Solar assistant: do you use it?

[OffGridForGood]

I have a Voltronic inverter that SA should be able to connect to, I also use the diybms which I assume that SA will be able to connect to using pylontech protocol, although I have yet to get this confirmed but I believe that should be pretty straight forward.
What worries me though is that I haven't been able to find information on if SA is able to also connect to stand alone MPPT chargers as well (connected to the same battery bank). My array will be larger then what my AIO inverter could handle alone and all I can find on SA homepage is compatibility for inverters, not simple chargers.
Maybe someone here can advise if SA can handle this?

If you used a Voltronic SCC - Like the MPP PCM60, this would be the same comms as the MPP AIO's, I don't have this SCC so I can't confirm for certain if SA will connect, I do know my three MPP 6048's all connect to SA no issues.

So unless the AIO and SCC are the same brand and use the same protocol. You can't connect both to the same instance of Solar Assistant.
You can add another AIO and use it just as a SCC.

Would be too expensive to use an AIO as only SCC

I believe the PCM 60 is about $200 USD.

 

[wattmatters]

I don't plan to ever change my equipment. But if I did, compatibility with SA would be a requirement.

For me it's compatibility with Home Assistant, be that via SA or other means.

SA to me is a conduit to enable this with these types of inverters.

The Solar Assistant programmer can never anticipate all of the unique scenarios any particular set up might have (let alone build them into their system), so having the MQTT facility was a smart move as that opens up control customisation to the nth degree. It need not be with HA either, e.g. it could be a Node Red set up.

That said, I would not want the tail wagging the dog - the suitability of the equipment to cover the home's energy demands is primary. If it can do what I want it to without HA or SA (unlikely) then I'd be OK with that.

 

[wattmatters]

Right now I have 3 instances of SA.
Main system
BMS's
DC loads

Tim, do you have an instance of SA which is only capturing battery BMS data (i.e. operates without an inverter input)?

I have a spare RPi, and thought it might be handy to connect it to the BMS of my server rack units. I would like to be able to monitor the battery cell data. Currently I just monitor the entire system with the Victron shunt in SA.

 

[timselectric]

SA was the game changer for my system.
I will never be without it. (Unless something better comes along lol)

 

[timselectric]

Tim, do you have an instance of SA which is only capturing battery BMS data (i.e. operates without an inverter input)?

Yes

 

[timselectric]

I would like to be able to monitor the battery cell data. Currently I just monitor the entire system with the Victron shunt in SA.

That's why I did it.
FYI, it doesn't give individual cell data.
Just high, low, and average.
I would prefer delta instead of average.

 

[wattmatters]

Yes

That's why I did it.

Thanks. Will look into doing this. The spare RPi used to run my HA, but I migrated that about a year ago (with help) to a NUC style PC running Proxmox, and HA operates inside the VM. The PC was actually cheaper than the Pi, but way more powerful and does not consume much energy. I also have a small switch out there so it can connect via ethernet for reliability.

 

[timselectric]

Thanks. Will look into doing this. The spare RPi used to run my HA, but I migrated that about a year ago (with help) to a NUC style PC running Proxmox, and HA operates inside the VM. The PC was actually cheaper than the Pi, but way more powerful and does not consume much energy. I also have a small switch out there so it can connect via ethernet for reliability.

No idea what you said, but ok. lol

 

[Skypower]

Unless it’s foolproof, I’ll have to stay with Solar Assistant. Yes the Home Assistant has a great customizable dashboard, but I’ve made friends with SA and I don’t have the time or patience to relearn. Then there’s the fear of something going wonky. Right now I know exactly what or how to tweak my system remotely and that pretty much a rarity now. The system goes to grid during off peak as needed and then leaves enough room for solar to top off so I get the most free power possible. The three blue spikes was the clothes dryer which put me over my solar storage so my system handled it automatically. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

 

[fmeili1]

@wattmatters
I can completely agree with @timselectric, monitoring (and if required, controlling) is really important. Doing it with SA is the way to go. To get the most detailed data, I've connected every AIO inverter (via individual RS232-USB-adapters) and every battery separately (via individual RS485) with SA (I'm not using the possible monitoring of some battery parameters via the AIO's master - in this case you'll not get all data).
I'm using this wiring schema (you can just use the battery part if you are not interested in inverter data).

There is still a drawback. SA only reports the min., max. and avg. cell voltage of each battery but not all voltages of all cells! It also does not show the max. cell delta in it's views (even if it would be pretty easy to implement in SA). But because I transfer all the SA data via it's MQTT bridge to my smart home, I'm doing the max. cell delta calculation by myself and have altering trigger rules to get informed if something happens (cell delta too high, temperatures too high, current too high, etc.).

For me, monitoring is a must to understand the system in more detail and to prevent possible problems as early as possible.

 

[timselectric]

@wattmatters
I can completely agree with @timselectric, monitoring (and if required, controlling) is really important. Doing it with SA is the way to go. To get the most detailed data, I've connected every AIO inverter (via individual RS232-USB-adapters) and every battery separately (via individual RS485) with SA (I'm not using the possible monitoring of some battery parameters via the AIO's master - in this case you'll not get all data).
I'm using this wiring schema (you can just use the battery part if you are not interested in inverter data).

