Solar | Energy Sparks

Audience

This page provides help for anyone using the Energy Sparks website.

What is a solar monitoring system?

A solar monitoring system allows you to remotely track the performance and output of a solar panel installation. It collects and reports data such as electricity generation, consumption and export, from your solar installation. This is usually done via a web platform or mobile app.

A solar monitoring system is usually fitted and made available by the solar installer, and typically consists of:

On-site hardware, which monitors the solar panels. This functionality might be built into the solar inverters, or it might consist of separate solar monitoring devices.
Connectivity that allows the readings collected on-site to be transmitted automatically to a remote service.
A website that allows you to view the collected data and produce reports.

Some solar monitoring systems also allow third-parties to access the collected data - in these cases, it is possible to incorporate your solar data into your Energy Sparks account.

Types of solar meters

There are three aspects of a solar panel installation that can be monitored:

Generation - the amount of electricity generated by the panels.
Export - the amount of generated electricity that is exported back to the national grid.
On-site (or self-) consumption - the amount of generated electricity that is consumed on site.

Depending on the age of the installation and the agreements in place with the installer and your energy supplier, a solar installation might include generation metering only, or metering of both generation and export. On-site consumption can usually be calculated from the generation and export, but some installations might also monitor this directly.

Some solar monitoring systems also collect readings from mains electricity meter(s), which can provide a more complete picture of total consumption from both the national grid and the solar panels.

How can Energy Sparks access our solar data?

Energy Sparks can load and analyse data from your solar panels in two ways:

Direct integration with your solar monitoring system.

Energy Sparks can integrate with a range of popular solar monitoring systems:

We can set-up access to any of these systems in order to automatically load daily generation and (if available) export data. Our team can coordinate with you about getting the access enabled and tested.

This is the best option for ensuring that the performance of your panels is directly reflected on your school dashboards and analysis.

We will need to coordinate with you to ensure that we can remotely access data from your monitoring system.

Via your energy supplier

Where we cannot access data from your solar monitoring system we might still be able to access data from your energy supplier.

This includes both your main electricity supplier, which may have access to your export readings, or the organisation with whom you have a Power Purchase Agreement.

To set this up we may need appropriate consent or a Letter of Authority in place to access data on your behalf. Data accessed via this route might not always be up to date.

What if our system is not supported, or we cannot access data?

We always aim to load data from your solar monitoring system, energy supplier or other organisation with whom you have a Power Purchase Agreement. Data collected by a monitoring system will give the most accurate insights into the performance of your panels and your electricity consumption.

We are happy to explore options for integrating with new solar monitoring systems, so get in touch if you are not currently using one of the systems above.

At a minimum, we need to be able to receive daily reports of generation and/or export data, or be able to automatically retrieve data from the system.

Where there are no other options available to us, or while we are in the process of getting access to a solar monitoring system, we can estimate the performance of your solar panels.

We use data provided by Sheffield University about the performance of other solar panels in your area of the UK. If you provide us with details of the size of your solar installation we can produce estimates of your half-hourly generation, export and self-consumption.