Those solar panels are a wonderful invention. It brings us green energy, makes us more and more self-sufficient and with the high energy tariffs, you also get your investment out faster. Great! But how exactly does that work with the yield of those solar panels? And is there a simple way to find out? Yes, you can! We use the energy manager EnergyFlip with the ‘solar’ extension set. David tells you all about it!
New solar panels, but what do they bring in?
In partnership with EnergyFlip
Since two years, we are the proud owners of solar panels on our roof. Our solar panels already provide an opportunity to see the daily yield. Being super curious about how our solar panels work - it was a big investment after all - we looked into this app daily in the beginning. Only there is one downside. In this app, we only see how much has been generated. To get the picture complete, you should also be able to put your household's actual consumption alongside it. Bummer, so that data is missing.
Smart meter versus energy manager
Finding out that data can't be that complicated, because this is exactly what those handy smart meters are designed for, right? The smart meter is the device in your meter box that keeps track of your electricity and gas consumption. It is placed here by the grid operator and allows them to remotely monitor your consumption. If you agree to this data being read out, the grid operator also shares this data with your energy company. This data is read once a day and used to draw up the energy bill for your household. And in the case of solar panels, the smart meter also keeps track of how much electricity is generated within your household. This tells your energy company enough to draw up the energy bill.
Energy consumption managers
In addition to drawing up energy bills, this data is of course ideally suited to gain more insight into your energy consumption, so you can get started as a smart energy saver. There are special energy managers on the market for this purpose that use the same smart meter independently of your energy company, but now with the aim of giving you insight and advice on your actual energy consumption.
These come in two flavours. The first is a device in the home that instantly (live) reads your smart meter. And you have remote energy managers who, like your energy company, receive your consumption once a day from the grid operator.
We ourselves have been using an energy manager from EnergyFlip for over a year, which gives us live insight into the yields of our solar panels and our energy consumption. We can see both our gas and electricity consumption in real time! EnergyFlip is a box in your meter box and a handy app on your phone that gives you live insight into your energy consumption. You can expand that box with a solar extension set, which is ideal for solar panel owners as it gives you live insight into the operation of your solar panels. EnergyFlip added functionality to the app to very easily switch between gross, net or total consumption for your household. Super handy if you want to calculate the efficiency of your solar panels.
With an energy manager from EnergyFlip, you can see on your phone exactly how much energy you generate from your solar panels and how much you consume yourself.
Getting started with your energy manager
An energy manager is very handy because it means you can see live what your solar panels are doing now and how much power you are using in the house now. If the sun is shining, this is a good time to switch on heavier appliances like the washing machine or dishwasher. And we also charge our electric scooter as much as possible when the sun shines. At thegreenlist.nl we often get asked if that makes sense, because you can never be sure if you are actually tapping power from your own panels. So we checked that with EnergyFlip. On the one hand, that is indeed true, but because energy chooses the path of least resistance, there is a really good chance that you are tapping from your own keg on a sunny day. Also not unimportant: if a solar panel turns out to be broken or stops working properly due to a gull flap, you'll know immediately.
Do you have more questions about energy consumption at home? Find a detailed Q&A here with EnergyFlip where we answered the most frequently asked questions from followers and readers of thegreenlist.nl reply. And also we wrote earlier a comprehensive review on EnergyFlip.
The magic behind the calculations of your energy manager and smart meter?
It's magical isn't it, such a handy app? And with those handy icons and graphs, you also have no reason at all to think about how that calculation comes about. Why should you? And yet, as a tech-savvy person, I do find it interesting to dive into this. What your energy company and energy manager calculate behind the scenes is your gross and net electricity consumption. In short, all the power generated by your solar panels is first used by your household. Should more power be generated than needed, the rest will be fed back into the grid.
Gross consumption is your household's total electricity consumption. If the yield from the solar panels is subtracted from this, the net consumption remains.
Simple calculation example: the yield of your solar panels
- Imagine: after a nice sunny year, your household has a gross consumption of 1,000kWh while your solar panels have generated 1,200kWh. For that year, we then speak of a net consumption of (1,000 - 1,200 =) -200kWh.
- The consequence for your energy bill is that you pay nothing on the part you used yourself (1000 kWh). Moreover, your energy company gives money back for the part you delivered back (200 kWh).
It is rather important which period you use to calculate your gross and net consumption. This can be annual, monthly or even hourly. To avoid ambiguity for consumers, the government now wants to require energy companies by law to do this annually.
Should you want to delve even deeper into the matter of gross and net consumption, Energyflip has a nice explanation on their site.
With an energy manager, you can time even better when you use large appliances. Is the sun shining? Then turn on the washing machine!
Also getting started with an energy manager from EnergyFlip?
Do you also want to get started with an energy consumption manager? Whether you have your own solar panels or not, it is incredibly nice to have live insight into your energy consumption. Because measuring is knowing right? We also use the app to hunt for our energy guzzlers. As a result, we managed to reduce our idle consumption by almost half (from 163 kWh to 94 kWh). The app also gives you live insight into your gas consumption. This is especially useful in winter, the period when you incur the most energy costs by using gas to heat your home. By being smarter and more economical with our heating and your hot water consumption, we were able to make huge savings by the end of 2023. While we struggled with sky-high gas prices, we used just 48m3 in February. From that money, we can go and do a lot of other fun or tasty things. Getting excited?
With the code GREENLIST10, you get 10% discount on your EnergyFlip. And are you now curious about how to optimally monitor your solar panels to achieve this, but don't know exactly what you need? Do EnergyFlip's handy decision aid and start reading your solar panels optimally.
More energy tips from thegreenlist.nl
- Want to get started on your gas consumption too? Here are simple tips to reduce your gas consumption today.
- Or read this article on stealth and open the hunt for home energy snoopers.
Photo credits: thegreenlist.nl.
