Monitoring a SunPower Solar System
[Update: Here is a new Node-RED flow that works better with Home Assistant's Energy Dashboard.]
After years of waffling on if I should install solar on my house, I finally decided that it would be a good investment. While the federal tax credit went down from 30% to 26%, I would still get a bit of my investment back. The tax credit goes to 22% next year and then goes away, so if I didn't make the leap now, I'm not sure financially it would make sense for a long time until the panel prices come way down.
Like most major investments, I did a significant amount of research. I got proposals from 9 companies using a variety of panels and inverters. For better or worse, I went with a SunPower system. SunPower wants to make it easy for people to see how much energy they are producing and their monitoring site has a very, very simple dashboard. Apparently their older dashboard (still available via a different URL that uses Flash) showed output on a per panel basis. When I asked SunPower about this, here was their response:
Unfortunately, our monitoring website only shows production data of the system as a whole. Inverter level monitoring was only offered to dealers for troubleshooting and/or repair purposes. This was not offered to homeowners because, after lengthy evaluation, that feature offers more information than is necessary to monitor ongoing system performance, but not enough information to help identify problems (on the rare occasions when they do occur). We also had concerns about the feature’s design, in part due to negative feedback from customers.
After a bit of research, I found that the monitoring device (PVS6) actually has the ability to be queried for local data. An individual with better hacking/detective skills than me figured out the commands to send to the unit and posted information on GitHub describing the setup. That looked pretty straight forward. So I decided to figure out how to integrate it into Home Assistant and into my Grafana graphs.
First step was to configure a Raspberry Pi as basically a bridge where HTTP requests sent to one port would be redirected out the other port. I didn't need a full fledged router for this, just an HTTP proxy. I decided to use a Raspberry Pi Zero W that I had lying around as a base. I ordered an Ethernet adapter for it and that was it for hardware. My son designed a case for both pieces and I 3D printed it.
Configuring the Raspberry Pi
- Download the Raspberry Pi Imager
- Select the Raspbian Lite image.
- Write the image to an SD card.
- Create a file called wpa_supplicant.conf at the root of the image with the following:
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev update_config=1 country=US network={ ssid="" psk=" " } - Add a file called ssh at the root of the image. This file should be empty.
- Assign a static IP address mapping on your router for the Pi.
- Boot the Raspberry Pi. Login using username: pi password: raspberry
- Update the OS using
sudo apt-get update - Install ha-proxy
sudo apt-get install haproxy - Modify
/etc/dhcpcd.confby adding the following so that the Ethernet going to the PVS6 doesn't attempt to setup a gateway. If this happens, the Pi no longer responds over WiFi.interface eth0 nogateway - Add the following to
/etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg:frontend http-in bind *:80 default_backend backend_servers backend backend_servers server sv1 172.27.153.1:80 listen stats bind *:8080 stats enable stats uri / stats refresh 10s stats admin if LOCALHOST - Reboot the Pi.
Now when you issue HTTP calls to the Pi, they'll goto the PVS6.
Setting up Home Assistant
I use Node-RED for most of my automations, so the following is how I poll the PVS6 from Node-RED.
Basically what I do is make an HTTP call to the Raspberry Pi over the WiFi interface that redirects to the PVS6. Using the information from the GitHub repo I found, the call is: http://10.0.3.55/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList
I then parse out the different devices that are returned (one for each inverter, one for the monitoring unit, one for the consumption meter and one for the production meter). My installer didn't hook up the consumption meter, but I use an older version of the Rainforest Automation EAGLE-200 to connect to my electric meter and get consumption data.
This Node-RED flow generates multiple sensors that can then be used to display data right in Home Assistant or in Grafana. There is more information in the output than I need such as AC voltage, DC voltage, AC current, DC, current, etc. I use Home Assistant's HTTP interface to create new sensors and since I have no idea how fast it can respond, I rate limit the updating of the sensors.
You can download my Node-RED flow from here.
