PassivSystems, the UK’s leading solar photovoltaic solar monitoring provider has unveiled Power Gauge, a home-energy platform that monitors overall energy consumption as well as generation from renewable installations – showing homeowners when they have free power available to use from their array and when they should reduce consumption because they are importing energy from the grid. The system is designed to support the popular solar-monitoring platform, PassivLiving, which has been deployed in more than 20,000 homes.
“With new lower feed-in tariffs about to hit the UK market, it is very important that those homeowners with an interest in local generation should focus across their homes and get smart about when they are using power,” says Colin Calder, CEO of PassivSystems. “A very large number of people who have installed solar panels are paying for electricity off the grid by using their appliances at the wrong time. Wiping out that cost with smart-home balancing as offered by Power Gauge could be the make or break factor for whether your renewable installation really hits the bottom line of the household finances.”
A key component of the solution is the newly-developed Power Gauge display, which provides users with a rich, visual real-time display of their available free electricity. This shows when there is sufficient unused solar generated electricity available to run appliances at zero additional cost – or when expensive electricity is being purchased from the grid.