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A monitoring platform that gives you live data of your home usage.
There are many benefits to having the whole picture of your household usage, and there are even greater benefits to having LIVE data about your home. Watch the video below for a tour of "The Monocle", and read on to see how it can benefit you.
Having the ability to monitor your Solar Production, Household Consumption and your Export, increases your ability to make smarter decisions on how you use your energy.
We all know now that the key to a profitable solar system is increasing your self-consumption. We know through years of research that the average home only uses 30% of the energy produced by solar. Simple steps to increase your self-consumption can save you hundreds every year.
Utilisation Is Where It's At!
We are all about maximizing self-consumption of solar production. It is good for you as the system owner (reduced power bills), it is great for the environment (powering your home with a renewable energy source), and it is great for the network (too much solar in the network is a problem).
Why It Works
* Your solar will offset your general household usage first, such as your dishwasher, computer and general 'stand by' appliances. Larger loads like kettles, dryers, and air conditioning units, are a little more complicated. Even though you may be generating solar, the full load may not fit completely under the solar curve, and may use some mains power to support the load.
* Any surplus solar will be sent to the grid for a 'Feed in Tariff'.
* The aim is to 'shift' the loads to fit under the solar curve in the most efficient way, to use more of the solar that is being produced.
* The difference between running a load inside the solar curve, and exporting to the grid can be as much as a $0.20 cents savings if not more, depending on your energy plan.
"The Monocle" offers an Energy Utilisation Graph - to let you know how your
self-consumption stacks up.
The average amount of a household load powered from solar, is approximately 30%.
Anything above that is a great result, for all the reasons mentioned above. "The Monocle" measures this for you! View it quickly and easily, for any timeframe, on our utilisation page.
The CATCH Solar Relay has the added bonus of Load Control - Anytime, Anywhere!
Now, from the comfort of your smart phone, you can control any load connected to the CATCH Solar Relay, via our new app "The Monocle". Simply click on the load icon turn a load on or off when it suits you. Send the instruction and the load will be on or off in seconds!
The Energy Graph
Knowing how your system is performing each day, and the production and consumption in your home through the day is very important. Our graph will instantly show you how much your home consumed and how much solar you generated. With one press of a button, you can see how much of your consumption was powered by the solar, and how much was exported to the grid. Allowing you to see the full picture, means you can make smarter decisions on how to use your power.
If you have multiple loads, you can install multiple CATCH Solar Relays, and you will be able to gain visibility on anything you want to monitor or control, be it a specific load, another solar array, or a particular phase. This flexibility is offered to you, when the data for the CATCH Solar Relay is monitored via "The Monocle".
The details are at your fingertips. Simply zoom into the graph to see all the details that you need at any time of the day. Then scroll across the graph with the slider, to clearly see the values of everything measured, at all times of the day.
Skip across to any day in the past since your CATCH Solar Relay has been installed, to see what happened on that day.
What About The Future?
Finn Peacock touches on what the Solar Tax could mean for you.
"The Solar Tax could cost you around $100 a year in savings, but Savvy solar owners should be able to come out ahead" - Finn Peacock.
We don't know about you, but we consider our CATCH Power customers as pretty savvy.
'Future Proofing' used to just refer to putting panels on the roof, and offsetting your electricity bill by offsetting your usage, and exporting to the grid. As more and more debate occurs about solar taxes, and dynamic export limits, the question is no longer if, but when?
How do we protect ourselves from these new solar reforms?
The CATCH Power team always have our finger on the pulse. For an extra couple of hundred dollars, at the time of installation, you can ask for the CATCH Power Solar Relay to act as a normal Energy Meter! On compatible inverter brands this will not only allow you to have solar, consumption data and load control, but also to ' Future Proof' your system.
Our CATCH Solar Relay works as the energy meter for a range of inverter brands. This means that we can control your inverter, and act on market signals to ensure that you are protected from new regulations as they are introduced.
This could mean turning on a load at a better time of the day. There will be other markets that will reward those that are coordinating large collections of solar generation and load, to harmonize the network. If you opt to participate in these markets, then you could be handsomely rewarded. Additionally, you will be playing a role in a better functioning network, that can have more renewable energy installed in it! On a less positive note, there has already been talk about a “solar tax”, where retailers charge you for exporting solar energy to the grid when it isn't needed. “How on earth can I stop that”? Which is a great question, and before CATCH Solar Relay was born, there was no way that your solar exports could be controlled to avoid being charged for it. Now you can!
The CATCH Solar Relay is connected to the internet via "The Monocle", and will make all of these opportunities available to owners with an internet connection. The solutions will be wide and varied, and it will all be made easy and seamless with CATCH Power products at your fingertips. Make your system ready for the Future needs of the network, and those that participate in it. It’s easy with CATCH Power.
Are you in the process of having solar installed?
Would you like to access household monitoring?
Has the network imposed an export limit?
Chances are your installation requires an energy meter.
So why not use an Australian Made and Engineered Energy Meter that allows for Inverter Control, Load Control and a truly future proof solution? While offering a 5-year warranty?
If you are using any of the below inverter brands (currently only single-phase models), the CATCH Solar Relay can be used in place of the standard energy meter.