Grafana
I'm going to leave it as an exercise for the reader to setup pretty pictures in Grafana. I've setup a basic dashboard and some other graphs. The per panel graphs are useful to tell me if a panel isn't operating properly. While SunPower doesn't really want you to know this information, it is very helpful. My system was turned on (my installer and SunPower can remotely disable my system which really bothers me) yesterday and I noticed that 1 of the panels wasn't generating power. This amounts to about 8% of my overall system; most people wouldn't know this which makes it even more important to be able to get status on a per panel basis.
Conclusion
I've written up this guide to help others, but also to refresh my memory in the future to figure out what I did. My home automation system is growing more and more complex by the day and if I don't document at least parts of it, I'll never be able to troubleshoot it.
Feel free to ask questions or provide comments.
Comments
Hi,
Thanks for the great post. I have a question about how do you get the real time energy consumption. I am not so clear about the “net_ltea_3phsum_kwh” and “p_3phsum_kw” meaning even after checking the GitHub page. can you make it more clearly to me? Thank you.
Hi Rick,
I believe that “net_ltea_3phsum_kwh” is the total number of kWh consumed (cumulative) and “p_3phsum_kw” is the current (at the time measured) number of kW being used. Since the consumption monitor was not hooked up for me, my values are all zero.
I hope that helps.
How do you create the sensors in HA? Is it through the RESTful API? Any example you can give of a sensor-setup? https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/rest/
Hi Odin,
It is through the REST API. Node-RED has an interface to it, so I don’t directly use the API. A request is something like this:
/states/sensor.inverter_total_power_E00121942059984
{
"attributes": {
"friendly_name": "Total Power",
"icon": "mdi:flash",
"unit_of_measurement": "kWh"
},
"state": 138.3355
}
I hope that helps.
Scott,
Thanks. Great post.
I am interested in something much simpler - basically checking the health of each panel periodically (monthly?) to make sure they are working properly.
My question is: why do you need the RPi in between. Could not a program on a home computer simply make an HTTP request directly to the PVS6, assuming the IP address on the home network is known?
Hi Brownell,
The PVS6 doesn’t have a way to communicate with it from your LAN. The Raspberry Pi is necessary because the HTTP requests can ONLY be made to the installer Ethernet port and not the regular Ethernet port (or WiFi). The Pi acts as a bridge so that you can route requests from your LAN to the installer Ethernet port.
I hope that helps.
Scott,
Thanks for the quick reply. I have a couple more questions. (I am doing this for a friend and don’t know a lot about the SunPower.)
where is the device that the RPi connects to via Ethernet? Is there some control box in the house, or is it on the roof with the panels? do I use a regular Ethernet cable or a crossover? when the RPi ports are configured as you describe, I can use software like Postman to send the HTTP Posts to the RPi and they will be forwarded to the SunPower and I will get the responses. Right?
Thanks, Brownell
Scott,
Sorry for another question. You are going to need two Ethernet ports on the RPi. How did you do that? Does Ethernet over USB work? I am using an RPi 4 that already has one RF45 port on it.
Thanks again, Brownell
Hi Brownwell,
The PVS6 (monitoring device) is usually located in the garage or near the electrical panel. I use a regular Ethernet cable to connect it to the Pi. In my case, I have Ethernet going from my garage to my equipment rack, so I have the Pi sitting in my rack.
Yes, you can use Postman or the like to send requests to the Pi which then sends the requests to the PVS6.
Keep asking questions!
You’ll either need 2 Ethernet ports or Ethernet and WiFi. Ethernet is required to plug into the PVS6 and Ethernet or WiFi connects to your LAN. I’m using a Pi Zero W which doesn’t have native Ethernet, so I have a “hat” that provides Ethernet (actually using USB). I have the PVS6 connected to the Ethernet port and the Pi is on my LAN on WiFi; I like hardwired connections, but this is what I had on hand and it seems to work well.
Thanks for this excellent write-up. My Sunpower supervisor is an SMS-PVS20R1 as opposed to a PVS6. It’s got two LAN ports. Do you think the approach you outline will also work? I have a spare Pi 2 and WiFi dongle so I can just give it a try, but I thought I’d ask.
It can’t hurt to try! I don’t have any idea if the older units are similar to the new ones. Please post back your results if you don’t mind.
Unfortunately, it did not work with my SMS-PVS20R1. I connected the Pi2 with WiFi dongle to one of the LAN ports. I could SSH into the Pi no problem. However, when I executed http:///cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList after 20 seconds or so I got a 503 Service Unavailable.
I checked haproxy status on the Pi and it looked right. So I gather the PVS20R1 just has a different interface,
Hi Eric,
That’s too bad; it was worth a short!
Oops, I need to report back a different result with my SMS-PCS20R1 Supervisor. When I did this originally, I disconnected the PowerLine adapter that the LAN1 on the Supervisor was using because that was my only convenient source of power. Then I plugged LAN1 into the Pi, and I got the 503 Service Unavailable error when using the HTTP GET request. So, today I worked a bit harder and got an extension cord, so I left the PowerLine adapter plugged in with LAN1 connected. Then I connected the supervisor LAN2 to the Pi, and the HTTP GET request works and I can get the DeviceList and DeviceDetails. The payload is a little different than the PVS6, but the basic information is there.
So, the lesson I learned is that you need to use the other LAN port for this to work; in fact you may have written that and I just didn’t notice.
That sounds like great news! Parsing the information is pretty easy so you should be all set!
This is really cool what you have done! With the SunPower partner site being inaccessible now, I would like to be able to check my production at the panel level ad-hoc (like 1x a month), similar to a previous comment. However, I don’t have experience using a Pi. The closest I have done to anything with programming is installing custom rom’s on Android phones. Do you think I could figure this out? You have great instructions on here, but will have some simple questions, would you be willing to help out a NOOB once I get my Pi? If I can at least get the raw data to see the production, I would be happy, but would also love to learn to build a dashboard eventually.
Hi Alan,
Getting the raw data is fairly straightforward; the dashboard is where the fun lies! Hopefully my instructions are complete; I can try to help, but can’t guarantee it.
Thanks Scott! While messing around today, I was able to get the raw data by just plugging in my laptop to the installer port and go to 172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList. I don’t think I really need a Pi now. However, so I don’t have to go physically connect my laptop every time I want to pull data, shouldn’t I be able to use an old router to bridge my PVS6 to my network? My PVS6 is connected to my wireless network currently. I assume I would need to plug the WAN port of the old router into the installer port of the PVS6. I assume I need to change something on my router to 172.27.153.1 (or 172.27.153.0), but not sure what. And then I assume I need to connect one of the LAN ports on my old router to my existing network. Any tips / advice?
Hi Alan,
I think that you could use an old router, but I don’t know how you’d do it. Basically the old router would be a bridge and I’ve only done that with Linux (and that was ages ago). You might be able to find some tips online on how to accomplish this. I wish I had better news; good luck!
I am following to see if there is a way to do it wireless. I wish someone could design an app that connects to the monitoring system. it sucks that the sun power monitoring site is not working anymore. For some reason I think my current (August) daily production is almost 4kwh less that what I was producing in May 2020.
But the Raspberry Pi in the above guide from Scott does do it wirelessly, that is how I use it! I have a Pi-zero-W attached to the mamangement interface on the PVS6, powered via the usb in the PVS6, then hooked up to my wifi. Then Scotts node-RED script is doing the polling. I then stick it in an InfluxDB on my Home-assistant setup where the Node-RED is running, and can see the stats in Grafana. The only thing Scotts guide is not covering is the graph setup, and specific setup on Home-assistant, but there are plenty of other guides for that!
Ugh.. I really want to do panel level monitoring but the above seems a bit more complicated than what I’m used to. Why doesn’t Sunpower allow this? Is there a very watered down easy way to do this?
I was also wondering, do you know if I installed the Enphase IQ Envoy with this, it would work and I could monitor the Enphase IQ 7AS inverters on the Sunpower? Or is that a waste of money.. I know they cost around 500 USD
Another option I was looking at was Solar Analytics where you install onto the main panel I believe, but I’m not sure if it provides panel level monitoring. Its an AU based company but has really good reviews
The thing about the above option is that my boxes/panels will all be outside on the side of my house which is right by the street. I would need to figure out how to get power etc. Also I’ve never configured a RPI but I’m not tech illiterate and can probably figure it out. I wish there was a more simpler way to access this. Also, what keeps Sunpower from updating something that might prevent from the RPI pulling the information in the future?
Hi Peter,
I don’t know if the off the shelf Enphase can monitor the SunPower system even though the system (at least mine) is using Enphase inverters.
Nothing will keep Sunpower from updating to make this stop working; my hope is that they’d go the other way and actually provide a documented API that lets us do local monitoring on our LAN without this type of bridge.
I wish I had better information for you; when I had my system installed, I had them put the PVS6 in the garage where I had access to 2 Cat 6 drop. 1 drop goes to my LAN and the other goes to my Pi.
Hi Odln. How did you connect your Pi-Zero-W to the PSV6? (https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-zero-w/). From looking online, it shows that the RPI-zero-w only has a micro usb and hdmi. How does it connect to the PVS6 when ethernet is required? Or is there a USB connection on the management interface of PVS6 that can be used to both transfer data and power the RPI-zero-w. Also, does the RPI-zero-w fit inside the case of the PVS6 or require its own casing? My PVS6 will sit outside in the sun, and I was wondering if the small chip and usb cable will sit inside the housing
Peter, if I followed Odin response - his setup would work for you. Pi Ethernet port connects to installer port. Use Wifi on the Pi to connect back to your network. He indicated he is powering the Pi via the USB in the PVS6. There is room in the PVS6 to house a Pi, so that setup may work for you. However, setting up the Pi is a hurdle for many (including myself). I may still try it, but there was a post on solarpaneltalk forums about using an old router, unfortunately, that site has been down for a couple days. Scott has done a great job here, so thank you, but for those of us who have minimal/no linux/pi experience, it can be daunting without screenshots/video.
Hi Peter! Get the raspberry Pi-Zero-W (important to get the W version). Then I got this case: https://www.amazon.com/Zebra-Heatsink-Raspberry-Wireless-C4Labs/dp/B01HP636I4/ Then install the Pi according to Scotts instructions above (HA-proxy stuff). Then get an adapter for a USB to Ethernet, I had one lying around for the FireTV-stick that was unused, so I know that one works! https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Ethernet-Adapter-Fire-Devices/dp/B074TC662N/ Plug the Ethernet adapter to the mgmt interface on the PVS6, and the USB-end to the Pi. At this point, you should be able to SSH to the Pi over your local network, and then send curl commands (i.e. curl http://172.27.153.1:80/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList) and also send the same command with the Pi IP-address from a computer on your network. Now install NodeRED on Home-assistant, and modify Scotts flow to work for you. Then follow Frencks 15-min guide on how to setup Influx and Grafana (https://youtu.be/m9qIqq104as) on Home-assistant. After this, all you need to do is create the graphs you want! This is what I have, and it works great!
Forgot to say, but it all fits neatly inside the PVS6 box, no outside cables needed! The Ethernet to USB is powered from the USB-port on the PVS6!
The problem I have is powering the Pi. I have an SMS-PVS20R1 Supervisor which I found will work with the Pi 2, however there’s not enough room in the box to get in PowerLine adapter in there to allow both the LAN1 connection for the SunPower ethernet cable and a power cord for the Pi. Nor is there a USB port on the supervisor to power the Pi. I ran extension cables to show the system worked. I’d have to Jerry-rig something pretty ugly to get it working full time. Out of curiosity, if I use a Pi Zero, do I get Power over Ethernet which would then fix my problem (i.e., I wouldn’t need a power source for the Pi)?
Hi Eric,
A Pi Zero, out of the box, doesn’t have Ethernet. You’d need an Ethernet adapter. The Pi Zero W also doesn’t have Ethernet, but has WiFi; in the case I’ve outlined, you need both WiFi and Ethernet. You can’t use a true PoE Ethernet adapter as the Pi Zero W doesn’t handle it, but there are splitters take PoE input and then split it out into Ethernet and a micro USB adapter which would power the Pi.