There is still a drawback. SA only reports the min., max. and avg. cell voltage of each battery but not all voltages of all cells! It also does not show the max. cell delta in it's views (even if it would be pretty easy to implement in SA). But because I transfer all the SA data via it's MQTT bridge to my smart home, I'm doing the max. cell delta calculation by myself and have altering trigger rules to get informed if something happens (cell delta too high, temperatures too high, current too high, etc.).

For me, monitoring is a must to understand the system in more detail and to prevent possible problems as early as possible.

Wattmatters is using SA.
And sending it to HA.

Through the MQTPFchangs thingy. lol

 

[NCislander]

Looking at the SA Battery Cell Min/Avg/Max, its not too difficult to do some quick mental math for the delta. My banks are fairly close in cell delta. 30-40mv

 

[wattmatters]

I can completely agree with @timselectric, monitoring (and if required, controlling) is really important. Doing it with SA is the way to go.

I use SA as a conduit but my system control is managed via automations in Home Assistant (and bit of Node Red).

The control options in SA are far too limited for what I need, so that's why I use HA for that. There is a fall back option to a SA-only control should HA fail me, but it would not be optimal.

The other side of the coin is load management, which SA is not designed to do. HA is perfect for that, plus I am able to integrate with other systems, e.g. my Fronius grid-tied PV.

 

[Zwy]

One day, when I get the nerve to try it. (I'm technologically challenged)
I will connect my 3 instances of Solar Assistant to Home Assistant.

As I keep installing smart devices like the mini splits, heat pump water heater and even smart receptacles, I end up using several apps on my phone. It works well but having it all on one screen might be an advantage. One thing I do like is remote access to SA and smart devices in the house. I can turn on/off dump loads remotely after viewing what is shown on SA. I can see down the road most houses will be integrating load management as a way to be efficient, especially with PV systems for power.

 

[fmeili1]

I use SA as a conduit but my system control is managed via automations in Home Assistant (and bit of Node Red).

The control options in SA are far too limited for what I need, so that's why I use HA for that. There is a fall back option to a SA-only control should HA fail me, but it would not be optimal.

The other side of the coin is load management, which SA is not designed to do. HA is perfect for that, plus I am able to integrate with other systems, e.g. my Fronius grid-tied PV.

There are tons of additional options when a PV system is integrated to a smart home system - I think, most of the people don't realize how powerful this could be and for me it was a game changer.
E.g. I have smart home rules which reduce the load in the early morning if the remaining battery capacity will be tight until new PV production starts by changing the setpoints of the heat pumps and disconnect the water heater (via smart relay/contactor), etc. to make it to the next (solar) day.
PV plus smart home is a very powerful duo!

 

[upnorthandpersonal]

There are tons of additional options when a PV system is integrated to a smart home system - I think, most of the people don't realize how powerful this could be and for me it was a game changer.

Yep. I use a more 'bare metal' approach consisting of Grafana for the user/monitoring interface and bunch of Python code that controls things like Shelly devices, the heatpump (dumping excess when battery is over 80% or so, also depending on weather forecast data, etc.), pings me when the wood gasification burner is done (so additional fuel can be added if needed), keeps track of the temperature in the hot water buffer, can kick in a generator based on state of charge in winter, turn on the water heater at optimal times in summer, and much more.

Anything I can think of I can implement in code and I'm not limited/constrained by the software platform. I can even use statistical methods (call it AI if you will) to make decisions based on historic usage patterns, etc.

 

[MaikaiLifeDIY]

My off-grid monitoring:

View attachment 203336

My battery is a hybrid LiFePO₄ (daily cycling) + SLA (reserve capacity), with 57% being my normal low SOC setting hence the battery SOC indicator being in the "red zone". I would only be going below that in a grid outage.

Battery is monitored with Victron shunt via Solar Assistant.

I saw one of your gauges has smoother colors while the others are the standard (green, yellow, red).

If found this little tool and it's so freaking amazing, I've got beautiful full smooth colors for all my gauges and I can easily set the ranges etc with this.

HA Rainbow Generator

Generate a smooth color transition in Home Assistant lovelace cards.

ha.labtool.pl

 

[TwoFeathers]

Pretty new to solar so I’m sticking to the KISS system for now.

 

[wattmatters]

I saw one of your gauges has smoother colors while the others are the standard (green, yellow, red).

If found this little tool and it's so freaking amazing, I've got beautiful full smooth colors for all my gauges and I can easily set the ranges etc with this.

That's really neat. I did mine manually and that was a PITA. I tried to set up something in Excel to automate it but ended up with the CBAs.

 

[wattmatters]

There are tons of additional options when a PV system is integrated to a smart home system - I think, most of the people don't realize how powerful this could be and for me it was a game changer.

Some of my load management is self-managing, e.g. the water heater and the EV charger self manage to consume excess solar PV only. I do have a load dump automation to kill one of the aircons if the off-grid load is too much.

Just updated the Power Flow Card Plus beta version. Bit of a crappy day so not much going on.