Cloud-free Sol-Ark 15K Monitoring

[LochNess]

I like the idea of being able to view performance data from the Sol-Ark (15K) but not on an App that funnels all the data thru servers in China or Amazon.
Ive read in various places Sol-Ark users replacing the factory WiFi dongle with a Rasberry Pi or serial-to-USB connection to a laptop, and Id like to investigate going that route (or something strictly LAN).
Is there a software product already available for this that doesnt have a steep learning curve?

 

[Lt.Dan]

Solar-Assistant is a locally hosted Monitoring service and is extremely popular here on the forum.

solar-assistan.io

 

[LochNess]

Solar assistant sounds like what Im needing, but Im seeing hints that it might not fully support the 15K solark.
Is it still in development?

 

[Lt.Dan]

I only have the 12k myself, but I can't imagine them being very different?

 

[robby]

Solar assistant sounds like what Im needing, but Im seeing hints that it might not fully support the 15K solark.
Is it still in development?

Good question. I am sure all the protocols are the same but the 15K has scale values that may be above the maximum that SA supports for Sol-Ark. Since they let you try it for free I would just buy a Pi and see if it works.

BTW if your a Data Nerd then SA contains only a fraction of the Data that Powerview Monitors and saves.

 

[LochNess]

Good question. I am sure all the protocols are the same but the 15K has scale values that may be above the maximum that SA supports for Sol-Ark. Since they let you try it for free I would just buy a Pi and see if it works.

BTW if your a Data Nerd then SA contains only a fraction of the Data that Powerview Monitors and saves.

Only monitoring 2 of the 3 MPPT channels, for example. I dont know if that is fact, though.

Having any sort of internet dependency on a plant intended to survive severe weather is counterproductive, so unless Powerview can function completely off-line its out of the running. We had rolling blackouts in Oklahoma during winter storm Uri when Texans were burning furniture to stay warm, and I can recall going 2 weeks without power another winter when ice covered most of the state.

 

[Spunky]

SolarAssistant does all three MPPTs

 

[stuartmacnb]

Good question. I am sure all the protocols are the same but the 15K has scale values that may be above the maximum that SA supports for Sol-Ark. Since they let you try it for free I would just buy a Pi and see if it works.

BTW if your a Data Nerd then SA contains only a fraction of the Data that Powerview Monitors and saves.

that's interesting, i was looking at doing SA on my solark 12k, i have the peak shaving cts installed that i was hoping i would be able to use for whole home consumption data since all the hardware is there for it to do this.

 

[robby]

that's interesting, i was looking at doing SA on my solark 12k, i have the peak shaving cts installed that i was hoping i would be able to use for whole home consumption data since all the hardware is there for it to do this.

You can do that without PowerView but there are a lot of other parameters that Powerview stores and can graph that are handy for diagnostic issues or trying to figure out why certain events are happening.

 

[Jason.Blier]

Solar Assistant works great on my 15K. I also use it to monitor 4 JBD BMS units. I just wish I could relay the SOC data back to the inverter via the RS 485 interface or translate BMS data to a protocol that the Sol-Ark understands and transmit via the CAN interface.

 

[Lt.Dan]

Solar Assistant works great on my 15K. I also use it to monitor 4 JBD BMS units. I just wish I could relay the SOC data back to the inverter via the RS 485 interface or translate BMS data to a protocol that the Sol-Ark understands and transmit via the CAN interface.

Does your 15k have a hard time calculating SOC? My 12k does a pretty damn good job, and is always within a few % of actual.

 

[Jason.Blier]

My 15K is usually pretty good at estimating during discharge, but it drifts pretty badly on charge. It will be more accurate once I do a full discharge / charge cycle (which I haven't done yet). But I use battery voltage for set points and it works great. I use sokar assistant for most of the monitoring as it is pretty much realtime and I can see all 4x battery pack BMS status and SoC.

 

[Lt.Dan]

I do know that anytime you make a change to any(?) battery settings, it takes the SolArk 3 days to accurately calculate 100% again, and that it will be inaccurate until then.

 

[Jason.Blier]

Yeah, it takes a bit to dial in. I really dont rely on the SoC reading on the sol-ark anyways but it would be nice to have everything "jive".

 

[robby]

Yeah, it takes a bit to dial in. I really dont rely on the SoC reading on the sol-ark anyways but it would be nice to have everything "jive".

You have to either be in closed loop mode or have enough PV to get a full charge at least every other day to get accurate info using Batt-% or Volt mode.

 

[Jason.Blier]

You have to either be in closed loop mode or have enough PV to get a full charge at least every other day to get accurate info using Batt-% or Volt mode.

Yeah, I do have enough pv for that, but at its best, the internal shunt/soc logic is, "mildly accurate" if I could just disable the SoC valculation/readout, I would do that.

 

[robby]

Yeah, I do have enough pv for that, but at its best, the internal shunt/soc logic is, "mildly accurate" if I could just disable the SoC valculation/readout, I would do that.

I find that with a full charge it is within 5% points of accuracy throughout the night and into the next day.
The main thing is to just make sure you set the Shutdown Voltage and the charging voltages correctly. At the end of the day, that is the real safety valve on the system.
I would not hold my breath waiting for Sol-Ark to make the open loop modes better. It has become very clear to me that they expect batteries to be in closed loop mode and I suspect that 90% of their systems are installed that way.

 

[stuartmacnb]

has anyone figured out how to change the refresh time in powerview, on the deye inverters apparently you were able to have tech support change the refresh time of "solarman" which is powerview to a 1 min refresh time.

 

[robby]

has anyone figured out how to change the refresh time in powerview, on the deye inverters apparently you were able to have tech support change the refresh time of "solarman" which is powerview to a 1 min refresh time.

You cannot change it in Powerview.
Sol-Ark is releasing their own software and once the Software and AWS servers are finished being Beta tested they will supposedly be moving to 30 second updates.

 

[Lt.Dan]

How much harder is it to just do it in real time?

Genuine question, as I don't understand the complexity of that side of things.