My house has two 120V legs coming in to the breaker from the power company. I have my solar generating and coming in on one of the legs. What will happen if I generate more than I need on one leg? Will it go over to the other leg or go out to the grid.
I am thinking that the net consumption on the other nongenerating PV leg will just drop as power shifts over? I asked my dad and he didn't know answer.
Is it better to split your PV Generation into one leg and each side of it to balance it? Or does it matter?
Re: Solar Generation Power Question
The excess of generation over consumption on that half of the supply will be exported. It will not affect the energy imported on the other leg.
Were your PV to generate 240 V across both legs and feed (the same) current into both legs, then the generation would offset consumption on both. But you could still get into the situation where one leg was importing and one was exporting.
Does it matter (to you) will depend on how your meter will register the resulting energy flows, and that is an entirely different question, one which I don't think I can answer. If your meter registers the total nett energy over both legs, then it won't matter to you. If your meter registers import and export separately, and the tariff rates are different, then there will be cost implications when you export on one leg and import on the other.
There are some notes under "Metering" in the Building Blocks article "EmonTx - Use in North America".
Re: Solar Generation Power Question
If your meter registers the total nett energy over both legs, then it won't matter to you-thats my situation Robert. Thanks for explaining that!