Scott, I’m sorry, when I wrote my text I was sloppy in terms of discussion of the components. If I get a Pi Zero W and use the Ethernet Adapter you suggest (the HAT), are you suggesting I can get a splitter that will take the ethernet out of LAN2 on the Supervisor and provide a micro USB power for the Pi plus an Ethernet connection to the Pi? If so that’s great, although strictly speaking I don’t know if the SMS-PVS20R1 LAN2 port is strictly ethernet or PoE.
Hi Eric,
I searched on Amazon and something like this takes 802.3af PoE and splits it to 10/100 Ethernet and a USB micro USB connector. So you just need your switch to be PoE or find a different PoE adapter (plenty on Amazon that are either 802.3af or are 2 parts that combine power and Ethernet in a passive manner). I hope that helps.
Hi Scott I think we’re talking past each other a little bit. The ethernet connection to the Pi is coming from the SunPower SMS-PVS20R1 Supervisor. So, if the SMS-PVS20R1 is providing PoE, everything works. If not, I am stuck without convenient power to the Pi.
Hi Eric,
Yes, you are correct that I’m confused ? If your Pi had 2 Ethernet ports and you were connecting to your LAN via Ethernet, then you could do what I set. However, in the setup I’ve outlined, you’re right that this won’t work. Kind of funny that it is so hard to get power to a solar unit!
It’s actually a little frustrating, I’d really like to get the data but I can find no good setup for doing so. I’ll get a PoE splitter given they are cheap but I expect it won’t work because the PVS20R1 Supervisor is likely just ethernet.
Back in 1993 I actually built and raced a solar car across the US and Australia (the car is in a museum now, actually) so I have a long-standing interest in solar power. Actually back in 1990 I met Richard Swanson, the founder of SunPower. Little did I know twenty-five years later his company’s panels would be on my roof!
Hi Eric,
That’s cool about the solar car! I wonder if you could get the supervisor replaced with a newer one. The PVS6 is very much over built as it has something like 4 USB ports, the LAN port, the installer RJ45 port, WiFi, and cellular!
Hah! My wife would probably hang me if I start tearing into the power system here at the house! But I sure would like a better piece of hardware like the PVS6!
I’ll touch low voltage and can wire outlets, but there is no way that I’d touch the solar system! Personally I wish there was a real, local API for it that was supported I am not looking forward to the day that it breaks.
Thanks Scott for the info. I just want to make sure I buy the right parts…
The Raspberry Pi Zero W. And also the splitter you linked above. So if I understood it correctly, I would connect an ethernet into the PSV6 and the other end into the splitter. Then connect the splitter, micro usb end to the RPI0W for power, and the ethernet end into another ethernet adapter to micro usb, and plug that into the RPI0W for data. Whew, thats a lot of cords/adapters! After all that, then I can load the stuff onto the RPI0W per your initial instructions in the blog? You should make a business out of this and just sell the units with everything upload :) I’d buy one haha
Hi Peter,
I was confused. The PoE splitter won’t work as you’re plugging the Ethernet into the PVS6. As Eric pointed out, you can just connect a USB cable from one of the USB ports on the PVS6 to the Pi Zero W to provide power. Then with the Ethernet hat, plug that into the supervisor port on the PVS6.
That makes much more sense. usb between PSV6 and Pi for the power, and then ethernet with hat to usb for the data. Would you mind posting a link for a suitable ethernet hat for the zero W?
Hi Peter,
While not technically a “hat”, I posted a link in the original article. Ethernet adapter. It connects via USB, but seems to work fine.
I added a tiny cheap tp link n300 router to monitor box, connected to LAN Ethernet port and powered via usb port in monitor. Able to connect wirelessly via phone or laptop and get the json panel data via the DeviceList command in browser. Nice to have with the partner site cutoff!
Could you post the link to the device you bought or used? I didn’t see any tplink n300 that had an Ethernet port as well as a usb power. My pvs6 will be outside so I’d like to have something small enough that will fit inside the housing of the pvs6
I was able to configure an old router as the bridge between my new SunPower system (PVS6) and my local LAN. Here is what I did, following previous postings here and on the SolarPanelTalk Forum.
