Solar Assistant Wish list, Bugs and Issues.

[TomC4306]

Yes I agree with that. Also I am not sure if it's just my iPhone but whenever I go into graphs the top half of the screen takes up 90% of the space and I can only see a sliver of the graph. I am not sure if it's a Safari Browser issue or a mobile platform issue.

The most recent update provides setting capacity for the gas gauges. Settings, battery, advanced button.

It's not a platform issue. There are 5 tabs in Solar Assistant. 4 of them scroll the page header and address bar off the top. It's just the 'Graphs' page that doesn't behave this way. And I too would like to see this fixed.

 

[robby]

The most recent update provides setting capacity for the gas gauges. Settings, battery, advanced button.

It's not a platform issue. There are 5 tabs in Solar Assistant. 4 of them scroll the page header and address bar off the top. It's just the 'Graphs' page that doesn't behave this way. And I too would like to see this fixed.

Yes it's just the Graphs screen that is broken.

 

[wattmatters]

The most recent update provides setting capacity for the gas gauges. Settings, battery, advanced button.

Good to know - it's in beta firmware 2022-02-24 only for now.

 

[wattmatters]

Took advantage of one of the recent firmware updates changes by adding my little off-grid solar PV/battery system which is monitored with Solar Assistant into the Home Assistant Energy module. It's now adds to the data from my grid tied system:



That's the daily summary data for January.

Can see how in January 66.1kWh went into my battery and only 2.1kWh came back out. At least according to the inverter reporting. That's because most of the time they are being kept at float and only occasionally discharged or are discharged at a rate too low to be picked up by the inverter monitoring. The battery is primarily for grid outage backup purposes, and as ballast for the solar PV which runs the pool pump and some sundry electronics. No outages this Summer so far.

 

[robby]

Took advantage of one of the recent firmware updates changes by adding my little off-grid solar PV/battery system which is monitored with Solar Assistant into the Home Assistant Energy module. It's now adds to the data from my grid tied system:

View attachment 85427

That's the daily summary data for January.

Can see how in January 66.1kWh went into my battery and only 2.1kWh came back out. At least according to the inverter reporting. That's because most of the time they are being kept at float and only occasionally discharged or are discharged at a rate too low to be picked up by the inverter monitoring. The battery is primarily for grid outage backup purposes, and as ballast for the solar PV which runs the pool pump and some sundry electronics. No outages this Summer so far.

Nice layout.
Is your billing cycle from the 1st month until the end?
Mine is from the 18th to the 18th and I wish the software allowed me to define the billing period so graphs and tables were all easier to compare against my actual utility bill.

 

[wattmatters]

Is your billing cycle from the 1st month until the end?

Our current retailer bills quarterly. I don't bother using any of the online systems for tracking billing, they just never have enough flexibility to manage all the various fees and charges. I have my own systems for that.

 

[robby]

Our current retailer bills quarterly. I don't bother using any of the online systems for tracking billing, they just never have enough flexibility to manage all the various fees and charges. I have my own systems for that.

I also did a Spreadsheet for it but I would like to get the total KWh used from the Utility between two dates without having to add the individual days together. It always amazes me that no matter which house or business I own, the Utility meter always reads about 2%-5% higher than any third party device I use to monitor it. I have asked and they always say that they only bill for actual power.

 

[robby]

Anyone notice that in this last update the Power meter Gauge Lines are always changing color slightly?
The PV Power one goes between Yellow to a light Orange for no real reason.
It's Nit Picking but I really preferred it when it just stayed one solid color. It;s not bad on a Monitor but it looks weird on a Tablet.

 

[Robbert]

Would like to have a consolidated dashboard, that reflects the data from two inverters, that are not in parallel, and both hooked up to their own pi.

 

[jasonhc73]

Software Version: 2022-03-23
Added a few BMS options.

Have you setup your BMS throught Solar Assistant?

 

[jasonhc73]

Would like to have a consolidated dashboard, that reflects the data from two inverters, that are not in parallel, and both hooked up to their own pi.

You would have to use Home Assistant for that. It can read from the two systems. However, YOU get to set it all up. ?

 

[wattmatters]

The timer option for the output source priority has been removed. You can only choose the mode of operation:


You use to be able to choose a different mode and set for how long you wanted it to stay in that mode before reverting back. I used to use that feature from time to time but it's gone. Bummer.

EDIT:

I see the feature is still there but is dependent on the setting "Maintain battery state of charge" which appears underneath being activated.

 

[jasonhc73]

The timer option for the output source priority has been removed. You can only choose the mode of operation:

View attachment 89419
You use to be able to choose a different mode and set for how long you wanted it to stay in that mode before reverting back. I used to use that feature from time to time but it's gone. Bummer.

EDIT:

I see the feature is still there but is dependent on the setting "Maintain battery state of charge" which appears underneath being activated.

View attachment 89420

My Axpert system has it

But it is not there on my Infinion systrm

 

[wattmatters]

My Axpert system has it

But it is not there on my Infinion systrm

Do you have the Maintain battery state of charge feature enabled for both inverters?

 

[jasonhc73]

Do you have the Maintain battery state of charge feature enabled for both inverters?

That did it.
One system is 100% off-grid and it never even was thought to activate that setting.
As soon as I activated it, the timer option is available.

 

[Robbert]

You would have to use Home Assistant for that. It can read from the two systems. However, YOU get to set it all up. ?

Have both of them running and one visible in Home Assistant. Don't want to set up a MQTT bridge.
However there also is a Grafana-addon and I am pretty sure that with the help of Grafana, I'll be able to build a dashboard that combines the primary values of both inverters.

 

[wattmatters]

That did it.
One system is 100% off-grid and it never even was thought to activate that setting.
As soon as I activated it, the timer option is available.

It's funny, it never occurred to me the timer wasn't available until I did the firmware update and went hunting through the menus and screens looking for changes. That's when I noticed the missing timer.

But I had also last week disabled the Maintain battery state of charge (MBSOC) feature because we were dealing with terrible weather and flooding in the region and so had the system on Utility first mode as I just wanted the battery at 100% ready for backup duties and didn't want it flipping back to SBU mode based on the MBSOC being active (it would flip back when there was a bit of solar but because of the weather it would never be enough to cover the loads so the battery would discharge some).

Now the weather is better I turned the MBSOC back on and voila, the timer reappeared.

I'm not sure why the timer feature is only available when MBSOC is enabled. That seems strange to me.

 

[Robbert]

You would have to use Home Assistant for that. It can read from the two systems. However, YOU get to set it all up. ?

In Home Assistant I was not able to make something. Just (with some help of a friend) trying to get things running in Openhab. It is not perfect yet, but sure we are getting there.

You would have to use Home Assistant for that. It can read from the two systems. However, YOU get to set it all up. ?

 

[jasonhc73]

In Home Assistant I was not able to make something. Just (with some help of a friend) trying to get things running in Openhab. It is not perfect yet, but sure we are getting there.



View attachment 90358

Looks like you are about as far as I got with it. After I got this far I decided that having two tabs on my browser was easier.

 

[wattmatters]

This is my grid-tied (Fronius) and off-grid (Solar Assistant) systems integrated with Home Assistant: