Thanks for your comments, Sunstroker. To answer your points, as I understand it, the percentage shown on the display is the percentage of the full sinusoidal waveform that is being fed to the load. In a phase switching system (like the old SI unit) the output thyristor (probably a Triac) is fired so only a percentage of the 50 cycle waveform is fed to the load, so for 20%, the triac fires late in the cycle and for 50% it fires at the mid point. A problem with this is that the fast switching injects harmonics into the mains, which can cause electromagnetic interference unless filtered out.
Burst fire is different in that it feeds full cycles to the load, but only intermittently. So for 13% only one in 8 cycles are fed to the load. This means current is being taken in 20mS bursts every 160mS which is about 6 cycles a second, well within the visual “flicker” range, but is only likely to manifest itself if the supply to the local group of houses is relatively poor. And your neighbours have got their lights on. If you’re on an estate or in town, you’re unlikely to experience any flicker problems.
The unit doesn’t need to know the wattage of the load. As I understand it, the old SI unit simply increased the power to the load in 10% steps until the sensor detected the export power was in the minimum range set, and then checked it every second or so.
My guess is that the problems with the new burst fire unit are to do with the sensor. In the old system, the sensor circuitry only had to average out the current for a couple of cycles or so, say 50mS, to get a reasonably accurate reading of the current flowing.
It’s much more difficult with burst fire, where it needs to average over 20 or more cycles.
If they’re sampling much shorter than this, a likely scenario is that the unit sets an output, samples and sees power being exported, so it increases the load, samples again, still sees export and increases the load and so on until it hits a burst. By this time the load has exceeded the available solar power so some is imported.
I monitor and record my usage, generation and import readings, and my usage is fairly constant over the year. So it was fairly simple to see the change when the new SI unit was fitted.
For the two months before I only used gas for cooking and water heating. For the 2 months after, I turned the boiler off.
The extra solar energy used was 166KwH
The extra electricity bought was 64KwH
I saved between 7 - 8 Units of gas = 220KwH - 250KwH
So 230KwH seems about right for water heating.
So it's saved me 230x0.032 = ÂŁ7.36
But it's cost me 64x 0.108 = ÂŁ6.91 in extra electricity.
Sorry it’s such a long tome.
Mike