- Connect the old router WAN port to the PVS6 installer’s ethernet port. Configure the WAN as Static and give it the address 172.27.153.2, one number above the 172.27.153.1 (PVS6 address), use 255.255.255.0 as the Mask and 172.27.153.1 as the gateway and DNS. For the second DNS, I used 8.8.8.8. At last, configure the old router with a Static LAN address for your local network. In my case, I used 192.168.1.170. Do not forget to turn off DHCP on the old router as well and Wi-Fi if not using it. Connect one of the LAN ports of the old router to your local network.
Now you need to create 2 Static routes. One in your LAN router pointing to the 172.27.153.0 (Destination), 255.255.255.0 (Subnet Mask) and 192.168.1.170 (Gateway/LAN IP of the old router). If your router uses metrics input 10. On the old router connected to the PVS6, add a static route with 192.168.1.0 (Destination), 255.255.255.0 (Subnet Mask) and 172.27.153.1 (Gateway). Basically, the static routes are pointing to each other networks, creating the bridge. Now when I visit the link below in a web browser, I get the info from my system: http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList
Here is one of the micro invertes data: “ISDETAIL”: true, “SERIAL”: “EXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”, “TYPE”: “SOLARBRIDGE”, “STATE”: “working”, “STATEDESCR”: “Working”, “MODEL”: “AC_Module_Type_E”, “DESCR”: “Inverter EXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”, “DEVICE_TYPE”: “Inverter”, “SWVER”: “4.14.5”, “PORT”: “”, “MOD_SN”: “P22MXXXXXXXX”, “NMPLT_SKU”: “”, “DATATIME”: “2020,08,26,17,34,24”, “ltea_3phsum_kwh”: “43.3751”, “p_3phsum_kw”: “0.1871”, “vln_3phavg_v”: “248.63”, “i_3phsum_a”: “0.75”, “p_mpptsum_kw”: “0.1873”, “v_mppt1_v”: “56.06”, “i_mppt1_a”: “3.34”, “t_htsnk_degc”: “36”, “freq_hz”: “59.98”, “stat_ind”: “0”, “origin”: “data_logger”, “OPERATION”: “noop”, “CURTIME”: “2020,08,26,17,38,00” I blanked the micro inverter serial numbers with XX. I believe that the current panel production is in Kw, so to empress in Watts, panel rated capacity, you need to multiply by 1000, the variables below for AC and DC. • p_3phsum_kw: AC Power (kilowatts) • p_mpptsum_kw: DC Power (kilowatts) In my case, using the example above, my panel is producing 0.1871 x 1000 = 187 watts AC approximately.
Now, is there a way to run this data or the JSON file in Windows 10 to make the data pretty with graphics? I am looking for a solution that does not require a Linux / RPi config if possible as I am already getting the data via the old router bridge solution. Thanks all for the comments and I hope the above is not to complicated for those trying to use an older router as the bridge. I wish SunPower would provide us the per panel info after spending so much money on them.
Thought about bridging but not sure if that cheap n300 router supports it. May be able to put dd-wrt on it to bridge if it doesn’t. Since I check infrequently is not really necessary for me to have bridge..I just connect to the different ssid and get data using router defaults including dhcp on.
BTW recent versions of excel allow you to import json data.
Ricardo - you can setup a web query in excel to http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList and pull the data. You can use a macro then to update it every x minutes and push it to a database (in my case another tab). If the solarpanelforum site was up, I would publish more detail there, but that site has been down for several days now.
Unfortunately you can’t use the equivalent google sheets function as the importhtml function requires a public facing site to work
Thanks Alan. I tried the the web query but for some reason my Excel version uses the old Internet Explorer 11 instead of the new Edge engine for web querying and does not allow me to import the data, only save to an external file. I am trying to figure out if I could change the Excel default browser to Edge or Chrome which work better displaying the data when accessing http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList .
