Has anyone used the SolShare product to back feed multiple tenant meters?

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pv_n00b

Senior Member
Location
CA, USA
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Professional Electrical Engineer
Someone sent me some information on SolShare made by Allume Energy. It seems to take the output of a single PV system and switches it between a number of outputs, allowing the PV system to back feed several tenant meters at a site. I have depended on virtual net meter programs or just back feeding the house meter but this looks like an interesting option if it works. Has anyone installed one of these?
 

GoldDigger

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Staff member
Location
Placerville, CA, USA
Occupation
Retired PV System Designer
Interesting.
I wonder how they manage the switching without causing the inverter to drop out and requalify the grid each time?

Does it work on 2 out of 3 phase 208/120 systems with different units on different phases?
 

wwhitney

Senior Member
Location
Berkeley, CA
Occupation
Retired
I perused the installation manual. I have the same question as Golddigger on inverter dropping out. I guess they must be able to do the switching fast enough that the inverter won't (or can't per the standard?) drop out. While ensuring the switching breaks before making.

I did notice some oddities/problems. The system is designed for 120/240V split phase. They basically have 5 different outputs for L1/L2 that it switches among. They call for just one neutral connection from the unit to the meter stack, but I don't recall seeing if they specify how to terminate it at the meter stack.

They also suggest on each output sending L1 to one meter and L2 to another meter, so it can serve up to 10 meters. At a minimum, that's just weird. And they have 5 separate KOs, but I would think with the single neutral, you'd need to run all 11 conductors in the same conduit.

Also, it says that it supports up to a 16.4 kW inverter, but that the wiring to each meter has to be able to support the full inverter output. Seems like it would be hard to wire up unless you had a meter stack that supported two breakers per meter.

Cheers, Wayne
 

jaggedben

Senior Member
Location
Northern California
Occupation
Solar and Energy Storage Installer
I find this rather hair-brained. Maybe there's a niche case or two in support of the idea but I mostly don't see it. Also while I don't see any real safety issues, I don't really see how this can be NEC compliant in most cases. Or at any rate, I don't relish the task of trying to convince an AHJ that I'm allowed to make multiple parallel taps off different feeder circuits to the same piece of equipment, even if somehow a case can be made. (I mean, perhaps in Australia, or most European countries, they have more sensible codes that don't stifle such innovation. But here it's a whole different ball of wax.)

Bigger picture, the device is engineered to accomplish a complicated physical goal that is or ought to be unnecessary. What is required to incentivize solar for apartments and apportion solar production appropriately is regulation and accounting that requires utilities to allow it. California has done the latter with Virtual Net Energy Metering (VNEM). VNEM does require installing an extra meter, which is not exactly cheap or easy. But is installing an extra meter for VNEM more or less hassle than installing this device? I mean, just from the materials-and-labor installation standpoint, red-tape and regulation aside? Hard to say, but the cost of the device would have to be pretty small, under $1k or so, which I doubt it is. Maybe this device could get around some of the regulatory weaknesses in VNEM. But it's a moot point because it's doubtful an AHJ would allow it, and essentially impossible the utility would or could allow it under current law and net-metering regulation in California. It's still an interconnected system and still exports, so it's not an non-export system and each connected meter would still need an NEM agreement, and that's where the big trouble would start.

As far as how they do the switching, I'm sure they could overlap/parallel two of their 'outputs' for a fraction of a second and the inverter wouldn't blink. But it's another thing that raises some funky NEC questions.
 

ggunn

PE (Electrical), NABCEP certified
Location
Austin, TX, USA
Occupation
Consulting Electrical Engineer - Photovoltaic Systems
As far as how they do the switching, I'm sure they could overlap/parallel two of their 'outputs' for a fraction of a second and the inverter wouldn't blink. But it's another thing that raises some funky NEC questions.
With solid state switching I'm pretty sure it can be done in a fraction of a cycle so the the inverter sees nothing more than a tiny glitch. I doubt that they do it with mechanical switching. I especially doubt that they would mechanically switch with overlap, since during the overlap two services would be connected to each other on the load side of the meters.

But like you, I think it looks like a solution in search of a problem; here in Austin there are a couple of pilot projects now running that share the outputs of PV systems on multifamily residences via virtual metering. They connect and meter the PV on the line side of the tenant meter bank and credit each tenant with an appropriate fraction of its production.
 

pv_n00b

Senior Member
Location
CA, USA
Occupation
Professional Electrical Engineer
Thanks for the insightful comments. I agree that VNEM is a superior way to apportion PV production. But for places without VNEM may be a viable product. There are some NEC issues though that I don't think anyone has thought out. The manufacturer did the UL Listing and then kind of left the integration hanging. It is a unique idea though.
 
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