Sunpower PVS6 and Solar-Assistant Beta?

[hear2talk]

Hello,

I have a Sunpower system with 17 Maxeon panels, Enphase micro-inverters, and a PVS6 control module. Like many others, I'd like to set up local monitoring of the system rather than pay Sunstrong for what has recently been pretty unreliable monitoring (glitches and gaps starting about mid-March).

I set up a Currents account and in talking to them, was pointed at Solar-Assistant (SA). Apparently they are working on a version of SA that supports Sunpower systems. I tried to join that Beta but was just told that they are not taking on any new testers atm and I've been unable to get any details on their implementation. I joined the SA beta program but the most recent build (2025-04-22) does not include Enphase or PVS6 as an inverter option.

There is open source software to use a Zero to pull data into Home Assistant but I'd prefer to pay SA a (pretty reasonable) one-time fee for a supported solution. I'm a (retired) software engineer and already have a few Raspberry Pi's automating various things (my aquariums, pool equipment, Homebridge, etc) so its not too much of a stretch, and I have a spare Pi Zero W which is apparently a decent device to use to connect to the PVS6.

Is anyone here participating in the SA Sunpower beta and if so are you able to provide any details? My initial questions are:
- do they use RS485 or a network connection to connect the PVS6/inverters to the Pi?
- if network, does their implementation work around the known memory exhaustion issue when pulling data via the .../cgi-bin/dl_cgi API?
- is there a forum of some type where testers can discuss issues?
- what is the status of the Sunpower Beta?
- is there a rough timeline for when support will be added to the SA public Beta builds?

Any info would be appreciated...

thanks!

 

[Stan_k]

Looks like SunStrong has blocked data access to the PVS via the currently available open source process. Interesting legal questions arise from blocking access to the personal equipment that we own, whose functions we paid for, and that we have been using for years. I wonder how many owners are effected after having monitored their own systems with a much more reliable and accurate monitoring system than what SunPower and, now, SunStrong provide.