Background: We installed solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in late January of 2024, but Madison Gas & Electric's online graphing and comparison tool becomes unavailable once customers switch to net metering for PV.

I've tried downloading my .csv data, but my meager spreadsheet skills have vanished. (I'm so old that I used Lotus 1-2-3 when learning to write spreadsheets.) I suggested to my former colleagues at Madison Gas & Electric (MGE) that they create a tool (or macro?) for customers with solar PV so they can track and graph their net electric use, but that hasn't happened. (They did email me instructions on which columns to use when creating a spreadsheet, but I don't want to spend a lot of time re-learning how to format a google sheet.)

A web developer friend asked Claude AI to graph my data, and it did a fairly useful job, but I'd like to create something that all MGE customers with PV could use.

• More background: When customers with PV go to "My Account" on mge.com, it displays this message:

>>>"This meter is enrolled in net-metering (PG-2), measuring the difference between consumption and production. The data is not available on this page.

Download your billing and energy data and refer to Column 42-MGE-Purch-KWH for kWh exported and to Column 20-Cons for kWh imported.

Download all of my billing and energy data "<<<

On a related note, I hope to make a tutorial that shows all MGE residential customers how to compare their gas and electric use, using screenshots and/or videos. (The highest energy users typically have the most opportunities for saving energy.) If I create a tutorial, I could do a first-Tuesday demo for S67, or 

Some customers didn't know they were eligible for free or reduced-cost programs, so I particularly enjoyed helping them navigate the process.

Thanks for all help S67 members give to this community!

Jonathan Beers

p.s. Our 7 PV panels produce about 94% of our electric use, which is what our solar contractor predicted.

[Bob Baddeley]

I've done extensive energy analysis with two homes so far.

1) I'm using an Enphase Combiner Box to take the output from the microinverters and feed them into the service panel. This includes a gateway inside which uploads data to the enphase cloud. From this you can get net energy production really easily. It also has the ability to add CT clamps to the service panel to monitor consumption, but I don't use them.

2) I'm using an Emporia Vue to monitor production and consumption. The Vue is awesome and pretty easy to install if you're ok with pulling the front off the service panel. I have CT monitors on every circuit, which includes the solar output, giving me not just how much I'm producing, but also how much I'm consuming from the solar, from the grid, how much I'm sending back to the grid, and what's going on with each circuit, allowing me to identify vampire loads and even get notifications on things (like when the washer or dryer is complete, I'll get a notification). The Vue app and web app have pretty graphs and allow for CSV download if you want to do more.

3) Before I installed solar I installed the Vue to get a sense of my exact consumption, giving me the ability to not just forecast exactly how much solar I'd need, but also where we could improve our waste and how we might make upgrades in the future to reduce our natural gas usage and switch to electric appliances.

Granted, this requires buying a $200 product and installing it in a service panel, which is not exactly accessible to everyone, but it has been a wonderful tool for me. Regarding the visualization of the MGE data, I'm afraid I haven't much to contribute. I will say looking at the net electric consumption from MGE perspective is nice because it doesn't require any hardware, but it masks possible waste since an unnecessary load during the day will offset some of the generation of the solar panels but that'll be invisible at the meter.

bob

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[Jonathan Beers]

Thanks, Bob. I also have an Enphase Combiner Box and use the Enlighten app for real-time monitoring, but to the best of my knowledge, that doesn't give "net energy production really easily" in the absence of additional monitoring, such as the VUE.

If anyone is interested, I can privately share a deep dive into my extensive experience in home energy monitoring, preferably by phone. From the late 90s tuntil 2015 I tested virtually every home energy monitoring device on the market including the TED 5000. (My spouse is very patient.) Like the VUE, the TED 5000 also had current transformers (CTs) on every circuit. I used a Sharpie to label each circuit with the "always on" standby wattage, which was quite a bit lower than average. Our overall electric consumption from 2009 to 2024 averaged less than 300 kWh per month, which is why we only needed 7 panels to supply ~95% of our consumption.

In 2013 I gave a joint presentation on home energy monitoring at the ACI 2013 National Home Performance Conference in Denver, focussing on what customers could do to answer the question "What's making the meter spin?"

Thanks again.

Jon

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