With the government subsidizing the installation of solar panels for many low income families across the nation as part of a green incentive it is becoming more popular for solar panels to be a significant source of energy during the summer, but are you really getting any savings by generating your own electricity?
Some might say yes, because obviously you are creating power and providing it onto the electricity grid, however this may not be the case as in many instances electricity meters have systems in place as “anti tampering measures” that detect when you’re putting electricity onto the grid, the meter itself will think that the unit has been tampered with and that you are attempting to reset the dial and have reversed the flow recognition, as such a warning will flash up on your meter rEd standing for “reverse energy detected”
If you are getting an rEd warning on your meter this can institute a failsafe that not only means you are paying for the electricity you create and send onto the grid but you also trigger the meter to clock on at a faster rate as it attempts to overcompensate, whilst still clocking up your ordinary electricity charges throughout the entire period.
I have done some research online and this is a regular occurrence, and what do the electricity companies do when you report this to them? At the time of recording the video they stated that they would take measurements throughout the whole payment period, and see if anything has changed, to this date they still haven’t done anything and the meter still reads rEd. They did promise to swap my moms meter for a smart meter ( a pay as you go topup meter wholly unsuitable for countryside use as she lives in the middle of nowhere, with no convenient topup points anywhere nearby) instead of her existing direct debit meter.
One thing I can confirm though is that since having the meter installed it clocks up at a severely faster rate than it ever did prior to installation, so unless solar panels drain your electricity there is something dodgy going on, and my mom took painstaking measurements weekly for months prior to installation to measure what difference her solar panels would make, nobody expected them to increase charges and trigger an rEd warning that the electricity companies refuse to put right (as they’re making extra money and benefiting from the solar panels far from anyone else doing so)
So if you do get solar panels or already have some you should be sure to check your meter for an rEd warning and make sure to report any problems immediately to your electricity supplier before you get ridiculously large bills as a result of generating your own electricity.