Solar Assistant Wish list, Bugs and Issues.

Victron is not a supported inverter:

Yes I know the shut does as I have been using that with my Powmr inverters and is good. If only the victron software worked anywhere near as well !!!! I can't believe how bad it is compared to SA. I thought I was buying into quality setup but I am not so sure now. Victron inverters may be able to do some fancy stuff but to actually get it to actually work like it is supposed to is another matter. So many people on Victron forums have similar problems but have not been able to find any solutions. Very frustrating!

Hi folks. I’m not sure if this is the right thread for this as it might already exist… I’m looking at getting solar assistant- does it have the ability to show/track/graph the energy you have exported back to the grid?

Lt.Dan said:

I know the smartshunt is compatible, but no idea about the inverters

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Similar but a little off topic.

I noticed the JK and JBD have a spot for a Can connection on the board. Can-H Can L GRND but no plug.

Also Solar assistant has in the configuration under battery for Daly, JB, JK via 485/Uart others.

The JBD has the Bluetooth dongle plugged into the UART port as do Daly.

UART pin outs are GND Rx TX Vraw.

Has anyone every made a connection between those BMS and SA?

@chrismjspencer Yes.
I am 100% off grid by choice, but you can clearly see in the screenshot from SA it shows what you are looking for.
Monthly and yearly.

thebaldgeek said:

I am 100% off grid by choice, but you can clearly see in the screenshot from SA it shows what you are looking for.
Monthly and yearly.

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Provided of course the inverter is capable of supplying the data on exports to grid. It will need to have separate such monitoring in place to do that.

I noticed a new update came out Yesterday.
Nothing really new for current users. Just more equipment compatibility.
It would be really nice to see some new features for current users.

• Support for changing inverter settings via MQTT.

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This one is pretty cool and is something to be expanded on in future releases.

What this means is my inverter's mode of operation can be controlled via Home Assistant automations.

It does also say the Power Management feature is getting an update soon.

Here's one for the wish list and put a large bag of spanners in the works!

What I would like is some sort of functionality of the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi. Our inverters are connected to a small computer after all!

Scenario:

Battery is fully charge and floating at 54 volts the sun is shining and no particular load, as we know the inverter pulls only what it needs from the panels ........what a waste of power.

I'd like to be able for the Raspberry to use one of its GPIO pin to operate a relay to turn something on. IE dishwasher, tumble dryer, washing machine etc.

Look forward to others comments.

nivagc said:

Here's one for the wish list and put a large bag of spanners in the works!

What I would like is some sort of functionality of the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi. Our inverters are connected to a small computer after all!

Scenario:

Battery is fully charge and floating at 54 volts the sun is shining and no particular load, as we know the inverter pulls only what it needs from the panels ........what a waste of power.

I'd like to be able for the Raspberry to use one of its GPIO pin to operate a relay to turn something on. IE dishwasher, tumble dryer, washing machine etc.

Look forward to others comments.

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that sounds like something you would want handled by a home automation system like home assistant or self programmed..
sa had mqtt intergration that works well..

one of the ways great software gets screwed up is adding too many "add-ons" in my personal view..
kiss comes to mind

houseofancients said:

that sounds like something you would want handled by a home automation system like home assistant or self programmed..
sa had mqtt intergration that works well..

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Yes, I have Home Assistant and it manages my pool pump automation.

I also have plans to automate some load reduction and provide warnings during grid outages, when I need to preserve battery capacity for essentials. e.g. if the grid goes down and the clothes dryer is running, I want a warning that the dryer is running and an option via my phone to cut power to it. I can do that via Home Assistant.

That said, most of the inverters we use with SA have some form of DC relay control and perhaps using or having control of those those is an option.

wattmatters said:

That said, most of the inverters we use with SA have some form of DC relay control and perhaps using or having control of those those is an option.

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this i like, however that would be dependant if the inverter allows this to be done through rs485

if so , mqqt would be an excellent way

nivagc said:

Here's one for the wish list and put a large bag of spanners in the works!

What I would like is some sort of functionality of the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi. Our inverters are connected to a small computer after all!

Scenario:

Battery is fully charge and floating at 54 volts the sun is shining and no particular load, as we know the inverter pulls only what it needs from the panels ........what a waste of power.

I'd like to be able for the Raspberry to use one of its GPIO pin to operate a relay to turn something on. IE dishwasher, tumble dryer, washing machine etc.

Look forward to others comments.

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Some GE dryers have a WiFi connection port at the back. You can buy the GE WiFi module for I think $40 and then you can control the Dryer or Washer. Mine has the port but I always thought it was a stupid idea but now that I am on Solar I could use SA and monitor the system remotely and when conditions are right I could turn on the dryer remotely. Sounds good but maybe it's going a bit overboard. I think I should just get a second water heater to feed the main one and connect it into the Dump Load. That would be simple and Automatic.

I added wifi controller to my Daikin ducted aircon system, and I added a Sensibo Sky to my mancave aircon. I can control both via Home Assistant integrations, along with Solar Assistant integration and the integration for my grid-tied Fronius system. Alls sorts of automations are possible. I use a smart plug with Home Assistant automation to control the pool pump.

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Is the main function Solar Assistant bring to the table over Home Assistant alone, the ability to configure supported inverter(s) directly?

That and I guess also that you don't have to do all the integration and Grafana work yourself like with HA?

crazydane said:

What does Solar Assistant bring to the table that can't be done with Home Assistant directly?