Not sure what version of excel you are using, but I had Office 2007 running on a old machine. Here is the workaround. Create a web query to 172.27.153.1, you will get a few script errors, but you will be able to save the query. Edit the query in notepad and change the address to http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList . Alternatively, create a query file in notepad (sunpower.iqy for example) with the following: WEB 1 http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList
Selection=EntirePage Formatting=None PreFormattedTextToColumns=True ConsecutiveDelimitersAsOne=True SingleBlockTextImport=False DisableDateRecognition=False DisableRedirections=False
Alan, the external query worked beautifully, thank you! I created a table on the side grabbing each important cell value from each individual panel and using the cell formatting to remove the comma =(LEFT(E84,SEARCH(“,”, E84)-1)*1000). Now I have a semi-automated Excel spreadsheet that when I open it, it automatically queries the SunPower PVS6 and shows the production table below with an auto update ever minute:
Panel 1 198.2 Panel 2 189.7 Panel 3 195.7 Panel 4 195.2 Panel 5 203.4 Panel 6 266.1 Panel 7 191.3 Panel 8 273.7 Panel 9 273.7 Panel 10 194.3 Panel 11 195.7 Panel 12 200.6 Panel 13 196 Panel 14 190.3 Panel 15 271 Panel 16 196.2 Panel 17 193.6
Producing Total: 3.6471 Net Metering: -3.8847 Consuming now: 0.9793
Thank you Ricardo and Alan. With your help I was able to use an old router to now monitor the PVS6 SunPower panel data on my home LAN. Good thing I did as some of the panels were malfunctioning and I would of had no Idea without the panel level monitoring. I could do the network setup but I am having difficulty setting up Excel to view the information and format it into usable data. Alan, you mentioned that you were going to post additional information on this. Have you done so and if so where can I find it? Hopefully someday SunPower will realize that it is not good business to make their customers spend this kind of time and effort on something most other solar companies include.
Not sure if you guys have seen this, but all my 17 Micro inverter modules are reporting ERROR in the STATE and STATEDESCR and they are not reporting the per panel info. However the total production seems correct. I am not getting the relevant p_3phsum_kw anymore. Any ideas? I was reading something about possible power line or voltage interfere. Any ideas?
ISDETAIL: true, SERIAL: EXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, TYPE: SOLARBRIDGE, STATE: error, STATEDESCR: Error, MODEL: AC_Module_Type_E, DESCR: Inverter EXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, DEVICE_TYPE: Inverter, SWVER: 4.14.5, PORT: , MOD_SN: P22MXXXXXXXX, NMPLT_SKU: , origin: data_logger, OPERATION: noop, CURTIME: 2020,09,25,23,56,44
My inverters do that very intermittently and report all zeros for short periods of time, but then they all go back to reporting correctly. It could be caused by a power spike or grid fluctuation. I have noticed that some of the inverters take much longer than others to get back online after a reset or when I turn off the solar breaker. As with yours the PVS6 still reports the correct solar production no matter what the inverters are reporting. I used the secondary router method of connecting and additional router to the PVS6 black configuration port to report the panel level information real-time to any computer on my network.
How do you post a photo? I would like to post a screen shot of my panel monitor
Hi Garu,
You can’t directly post a picture, but if you have a link to the picture (hosted elsewhere), you can embed it.
So I finally have my PVS6 installed and I just purchased the n300 multi mode extender. I planned to place this inside the cover of the box and connect the usb for power and Ethernet for the comms. However, does this extender need to be configured? Or how do you access the PVS6 info from a computer once everything is connected?
So I finally have my PVS6 installed and I just purchased the n300 multi mode extender. I planned to place this inside the cover of the box and connect the usb for power and Ethernet for the comms. However, does this extender need to be configured? Or how do you access the PVS6 info from a computer once everything is connected?
