Often mistaken for the same concept, solar monitoring tracks your energy production, while home energy monitoring tracks your energy consumption. Using both monitoring systems together allows you to spot faults early, shift loads, and boost ROI, among other things. Read on to learn more about fully optimizing your solar system’s efficiency with monitoring products here at Solaris Renewables.
What Is Solar Monitoring?
Solar monitoring strictly focuses on how your solar is producing energy and the well-being of your solar panels. There are technological components embedded within the inverter of your solar system that collect data from the panels themselves and send it to a customer-facing app where users can check the status of their solar panels.
Solar monitoring does not track any of your actual energy use in your home. It instead dives into the specifics of exactly how much energy your solar panels are producing before your home uses portions of that energy for its purposes.
What Are The Benefits of Solar Monitoring?
Your solar monitoring smartphone app enables you to consistently check various factors that have an impact for your solar system.
Immediate Problem Detection
Using real-time data, you can ensure your solar system is working to its fullest potential, and, when it’s not, you can easily spot this trend and make adjustments accordingly. Any issues are typically detected quickly by the sensors within the inverter, resulting in immediate notification to the app’s servers. So, if you were to get a push alert regarding low output, voltage fluctuation, overheating, or some other physical factor (such as a fallen branch or shade overtake) affecting your solar panel, you would be able to address that immediately.
Savings
Being able to catch these problems early on not only saves you lost energy but also saves you money on excessive repairs. Furthermore, the more efficient your system is over time, the quicker you will maximize your Return on Investment (ROI).
Environmental Education
The ability to observe your solar trends is also both entertaining and informative. It makes you more aware of the positive impact your solar system has on the environment. Furthermore, it helps you understand how your system operates under varying conditions (such as weather and seasons).
What Is Home Energy Monitoring?
Home energy monitoring is a way to observe how your house utilizes the solar energy you’re producing. If step one consists of your solar panels harnessing solar energy, then step two consists of your home using that energy to meet its necessary electrical demands. It is this consumption part of the process that home energy monitoring tracks.
While a solar monitoring system is included in the package deal for installing your solar, a home energy monitor would need to be purchased and installed separately. You don’t even need to have solar to have a home energy monitor – the two are not mutually exclusive.
Home energy monitors are usually built into or near your main electric panel. Many home energy monitors can interact with existing smart home systems you may already have installed in your house. Home energy monitors that are not located in the electric panel typically have sensors that can detect the activity of your electrical circuits, interpret it, and then send the data to their corresponding smartphone app so that you can view the trends yourself.
Some panels are even more advanced and don’t include an app because they feature a screen that displays real-time data right in front of you. It all depends on what type of monitor model you pursue.
What Are The Benefits Of Home Energy Monitoring?
Appliance Usage Recognition
Home energy monitoring can show you exactly how much electricity you are using on which devices and can therefore help identify wasteful patterns. For instance, example notifications could include anything from a simple, “The oven was left on” to a more complex, “Your home’s energy just spiked 5% above your typical daily average.” This information allows you to adjust habits and make your house more energy-efficient.
Savings
Similarly to solar monitoring, the recognition of unusual trends by your home energy monitoring interface, such as when certain appliances are consuming more electricity than usual, can be very helpful on the money front. By pinpointing excessive usage areas early on, you can prevent unnecessary bill expenses on devices you’re not even meaning to have running.
Environmental Awareness
Home energy management, of course, is also beneficial for the environment because it makes you ultra-aware of how your individual usage habits can contribute to energy waste on a larger scale. It helps you realize the aspects of energy efficiency that you do well and the aspects that you need to work on. A home energy monitoring system is like your own personal environmental consciousness assistant.
How Could Solar Monitoring And Home Energy Monitoring Be Used In Tandem With Each Other?
Although solar isn’t necessarily required to purchase a home energy monitoring system, there’s a lot of potential for fun and maximum energy efficiency if you have both a solar system and a home energy monitoring system.
Production Vs. Usage
One cool thing about having both systems is that you can see if you’re producing more solar energy than you’re using as electricity in your home. This can help you understand when you are drawing from the grid versus feeding back into it when you have excess, which, of course, is convenient to know for your potential net metering rewards in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, or Maine.
Load-Aligning
By using your solar monitoring system to observe when you tend to generate the most energy, you can then shift your home’s energy-intensive tasks (which your home energy system will inform you of) to that time of day. That way, you optimize your electricity usage because your large amount of solar power is going directly to an equally large demand.
For example, using your dryer typically takes up a large amount of energy. However, If you elect to do this task midday, then you are aligning this high-energy task with a prime time for solar production. This increases your use of free solar power, making it so that you don’t have to rely extra on the grid for fueling those energy-consuming tasks during, say, nighttime, for example.
Online Access
Since both of these systems have app interfaces, they become very attractive as a package deal. With the simple unlocking of your phone, you can view both your solar production and home energy usage simultaneously – a super easy and convenient feature.
Cross-checking
Lastly, with both of these apps sending you notifications when issues arise, you can cross-reference both systems to determine how problems are interconnected. For instance, if your home energy usage remains consistent, but your solar monitoring app indicates lower solar output, that could indicate problems with your panels themselves. This cross-checking process can apply for many scenarios and make troubleshooting problems a lot easier.
A Recap
Solar Monitoring Home Energy Monitoring
| Tracks solar panel output | Tracks overall home electricity use |
| Focuses on solar panels only | Focuses on whole house including appliances |
| Provides alerts on panel efficiency and faults | Provides alerts on usage patterns and device-level data |
| Uses solar inverters and panel sensors | Uses smart panels and circuit sensors |
| Interacts solely with solar panels | Interacts with smart home systems |
| Maximizes solar output and maintenance | Identifies energy patterns and hogs |
Other Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do I Need To Get Both Solar And Home Energy Monitoring?
No, you don’t need to – the systems are individually excellent. However, as mentioned in the section above, there are many benefits to having both solar and home energy monitoring systems, so it is our recommendation that you do.
What Determines How Much My Home Energy Monitoring System Costs?
The cost of your potential home energy monitoring system isn’t set in stone. It depends on what features you desire, the brand of system that you want, the size and complexity of your home, and how you want it installed. If you are interested in seeing how much an energy monitoring system would cost with us at Solaris Renewables, consider getting a quote.
Who Can Install My Monitoring Systems If I Live In New England?
Though we are a Massachusetts-based company, here at Solaris Renewables, we serve a greater New England area. So, if you are a Massachusetts, New Hampshire, or Maine homeowner, we are here for you all the way from deciding what kind of monitoring systems you are interested in to the actual installation process.
Get Your Solar and Home Energy Monitoring Systems Today!
Here at Solaris, we can easily install both solar and home energy monitoring systems for you.
Remember, our solar monitoring systems are included in the installation of your solar system with no extra cost. Once your installation is complete, you will get a call from us with instructions on how to download the app and monitor your solar system yourself.
Furthermore, we also sell three different types of home energy monitoring systems: the Span Smart Electric Panel, the Lumin Smart Panel, and the Sense Home Energy Monitor. For more information on these systems, their costs, and the implications of installation, please call us or visit our website to obtain a quote today. We look forward to working with you here at Solaris Renewables.