Greetings,

Thank you for your explanation about meters going into reverse. I follow your argument to some degree, but I feel that there is a fallacy. I am thinking about what you have said.

If I use say 10 Kwh of power in one day and my PV panels produce 5KwH of power, then the power that I buy from my energy supplier is 5 KwH less that the total power used. That means that I have effectively saved myself 5KwH of power which I do not have to pay the energy provider for! That is a benefit financially to me.

If on a similar day the PV panels generate 5 KwH of power and I use 5 Kwh of power, then that is 5Kwh of power that I do not have to buy and I have had a days electric power for free. I have a financial benefit.

Now, if on another day my PV panels generate 10 KwH of power and I only use 5KwH, I am exporting to the grid 5KwH of power. According to your reasoning I am suddenly penalised for actually exporting unused power, whereas if I use it I benefit.

It does seem to me that if what you say is correct, there is an inducement to me to use everything that I generate on summer sunny days. I should do all my cleaning with the vacuum cleaner, boil water and do lots of washing of clothes, have lots of baths and so on. This would seem to defeat the idea of the PV panels on my roof feeding power into the grid system! It is a very rum argument in my opinion.

Over the year I do use well over twice the amount of power generated by my PV panels, and so I do save myself effectively over 1200KwH of power.

Thank you for your thoughts on the subject. I will think more.

Best regards in advance,

Tom Peckham