I intend to create a big write-up in the future, but I'm still in the middle of my offgrid journey, so I'll save it for a little later once I have better conclusions. Today I just wanted to write a few notes about using the Sunny Webbox with my 2Phase2 6048-US system. This is information that I haven't found elsewhere and simply discovered by trying things.
The Sunny Webbox RS485 is discontinued, but you can find it periodically on places like EBay. To get the webbox to discover your inverters, you need the RS485 Piggyback module installed (also found on EBay).
Once the Webbox is connected, you can both monitor and configure your inverters on the local network in real time. This eliminates the need to sit in front of the inverter and try settings to get the behavior that you want. Note that the webbox itself is not the most stable design, so attaching wifi power control helps to not have to walk over and power cycle the box. You can also connect to Sunny Portal, but I haven't found this to be particularly useful.
Via the webbox you can find settings that are not available via the front-panel as it appears that the hardware/firmware was reused across product lines. Particularly interesting was that I can now see/control the Sunny Backup settings (google Sunny Backup 5000 to find the manual). As an example, I can set FedInMod to Time and then set times/BatSoc levels to dump battery power to the grid (I'm on a TOU NM plan). This particular setting is a little unreliable and I haven't experimented enough to get it to work correctly, but it's there and I've seen it work. It's also a little frustrating because I'm still using LiFEPO4 batteries in VRLA mode, so you the BatSoc that the setting relies on is always wrong (a problem to solve in the future).
The Sunny Webbox has an RPC interface (google sunny webbox rpc manual. Yesterday I wrote some simple python code to pull status information and change settings. From there I installed Ubuntu via WSL 2 to a home PC that is always on (my Plex server) and then set a cron job to disconnect from the grid at the start of expensive TOU and reconnect at the start at inexpensive TOU. I do use GdSocEn = Enable, but this resulted in throttling my Midnite Classic 200's production when the battery is full, so this is my workaround for now. Even if you don't have this use case, being able to control the inverter from my desk/via automation is really nice. The interface is pretty simple and once I have cleaned it up and have some specific use cases I will post the code somewhere. If I were a little more ambitious and had more time I'd probably reverse engineer the rs485 interface and then connect it to a RPi, but I do have a day job so that's not going to happen.
The Sunny Webbox RS485 is discontinued, but you can find it periodically on places like EBay. To get the webbox to discover your inverters, you need the RS485 Piggyback module installed (also found on EBay).
Once the Webbox is connected, you can both monitor and configure your inverters on the local network in real time. This eliminates the need to sit in front of the inverter and try settings to get the behavior that you want. Note that the webbox itself is not the most stable design, so attaching wifi power control helps to not have to walk over and power cycle the box. You can also connect to Sunny Portal, but I haven't found this to be particularly useful.
Via the webbox you can find settings that are not available via the front-panel as it appears that the hardware/firmware was reused across product lines. Particularly interesting was that I can now see/control the Sunny Backup settings (google Sunny Backup 5000 to find the manual). As an example, I can set FedInMod to Time and then set times/BatSoc levels to dump battery power to the grid (I'm on a TOU NM plan). This particular setting is a little unreliable and I haven't experimented enough to get it to work correctly, but it's there and I've seen it work. It's also a little frustrating because I'm still using LiFEPO4 batteries in VRLA mode, so you the BatSoc that the setting relies on is always wrong (a problem to solve in the future).
The Sunny Webbox has an RPC interface (google sunny webbox rpc manual. Yesterday I wrote some simple python code to pull status information and change settings. From there I installed Ubuntu via WSL 2 to a home PC that is always on (my Plex server) and then set a cron job to disconnect from the grid at the start of expensive TOU and reconnect at the start at inexpensive TOU. I do use GdSocEn = Enable, but this resulted in throttling my Midnite Classic 200's production when the battery is full, so this is my workaround for now. Even if you don't have this use case, being able to control the inverter from my desk/via automation is really nice. The interface is pretty simple and once I have cleaned it up and have some specific use cases I will post the code somewhere. If I were a little more ambitious and had more time I'd probably reverse engineer the rs485 interface and then connect it to a RPi, but I do have a day job so that's not going to happen.