Gross Metering & Net Metering

Does size really matter?

Well yes, but how you use it is just as important.

How big should my solar system be? 

With the cost of solar continually dropping, and panel and inverter technology continually evolving. The general rule of thumb is to install as much as you can physically fit "or" afford for your home.

A decade ago, everyone was trying to maximise the North facing roof. Ignoring the East and Western faces. We had the "Gross Metering" system where all the energy produced by the solar system, was exported to the grid, at a very attractive feed-in tariff. The gross amount of energy produced was the most important outcome, not the time it was produced.

These days, we have "Net Metering". Most would agree that this is much closer to the true essence of solar power. We generate and "self-consume" the solar energy as we generate it, and only the surplus amount or "net" amount goes back to the grid.

For this reason, it has become very important to have the solar arrays pointing in directions that more closely reflects your consumption patterns. For example, there is more to be gained from setting up an array pointing East, if the homeowner tends to get up early and do all their chores early. Then, they are using their own solar energy to run the appliances. The same for the afternoon.

In fact, we find for working households, setting up solar arrays on the Eastern and Western roof faces is more beneficial, even ignoring the Northern roof in a lot of instances. We don't want to have a big peak of production in the middle of the day, if nobody is home to use it.

Your surplus will not go to waste though, there are still some attractive feed-in tariffs around, but the main saving is using your very own "self-generated" electricity.

So, yes, we do need to make sure we have enough solar capacity to be able to support the loads in the house. But we also need to be very mindful of the time that these loads occur when designing a solar system for your home.

Solar panel and inverter technology is constantly moving forward. Panels can now generate electricity with the sun at much wider angles than previously thought was possible. Inverter voltage tolerances are much wider than before. This makes the modern day solar system so much more efficient and flexible than ever before. Houses that we previously thought to be unsuitable, now are viable due to new technologies like DC optimisation and micro-inverters, but maybe we can chat about that next month.

Plug into the Sun.

Cheers, Cameron.

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