feeding the grid and net metering

[jarvis]

I posted a while back about private consumers producing electricity and feeding excess back to the grid. I was told that this does not cause your meter to spin backwards. I have since learned that most states have "net metering" in which your excess electricity IS fed back through your meter causing it to turn backwards. Basically you get paid the retail price for the excess energy you produce with renewable energy source such as wind. In Minnesota where I live, if your generation capacity is less than 40kwatt you are qualified for "net metering" regardless of electric utility.

Check out

http://www.awea.org/faq/netbdef.html

Thanks
Ben Englund

 

[c12sc16]

You are correct that an electromechanical meter will turn backwards unless it has a detent. Presently almost all of the single-phase solid-state meters will add negative flow as positive flow because negative flow normally is considered tampering. Industry is slowly reacting to the customer generation scenario and I only know of one manufacturer that is producing a true “net” solid-state meter for utility use.

 

[TestBeforeTouch]

In order to "steal" energy, people will turn their older style kwh meters upside down for a short period of time to run them backwards. This is one reason some meters now only measure flow in one direction.

 

[busbar]

 
One of the early local e-net !EEE929/UL1741 photovoltaic/inverter installations knocked the owner for a loop when a few days before a new form-2 meter and utility turnover, he quietly tried things out early. He was flabbergasted when, with the inverter running and close to zero house load he found the meter still registering power used.

Sure enough, the meter disc was rotating “backwards,” but with a photoelectric sensor simply counting holes passing in the disc, the electronic register did not know the direction of flow. The following week, the utility replaced the hybrid meter with a GE kVs meter {at his expense} with two time-of-use registers preloaded to 50,000 counts. With energy received [toward the utility] the new meter correctly incremented either side of 50,000 counts.

 

[peebee]

TestBefore -- neat trick, one I'd never heard of before!

 

[tinfoil]

peebee (and anybody else who reads this thread):

DO NOT TRY THIS!

1) It is stealing.

2) Utilities have known about this 'trick' for years and are on the lookout for it.

3) More sophisticated billing software allows the utilites to detect tampering even without a person on-site

4) Utilities have become very aggressive about pursuing 'theft of power' cases through the courts, and are enjoying decent conviction ratios when they do so. Utilities are concerned about 'internet proliferation' of tampering techniques and act more promptly now to create an effective deterrent.