How carefully is solar PV Feed in monitored ??

[Ghostrecon]

An Idle thought this morning ... somebody with an installed 4kw solar on the 40 odd p fit call them Householder H shall we generates loads of leecy in the nice summer months but is dismayed by the lack of generation in our gloomy winter so comes to an arragement with HouseHolder G next door - H uses an extension lead to 'buy electricity from G at 20p unit and feeds in to the grid (some loss in step/up/down rectification I guess) G makes a 10p profit per unit and and H makes a 20p profit per unit? Possible??

Possible variations for H - buys and charges couple of battery banks using

10p/unit electricity and feeds it back in at 43p unit ?? - Even better if charged with economy 7 electricity but has the added cost of buying the batteries?

[Roger Chapman]

That of course would be out and out fraud which, or so it seems to me, would be 100% detectable without very much effort. The electricity company will know the size of the array and thus, within close limits, how the output will vary during the year and what the yearly total is going to be. Under performance would not raise any concern but any over performance would ring the bell loud and clear.

[Jethro]

Any distortion of the free market by the state will cause such potential schemes to emerge ...

IIRC in the 80s, BT offered cheap calls at night, to allow firms to send faxes in bulk. Some smart cookies worked out that if they ran a bank of diallers to call premium-rate numbers (which they owned) BT would effectively be paying them nett each month.

WRT the scheme above, I suspect the Energy companies will have fraud- detection software in place to watch for anomalous profiles. Since they are already monitoring for unmetered energy consumption, I imagine it's not too much of a reach.

[Ghostrecon]

umm I was advocating this obvious illegal practice it arose as I was thinking about whether I could save money by using a solar panel and battery to reduce some of my base load of 12v devices - mainly routers. I would think that if you did someting stupid like feeding in more than the max possible or feeding in at night then yes it would be picked up quickly

- I was thinking really of the less extreme supplementing during the day when the weather was foggy/cloudy - cant really see that they could monitor the weather to such an extent?

[Ghostrecon]

oops correction

I WASN'T advocating :-)

[Roger Chapman]

They don't need too. As I understand it all they are getting is 3 monthly generation figures. If they add up to too much overall in the course of a year or if one quarter is significantly over productive then they will be on to you.

[The Natural Philosopher]

took em over a year to tumble to the fact that 'solar power' after dark was costing the spanish economy...rather a lot.

[Roger Chapman]

Well we are well accustomed to 'Spanish practices'. ;-)

[John Rumm]

The smoother version would be for neighbour to buy a legit 4kW setup. Once installed and setup, flog off all the panels for a quick recoup of a large chunk of the investment, and then to a deal with a neighbour to borrow a mains feed. Make sure that the injection rate is controlled by the level detected by a small solar panel (only needs to be a couple of inches square). That way the feed in matches expectations and local weather condition perfectly. ;-)

Hardly any more fraudulent than the actual scheme, and there is no chance of unbalancing the grid with a system like that!

[Brian Gaff]

Does this not contravene the contracts though?

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

It just goes to show though, how stupid the whole false costings really are. One should really make this unsubsidised and level, this would then really rule out stupid systems as are being fitted and hopefully make people more inclined to shop around for the cheap option and hopefully if the regulator was fair, drive prices back down to non profiteering levels.

Brian

[Dave Liquorice]

Possible??

Probably, one would have to look at the wording of the contracts to determine if the source of the "generated" electricity is leaglly tied down.

Even if the source is not tied down it would be fraud and since when have fraudesters worried about breaking or bending contracts?

There seems to be a growing assumption that inventing a law will

*actually* stop people doing what ever that law is supposed to stop. That will only happen if the chances of being caught and the penalty are high enough to make what ever it is not worth while.

[tim....]

Did I miss something - This is electricity company admin departments we are talking about here?

tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

That assumption was purely down to 10 years of Blair, the shyster lawyer, who felt that laws were a cheap way to placate public opinion and raise taxes..

The net result is that the law itself is now simply disregarded

[therustyone]

from what I've seen on TV, the connections from panels to utility supply are sealed just like normal meters, so some physical damage would be required to do this.

rusty

[The Other Mike]

How are they "monitoring for unmetered energy consumption" ?

[Dave Liquorice]

Pattern of recorded meter readings against the pattern that type of property should have. So if you want to get into hydroponics only put the pumps and lighting on the iffy feed, keep everything else as normal so the meter readings look right.