Solar Assistant Question

Hoping someone with Solar Assistant knowledge can chime in...

Does Solar Assistant proxy data back and forth between the inverter and the BMS?

Meaning, is the inverter also able to read the SoC from the BMS (via Solar Assistant) and act as if it is direct connected to it?

Or is Solar assistant completely its own thing, which just communicates to the inverter and to the BMS, building it's own data only, but not able to translate the data transmission back and forth fully bridging the gap, allowing the inverter to be set to say, Lib or Pylontech battery protocol or something that Solar Assistant may know how to communicate (in my case MPP Solar inverter), and operate as if it is direct comms connected to the BMS?

Do my questions make sense?

No, it is not passing comms between the battery and inverter.
It is reading both, then allowing some triggers based on the information it reads from both sources.

jberger said:

No, it is not passing comms between the battery and inverter.
It is reading both, then allowing some triggers based on the information it reads from both sources.

Click to expand...

Thanks for providing that info. Do you happen to know of any examples of a trigger type action that could be set up to perform?

Power management for example :

Solar Assistant does support MQTT integration and will continuously publish inverter/battery stats that can be read by other devices. In a recent revision, it also supports publishing to a particular topic to set inverter values, though the documentation is not specific about what values can be set other than the output source priority. This allows for arbitrary integrations to manage inverter behavior so you can build your own custom integration or use a framework like Node-RED to create triggers based on the data published to the MQTT exchange. More information can be found here: https://solar-assistant.io/help/integration/mqtt

wayne530 said:

it also supports publishing to a particular topic to set inverter values, though the documentation is not specific about what values can be set other than the output source priority.

Click to expand...

Output source priority is the starting point for this feature (just released recently). I think they are planning to add more inverter control parameters in future updates.

I'm looking forward to it as I have ideas on some automations I'd like to set in place.

Is there any MQtt topic to set the SoC of the inverter?

I am looking at reading SoC from the BMS and then setting the SoC of the inverter in order the control the axillary output of the inverter (Deye inverter). I want the inverter to have an accurate SoC for which it will trigger the disconnection of non essential loads.

Alternatively, does solar assistant has a topic to publish to that can turn off the axillary output?

eumobong said:

Is there any MQtt topic to set the SoC of the inverter?

Click to expand...

Not sure I understand.

SOC is what it is, you can only change it by charging or discharging your battery.

As far as I can tell, at the moment the only two settings which are adjustable via MQTT are:
- Output source priority
- Charger source priority

Everything else is read only.

This is what my Home Assistant MQTT integration shows:



You can see the Output Source and Charger Source priorities are available, the rest are greyed out and I believe are going to be added for control via MQTT in a later firmware update.

I wish to have control over the Grid Charge current setting and also the Float Voltage setting (as these inverters suffer from the premature float bug and can need a kick in the bum to get out of that).

wattmatters said:

Not sure I understand.

SOC is what it is, you can only change it by charging or discharging your battery.

As far as I can tell, at the moment the only two settings which are adjustable via MQTT are:
- Output source priority
- Charger source priority

Everything else is read only.

This is what my Home Assistant MQTT integration shows:

View attachment 111888

You can see the Output Source and Charger Source priorities are available, the rest are greyed out and I believe are going to be added for control via MQTT in a later firmware update.

I wish to have control over the Grid Charge current setting and also the Float Voltage setting (as these inverters suffer from the premature float bug and can need a kick in the bum to get out of that).

Click to expand...

Thanks for clarifying.
Are you running your home assistant on the same raspberry pi as the solar assistant?

eumobong said:

Are you running your home assistant on the same raspberry pi as the solar assistant?

Click to expand...

No. AFAIK Solar Assistant requires its own dedicated hardware.