Today I figured out that the PV installation done on my late Mums house was cocked up. Basically they have routed all the generated power to the mains supply side of the meter rather than into the consumer unit where it would have been used by the house.

The result of this is that amount of electricity imported through the meter did not drop as the house used none of the power it had generated.

Apart from the installing company coming back and fixing this mess I’m of the opinion that they should pay compensation for the power we had to pay for but should have been free. As the government decided that the average house would export 50% of the PV generated power to the grid, I’m going to ask for the other 50% (about 3250 units x 13p).

The only issue is that the PV was installed 3.5 yeas ago – should this make a difference?

Here’s a pic of where it went wrong for those that are interested (the cable on the left coming through the board is the supply from the inverter).

Pv wiring

You can still sue at 3.5 years.

Good luck, I suspect you’ll need to go to court.

Are you not on a feedback tariff???

Normally on the PV systems that I have installed electricity is sent back to the grid and the units feed back into the grid.

Normally another another meter or multi function meter is used if new build.

On the PV switch is that another armoured???

Is their a meter outside?

If deffo a cock up, have the contractor admitted fault????

If so then you are entitled to be compensated.

Good luck

An explanation of Feed In tariffs

I’m fully aware of the FIT and yes we’re on them. The issue is that part of the attraction of any PV system is that you can use power your system has generated – but the way this has been wired means that we pay for this power as it’s going into the meter along with the normal mains feed

I think it might actually be worse than that as any electricity generated and used in the house is going through the supplier’s meter which you are paying for as it will incremment.
Rich.

Can you expand on that?

I have three meters, production, consumption and consumption of our own production. The production reads what we produce, the consumption reads what we consume and the consumption of production meter always reads zero as we prefer to sell everything at the feed-in tarif and pay the going rate for consumtion (which is lower).

Yours all looks fine to me. You’d need another switchable meter between the PV box and your house wiring to consume your own production and record it.

Edit: the only advantage of the third meter is that we can run independently if the grid goes down by flipping a couple of switches.

If you have no joy with the contractors directly, then get onto MCS. They’ll take dim view of the bodged install.

Edukator, you’re not in the uk though are you?

I’m in France, I thought the British feed-in tarif was higher than 13p too so I can’t see why you’d want to consume your own production when you can sell it for more.

Edukator – sorry mate but it’s a complete balls up (confirmed by a number of those that know on Navitron). The pv generated power should be entering the house on the ‘inside’ of the consumption meter (so power you generate and consume isn’t metered), but it’s actually entering on the ‘outside’ of the meter which is wrong.

Good point Geoff. The installing company (quite a big setup) have gone rather quiet since I emailed them the picture this afternoon!

We actually get 45p/Kwh from the FIT but it’s not metered in the UK, an assumption of 50% of your production is assumed to be exported and this is what you get paid for whether you use it or not.
So it makes sense to use as much of the generated power as possible.

Well as it is you’ll get paid for everything recorded by the PV meter and pay for everything recorded by the house meter (I assume the thing with “PV” on it is meter – if it isn’t a meter then PV production will have been invisible and then you’d be right to protest). Check the bills and payment records; you should have been paid for everything on the PV meter and paid for everything on the consumption meter. The inverter keeps a record of production, ours reads exactly the same as the production meter.

50% is a rather generous assumption given the consumption of households posted on STW threads.

No mate the thing with PV on its is an rcd/isolator…. not a meter. So, yes, invisible power generation 😥

The payments both ways have been right but looking back upon the consumption records I’ve kept over the last 5 years, there was no drop in consumption after the PV was installed, which was odd in hindsight.

When the PV generates it will record it’s production on the generation meter (not visible in the photo) so you’ll get your FIT ok. However, if the PV is producing 3kW and the immersion is on with a view to making use of the electricity being produced, it will tick up on your normal meter (ie the one in the photo) so you’ll be billed at your normal rate for the electricity your producing.

You may have already said that in your first post but it’s been a long day so forgive me if I missed it.

Rich.

NOt a meter, so how do they know how much you’ve produced? Your meter looks old, does it go backwards on sunny days?

Edit: no of course it can’t.

Actually it could, but I’ll only find out once they’ve wired the PV properly so that there actually can be a reverse flow of power through the meter.
If it does go backwards I’ll have to get it changed.