Solar Assistant and victron charge controller

[Rosstafarian]

Currently solar assistant is monitoring my inverter and my batteries very well.
I have added a Victron CC to my system and was wondering if anyone had a way of including a CC in the mix. I know you can have multiple inverters being monitored, just not seeing any way to read the data from the CC.
TIA.

 

[MacISAces]

I am interested as well, I would like to add it to my solar amount in solar assistant

 

[Rosstafarian]

Yep.
Was looking at buying the Cerbo gx, but I’ve already purchased SA and like it.

 

[sunshine_eggo]

Given that SA doesn't support Victron inverters, I doubt it supports MPPT.

I think SA is as popular as it is because the supported inverters don't have anything comparable to VRM.

I can confess to a love affair with Victron VRM. Highly recommend it. I can't imagine SA is as good.

Complete remote monitoring and control, including major configuration changes and firmware updates, custom widgets. Retains detailed system data for 6 months and kWh/SoC/consumption data for 5+ years.

If you're clever and understand MQTT, the GX can be set to broadcast this for local capture, storage and charting with Grafana.

 

[Rosstafarian]

Given that SA doesn't support Victron inverters, I doubt it supports MPPT.

I think SA is as popular as it is because the supported inverters don't have anything comparable to VRM.

I can confess to a love affair with Victron VRM. Highly recommend it. I can't imagine SA is as good.

Complete remote monitoring and control, including major configuration changes and firmware updates, custom widgets. Retains detailed system data for 6 months and kWh/SoC/consumption data for 5+ years.

If you're clever and understand MQTT, the GX can be set to broadcast this for local capture, storage and charting with Grafana.

Silly question, is vrm compatible with other inverters and batteries, not victron ones?

 

[JAS]

I have Solar Assistant (love it) and just recently setup Home Assistant. Planning to integrate the two. Once that is setup, you could setup a RasPi with VenusOS (talking to the Victron equipment) and use MQTT to forward the stats to Home Assistant.

 

[sunshine_eggo]

Silly question, is vrm compatible with other inverters

No.

and batteries, not victron ones?

If the battery BMS can communicate with the GX via CAN, yes. I have a DIY 21P14S NMC Lithium battery (PHEV cells) with a Batrium BMS that actually has total control of the system.

VRM then tracks any data the BMS reports to VRM. This is my high and low cell voltage data for the last 6 months:



Pylontech, SOK and EG4 rack batteries can be made to work.

There is also a means of using a RPi with the Venus OS to use a JBD and other BMS.

 

[Adam De Lay]

Currently solar assistant is monitoring my inverter and my batteries very well.
I have added a Victron CC to my system and was wondering if anyone had a way of including a CC in the mix. I know you can have multiple inverters being monitored, just not seeing any way to read the data from the CC.
TIA.

I asked SA if they had the ability to read data from the Victron CCs and they said not at this time. What I ended up doing was setting up the VenusOS on a raspberry pi and hooked into the VRM.

I followed Andy's video:

Nice and simple install!

 

[sunshine_eggo]

Are RPi readily available yet? At $150 for a RPi, I'd rather have a cerbo.

 

[Adam De Lay]

I found a used on ebay because of the cost of a new one.

 

[JAS]

Are RPi readily available yet? At $150 for a RPi, I'd rather have a cerbo.

Not Really... I've found 2 used 3b's over the last 2 months on FB marketplace for $50 each

 

[trig2]

Given that SA doesn't support Victron inverters, I doubt it supports MPPT.

I think SA is as popular as it is because the supported inverters don't have anything comparable to VRM.

I can confess to a love affair with Victron VRM. Highly recommend it. I can't imagine SA is as good.

Complete remote monitoring and control, including major configuration changes and firmware updates, custom widgets. Retains detailed system data for 6 months and kWh/SoC/consumption data for 5+ years.

If you're clever and understand MQTT, the GX can be set to broadcast this for local capture, storage and charting with Grafana.

Solar assistant does all that other than inverter firmware updates, it uses grafana but can also broadcast MQTT.

 

[HarryN]

It looks like this is just for monitoring - no real control?

For instance no ability to react to a low battery voltage or SOC ?

 

[trig2]

It looks like this is just for monitoring - no real control?

For instance no ability to react to a low battery voltage or SOC ?

You can set it up to swap to utility based on soc and inverter shutdown based on soc.

 

[sunshine_eggo]

Solar assistant does all that other than inverter firmware updates, it uses grafana but can also broadcast MQTT.

Not with the ease and complete lack of expertise VRM requires.

 

[TomC4306]

I think I have seen you previously admit to being a victron elitist. LOL. Wish I could justify the expense.

 

[Adam De Lay]

I've used both the VRM and Solar Assistant. Each one seems to have it's plusses and minuses.

Off the top of my head, a few of the differences between the systems:

The VRM allows for a lot of data customization, firmware updates for connected devices and notifications regarding set thresholds. It is however limited to Victron equipment only.

SA is designed for quite a bit of different systems, allows for remote config changes of certain aspects of those systems and allows you to keep and view all your data locally. Unfortunately out of the box it only has fixed graphs and currently has no ability for notifications.

I would recommend both products. It all depends on what kind of hardware you have.

 

[wattmatters]

Not with the ease and complete lack of expertise VRM requires.

SA is about as easy as it comes to use.

It comes with some inverter management functions but if those are not sufficient then you can integrate it with your choice of Home Assistant or Node Red (or both) via MQTT. That set up is also pretty simple.

HA automations to control the inverter's operation are easy to set up, the UI for that is pretty good.

What SA has done is turn cheaper inverters into much more highly capable equipment with the remote monitoring, control and automation those using Victron with VRM are accustomed to, but at a fraction of the cost.

My 8 kW inverter + SA is remotely controllable and is managed with automations. It even integrates the data from my Victron shunt.