It's really exciting to see our customers installing solar battery storage and use their Solar Analytics Monitoring (SAM) service to get the most value out of their expanded solar power system - panels and battery. The Speechley family in Alexandria NSW have recently installed a Tesla Powerwall and share how they are making the most of it with their SAM service.
Gary Speechley and his wife are moderate-to-high energy consumers with plenty of appliances that they power with their impressive eleven-solar panel array and another five ready to be installed. Seven of their panels are connected directly to the grid to take advantage of their 60c bonus feed-in-tariff, and the remaining are connected to their Tesla Powerwall.
Gary is using their Solar Analytics Monitoring to keep tabs on exactly how much solar is being generated, exported and saved to battery, as well as how much they are consuming and when.
Gary says, "Coupled with online real-time monitoring from our friends at Solar Analytics, we are able to see exactly what our power generation and power consumption is, with second-by-second vision of selected power circuits in the house. And our SolarEdge inverter also logs data to the Monitoring also allows us to assess the performance over time of our solar arrays, ensuring that they remain delivering at peak operational performance.
Above all, with so-called “smart metering” becoming the default method of charging for electricity, we are able to decide when to run high-demand appliances such as the dishwasher, washing machine and air conditioner. Scheduling appliances to run when electricity is cheapest, along the lines of the older “off peak” systems, allows us to minimise our power costs.
All this positions us for the end of the current (NSW) solar bonus scheme when we lose our current rebate for the energy we pump into the grid from our original solar array."
If you would like to understand more about your own solar, head to our How It Works page to learn more.