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Can you change your inverter's mode of operation directly with HA?

crazydane said:

I have 8 inverters all nicely integrated in HA's Energy pane

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I have two inverters feeding data into this (one being via Solar Assistant) but for some reason the HA Energy dashboard is not working so well for me at the moment. It's refusing to display the Solar production chart.

This is what I get now:



The data is there because the Energy usage chart shows the solar contribution and flow charts at top right shows the production data, and the individual inverter production data is shown below the Solar Output. It has me completely confused as to why it won't display. It just decided a few days ago to stop. Last day it was displaying correctly was 1 September when I happened to make a screen grab:


Also missing from that Solar production chart is the Solcast solar forecast data. The whole chart has just decided to stop working. Caches cleared, am using latest HA operating system etc.

The Energy Dashboard is a bit of a work in progress, it's improved but has had its issues over the past year for me. I like it, and wish it were more reliable, but I would not be trusting it to be a long term reliable source of information on my system's performance.

I don't see why HA would not be able to change inverter modes, but I'm not aware of any of the inverter integrations supporting that at this time. I primarily use HA to just monitor what's going on. My inverters are grid tied and after the initial configuration, I have not had a need to go into them to change anything. But I don't have batteries in the mix and I see that Solar Assistant has extensive support for that and also insight into BMCs, etc.

I haven't really noticed any reliability issues with the Energy dashboard, but then I have only really been using it for the last month or so. Here's what mine looks like:



I really like the ability to monitor individual devices as well:



But I track my main inverter stats in Grafana:



And also what's going on with power in general:





And I really like the sensor value templates to do math on sensor readings:



But there's a LOT of manual configuration involved to get HA setup, so I definitely see how Solar Assistant would be a lot more user friendly in that regard. It doesn't look like there's a ready made Integration in HA for Solar Assistant, so what's the method used to pull data from it into HA?

Can I run Solar Assistant in a VM, or only on a Pi?

crazydane said:

But there's a LOT of manual configuration involved to get HA setup, so I definitely see how Solar Assistant would be a lot more user friendly in that regard. It doesn't look like there's a ready made Integration in HA for Solar Assistant, so what's the method used to pull data from it into HA?

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Solar Assistant uses a Home Assistant MQTT broker integration. It enables not only listening to all the data from SA but also the ability to change the inverter's mode of operation.

crazydane said:

I don't see why HA would not be able to change inverter modes, but I'm not aware of any of the inverter integrations supporting that at this time. I primarily use HA to just monitor what's going on. My inverters are grid tied and after the initial configuration, I have not had a need to go into them to change anything.

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With grid tied inverters you would normally not need to change anything since they just pump out all they can all the time. But with off-grid inverters using a supplemental utility input for charging or load assistance you are often wanting to change the load source priority and/or the charger source priority. It's typically a daily cycle.

e.g. in the morning I swap the operating mode of my off-grid inverter to Utility First mode, so that it uses my grid tied PV system to supply loads. But in the late afternoon/evening I switch back to Solar/Battery/Utility mode so the house runs from the battery overnight.

Why don't I have a grid tied battery system instead?
A: Cost - because of local regulatory requirements it would be at least triple the price for the same storage capacity. So making it off-grid with grid support and doing some management of inverter operating mode gets me effectively the same thing for a price that makes economic sense, while grid tied battery prices are ridiculous.

Sometimes I also want the grid tied PV (11 kW) to supplement battery charging by my much smaller off-grid PV array (2.2 kW). If the off-grid array isn't going to get the batteries charged in time, I adjust the charger source priority and charge rate during the day to provide supplemental energy to the batteries.

crazydane said:

Can I run Solar Assistant in a VM, or only on a Pi?

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Only on a Raspberry Pi.

Read up here:

Thanks for the responses! Solar Assistant sounds like a very interesting product and I see now how it differentiates itself from HA. That's a pretty clever arrangement you have setup!

Has anyone found a fix for rebooting when on wifi?

If I cut power from the inverter without a proper shutdown, it doesn't want to reboot without pulling the usbs.

wattmatters said:

Only on a Raspberry Pi.

Read up here:

Real-time solar monitoring from a Raspberry Pi | SolarAssistant Software

Real-time charts, analytics and power management from via a Raspberry pi - the most powerful, cost effective device on the planet.

solar-assistant.io

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Can't get Pi's until next year. Anyone running something similar on a PC or ESP8266/ESP32 type device.

Crazydane, absolutely love your system.

wattmatters said:

Following discussion here and elsewhere, another to add to my list:

9. Data / system backup and restore options.

Because the supplied RPi system is SD card based, this is not a long term reliable option for system and data. It will fail.

So I'd like to see options included in SA for the user to more readily backup their SA system and data (preferably an automated option), and of course a means to restore it.

For my Home Assistant RPi I have it auto backup everything 3 times a week to a Google drive.

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I have to agree this is crucial. Mentioning the feature of "10 years of data with single inverter" using an 8Gb uSD card easily makes you think longevity of your data is not a concern, but with constant writing to SD cards being the only official implementation I highly doubt you would even get close to 10 years of data before the card fails...

I am waiting on my RS485 cable so that I can setup my SA installation, but now I am already concerned about when I will lose my data.
Even a manual "export my data" and "import my data" option will alleviate the concerns to an extent, but automated periodic backup to say Google Drive is a better long-term solution.