What is everyone experience in "testing" the system before PTO? The Tesla panel guys said the electric company is activity monitoring the homes and would detect something like this and of course all the legal language with penalties, etc. without a PTO. I get it.. but I'm talking about disconnecting completely from the grid for hours during the day to see how the system operates. By disconnecting completely from the grid, we may not be "operating".
Anyone heard any big slaps from extended testing before PTO? I'd like to test for an entire 24 hr period. =)
To some extent, it may depend on the utility. I have seen some people post the wording from their interconnection request and it explicitly states that they are not allowed to run their system before PTO. If you signed something like that, then you probably should wait to turn on your system.
I definitely would not run your system in such a way that you could export power back to the grid before you get PTO. Even if it’s not specifically called out in your agreement I think it’s clear that it would be in violation of the terms.
However, personally I had no problem running my system off grid and disconnected from the utility before I got PTO. As far as detection goes, I don’t think they have any sort of magic detection systems, but I think it could be detected if someone was looking for it, simply by looking at your power consumption. Most utilities have smart meters now so you can see your power consumption in 15 minute or hour intervals throughout the day. If you went off grid for 24 hours your power consumption would drop to 0 for an entire day. If they were actually looking for that I think they could assume that you might have gone off grid to turn your system on.
In my case I operated mostly off grid for 2.5 months before I got PTO. My consumption went from 2500-3000kWh per month to 200-400kWh per month. I’m sure that if anyone was looking for it they would have realized what I was doing, but in my case, at least, the utility didn’t care. They never questioned it and I had no problem getting PTO.
In fact, I was off grid and my system was fully operational for the city inspection, the utility inspection and when the utility came to change out the meter and no one batted an eye. The city inspection was scheduled and I had planned to turn off the system and go back on grid before the inspector came, but he showed up more than an hour early and I hadn’t turned off the system yet.
The utility inspection wasn’t scheduled, but I knew he could be coming any day, so I had been keeping a close eye outside and I was hoping that I might be able to see him pull up and shut it down before he came to the door, but I saw him arrive and I’ve never seen someone park and get out of their car so quickly. He was out of the car and on the side of the house before I could even get my shoes on.
One thing that was kind of funny was that outside unit for my heat pump was right next to the meter, so when the guy came to switch out the meter he pulled the meter and the heat pump kept running. He kind of did a double take and looked quite confused and I just said “Oh, the batteries probably took over”. That lead to a bit of a conversation about the tesla powerwalls and exactly how they work. He said that he had heard of them, but never seen them before, so I opened my garage to show him the batteries and we talked about them for a little while.
All that said, I think it really depends on your utility. I think it is definitely conceivable that they could detect you operating your system off grid, but I question whether they really would go through that trouble or do anything about it, especially if you were just doing a 24 hour test. So as long as your interconnection request doesn’t explicitly state that you can’t turn on the system before PTO then personally I think you should be fine doing a test.