What is a two-way self-consumption meter? ☀️ POWER

And bidirectional counter it\’s a word to sayEssential device in a self-consumption photovoltaic installation with surplus which allows the electricity trader to pay us the excesses and in this way the price of the monthly bill is reduced. This happens because this device is responsible for accounting for the energy flowing in a photovoltaic installation in both directions, both from the power grid to the user and from the user pouring the produced and excess energy into the grid. They measure both the energy demanded from the network, as any conventional digital meter does, and the energy that is poured into it.

In a self-consumption photovoltaic installation, when the energy produced by our solar panels is not consumed, the surplus can be injected into the electricity grid. trading company, which is based on the data provided by the two-way counter, will thus compensate us for energy surpluses, which represents significant savings on our monthly bill. It should be emphasized that only those household y Business with installed powers lower than 100 kW.

Bidirectional photovoltaic meters are therefore an important element for saving at home and those responsible for measuring the amount of excess energy that has been injected.

Rent or buy the two-way counter?

A two-way counter can be purchased as property by the user or can be rented from the distribution company. If we decide to buy it, we will be responsible for its proper functioning. For this reason it is much more used to rent it since in this case the user will only have to guarantee its custody, and the distributor will take care of its installation, maintenance and replacement in case of failure.

Besides, it is more expensive to own the meter than to rent it, both for the economic cost and for the administrative costs of the verification. The meter rental costs will be paid by the user on a monthly basis through the invoice with the retailer, who will pass the rental amount to the electricity distributor, who owns the meter and registers it.

Two-way counter operation

As I just mentioned, the bidirectional self-consumption meter is a photovoltaic component that has the function of measuring the electricity flowing in a photovoltaic installation, both from the grid to the user or the requested energy, and from the user to the grid or injected energy .

Also bidirectional counter must be approved by a commercial company and works correctly as follows:

1. Solar panels generate electricity during the day. The meter calculates the electricity produced and subtracts it from the consumption of the network service.

2. If not all the energy produced by the solar panels has been used, the surplus is injected into the electrical network and the two-way meter counts the surplus energy.

3. At the end of each billing period, the distributor performs the reading of energy exported and imported from the network. Later, it communicates the data to the marketer so that he can apply the compensation to the electricity bill.

What is the number of meters required in a self-consumption installation?

He RD 244/2019 simplified measurement setups for that in almost all cases it is more than enough to have a single accountant with the distribution network.

In the specific case of self-consumption photovoltaic installations that benefit from simplified compensationit is essential to have one more meter in common self-consumption facilitiessince it is necessary to measure the energy generated to achieve the distribution between the participants.

Sometimes it is necessary install an additional meter for monitoring a photovoltaic system and in this way you get all the detailed energy consumption data. This is because the meters are owned by the distributor and not all of them provide this information to users to have control over consumption.

at present almost all smart meters are digital and bi-directional. For this reason, there will be no need to modify the existing meter if we decide to use simplified compensation. Yes, it should be replaced if our meter is not digital.

Will be need another additional counter in the following cases:

  • Common self-consumption. In this case, another meter is essential to account for the produced energy and distribute the energy between the participants of the collective installation.
  • Self-consumption with surpluses ineligible for compensation. An additional meter is required if there is no single supply contract to differentiate the demand of the user and that of the auxiliary generation services. This way you can correctly invoice what corresponds to each one.
  • Power generation systems equal to or greater than 12 MVA.