Three sources, three stories
A business running on grid, a generator, and solar is really running on three separate measurement systems. The utility meters the grid and sends a bill once a month. The generator has its own gauge, or a hand-written run log. The solar reports through the inverter’s own app, on its own cadence and in its own units. Each is accurate about its own slice — and none of them was built to add up with the others.
So when someone asks the simple question “how much energy did we use, and from where?”, the honest answer is a shrug: the numbers don’t reconcile, so the total can’t be trusted.
| Source | Usually measured by | Why it doesn’t line up |
|---|---|---|
| Grid | The utility meter and monthly bill | Monthly, after the fact |
| Generator | Its own gauge or a manual run log | Rarely matched to the grid data |
| Solar | The inverter’s own app | Separate cadence, separate units |
You can’t manage what doesn’t add up
This is not a tidiness problem — it is a decision problem. Every useful energy question sits on top of the numbers agreeing first: which source actually served the load, and what did each cost? How exposed are you in the peak window? Under net billing, what did you really consume net of export? If the underlying figures don’t reconcile, every one of those answers is a guess dressed up as a number.
What a single source of truth actually is
A single source of truth is not a prettier dashboard — it is a reconciled one. It means grid import, generator output and solar generation and export are all measured consistently, at the same cadence and per phase, in one place, so they add up to a total you can defend. The value is agreement: everyone — operations, finance, an auditor — works from the same figures, calculated the same way.
How WattEY does it
WattEY reads each meter continuously, classifies each source from its own telemetry — grid, solar-exporting, or with a generator attached — and reconciles them into one view, per phase. Because the sources finally agree, every downstream number is built on solid ground: cost-per-source, the time-of-use split, and net-versus-gross all draw from the same reconciled total instead of three stories that never matched.

