42OhmsPA
What's in a title?
Good discussion on that here.
Thread 'Source for predicting cloud cover?' https://diysolarforum.com/threads/source-for-predicting-cloud-cover.76073/
Need a way to bottle or can excess solar production.
- Thread starter Mattb4
- Start date
Thread 'Source for predicting cloud cover?' https://diysolarforum.com/threads/source-for-predicting-cloud-cover.76073/
ricardocello
Watching and Learning
Victron VRM creates an estimate of kWh for a few days into the future.
It supposedly accounts for weather and cloud cover.
It’s no worse than any other meteorologist, but that’s not a high bar.
I personally just use the Apple iOS hourly weather widget in the morning and see how many hours are cloudy, and set my low SoC value.
Doggydogworld
Solar Enthusiast
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2022
- Messages
- 361
You'd love Micah Toll's "Awesomely Weird Alibaba EV Deal of the Week" series. He finds some crazy things. It's mostly tongue-in-cheek, but he bought and imported a tiny pickup with a dump bed a couple years ago. He also bought a small boat and more recently imported a container full of electric tractors to resell. List prices often exclude batteries or only include cheap lead-acid. And shipping+customs is a bitch - I think total cost for his pickup ended up being 3x list price. But the articles are fun!
wattmatters
Solar Wizard
I use Solcast and have it integrated in Home Assistant.
Provides week ahead and hourly forecasts. Can see how it performs over time compared with actual. The dashed line in the lower chart is the PV forecast provided by Solcast:.
Daily:
Hourly (archive):
Hourly (live):
I use it in automations to help decide if/when pre-emptive charge of the batteries with supplemental energy from my grid-tied PV is turned on or off. Normally they charge from the off-grid PV array but that won't always generate enough. So the automation tracks the current status of the battery and the forecast solar output data (which updates through the day) and determines if and when supplemental charging is needed.
CaliSunHarvester
Solar Enthusiast
Impressed. Best i have seen. Will check out your link.
wattmatters
Solar Wizard
I use Node Red for the logic for deciding whether or not supplemental charge is required:
That then updates relevant entities which are used in Home Assistant automations which switch the supplemental charging on or off as well as manage the rate of charging based on available excess PV:
I won't bother with the details of the automations - they are specific to my set up. But they are not difficult to design, the automation UI is pretty easy to use. Or you can do it with yaml if you prefer.
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
If your batteries are full you need more batteries
And you should just keep going back and forth as you get extra money, or run out of room to put the stuff.
I use it similarly: to know if I can dump battery into the buffer with the heat pump or not to maximize energy use. Especially in spring when it's cold, but we have lots of sunny days.
