Best way to keep track of lifetime solar production for a small portable solar panel + power station?

[smallfryhero]

Hi there!

Sadly I don't have a "real" solar power system. I live in an apt in the city and just have a couple portable solar panels on my balcony. The polar panel has a 8mm output cable. I use an 8mm to Anderson Powerpole cable to charge my portable power station with it. I then use the power station to run several of my devices.

My question is what is the best/easiest/cheapest way to track lifetime kWh production of the solar panels?

I see lots of meters for hooking into a breaker box if you are doing a full solar system, but I don't see any easy to use meters for small setups. I've seen multimeters you can wire into the connection going from the panel to the power station, but they either don't save a running kWh total or require 24/7 auxiliary power.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[Samsonite801]

A simple low-cost shunt with a KWh meter:

Amazon.com

You may want to write down the KWh number every once in awhile in case the cumulative KWh gets accidentally reset.

 

[smallfryhero]

A simple low-cost shunt with a KWh meter:

Amazon.com

You may want to write down the KWh number every once in awhile in case the cumulative KWh gets accidentally reset.

Awesome, I tried to find something like this on Amazon but it wouldn't return any. Playing around with it I see I needed to add "DC" to my search.

Thanks!

 

[Samsonite801]

Here's a video you can watch just for some ideas on building a case or something for it: