My Power

Q: What happens to energy produced by my system? Am I getting my electricity from my solar or from the local light department?

A: If you have Net Metering like most customers, and you are making solar and your home needs power, your solar energy system will feed your home first (the path of least resistance). If more solar energy is produced than is needed in your home, the excess power is sent into the grid for others to use. If you are not producing enough solar energy for your needs, the additional power you need will automatically come from the grid.

If you are a Rhode Island solar owner in the Renewable Energy Growth program, you don’t have Net Metering. Instead, all the energy your system produces is sent into the utility grid.

Q. How much solar am I producing?

A. If you have Net Metering, there are two ways to tell how much energy (in kilowatt-hours or kWh) the system is making: the production meter in the basement and the inverter’s monitoring website.

The inverter company’s monitoring website pulls information from your inverter and displays it online. Most monitoring websites let you view production for whatever time period you like, e.g. last month, last year, this month, etc.

The production meter also tracks your system’s energy production. The production meter only counts upwards so it always reflects the total amount you have made since your system was turned on.

If you compare production numbers from your inverter website and the production meter, they will be slightly different because they measure production at different points in the process.

The production meter, also called a “revenue-grade meter” is the most accurate, which is why Massachusetts requires solar owners to use those numbers for SREC reporting.

Note that if you are a Renewable Energy Growth customer, your “generation meter” tells you how much solar you have produced.