On another note, if my system is sized 6.225 kw but my ac output at its peak midday only hits 4.850kw at its max (clear sunny day), is that normal? I know I won’t get near the 6.225kw since there’s some inefficiencies converting dc to ac, but I thought it would be a little higher. I guess once I can do panel level monitoring setup I can see if any of the panels aren’t functioning. My install crew came back the next day after installing saying that one of the arrays wasn’t plugged in properly, so it’s a little concerning. I am also using the sense smart monitor to monitor the total production of solar. It’s been pretty accurate based on my meter read usage
The total output is always less than the maximum rated output. You will notice that the maximum your system produces will vary throughout the year due to the angle of the sun. My system produces the most in late June when the sun is the most directly overhead. My is an 11.2kw system and the most it produces is 10.5kw. Currently because the sun angle has decreased from vertical the max the system produces 8.3kw. It will continue to drop off through winter and pick up again in the spring. You definitely want to do some kind of panel level monitoring to make sure all of your panels are operating correctly. If I had not had that information, I would have never known that one of my panels was not functioning due to a palm frond shadow. To monitor my individual panels, I used the additional router method described by Ricardo AUGUST 26, 2020 in this blog. It works great and I recommend everyone who has a SunPower system to set it up. I have set mine to provide real-time information on each individual panel reported to an Excel spread sheet. Its really too bad that SunPower does not provide this information. If I would have known I probably would have gone with a different company.
Garu is correct, production changes as the sun angle and seasons change. My system is a 5.7Kw system and the most it has produced is 5.26kw at 1-2pm since installation a couple months ago. Currently it is topping at 4.8kw.
Thanks guys, I appreciate the comments about the peak production and that makes sense. I just didn’t expect it to drop so much I guess, and thought maybe some of the inverters weren’t working. So hopefully having the panel level monitoring setup will ease my concern
So, I finally have my TP-Link Wireless N Nano Router WR802N installed in my PVS6, however I’m having trouble on configuring the device so I can access it from my home network. So this little device sits inside the housing of the PVS6, and is powered by USB and connects to the partner ethernet port. If I use my laptop to connect to the TP Link Router by changing the wifi connection (TP-Link_XXXX), then I can search in my web browser “http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList” and get the information I want. However, I want to make it so this device wirelessly connects to my existing home wifi network, so I can access from my home computer while its connected to the internet. I don’t want to switch between the two wifi networks to get the data I need, since I want to be able to eventually poll every minute and still use my computer with internet. Any tips?
I tried to follow RIcardos steps, but his directions seem like its more for a wired ‘old’ router that is connected by ethernet to the PVS6, and also connected by ethernet to the home router. In my case, my PVS6 is outside the house. How can I setup the ‘old’ router as wireless so it will connect to my home wifi. I know that the TP-Link Wireless N Nano Router WR802N can act as a client and connect directly to an existing home wifi, or maybe setup as a wireless hotspot?
When I do the quick setup in TP Link, it gives me a choice of modes (wireless router, hotspot router, access point, range extender, and client). I choose client (which I think was right), then select my 2.4Ghz wifi, confirm the SSID and MAC addresses to be bridged, then it lets me choose LAN type (Smart IP or Static), and then its configured. I tried both Smart IP and Static, but when I try to access the PVS6, it won’t connect. Am I doing something wrong? I thought maybe instead of setting the operation mode to ‘Client’, setting it something else like ‘wireless router’ and figuring out another way to bridge the two. Any tips or help would be appreciated
I have the same question as Peter, I believe. I’m trying to set up to connect wirelessly to the monitor. Using my old TP-Link N450 (TL-WR940N) to make the bridge. I believe I have it set up with the necessary pointing, but I can’t get my LAN router (Netgear R7400) to establish a static IP to 172.27.153.0. I believe the R7400 must see the device on the network before a static IP can be assigned to it. In any event, I’m using the TP-Link MAC address and it tells me 172.27.153.0 is an invalid IP. Any recommendations?
Sorry. Ignore my prior post. It was easier than I thought. I set up my old router as an ACCESS POINT, gave the WAN the necessary static IP address, named the resulting wifi net and VOILA! I can access the data on the new network . Although it’s not on my main network, it’s accessible all the same. Excel 2013 won’t access the url directly ( …I don’t know why), but I can save the .json file and import it to Excel from there with the proper delimiter removal.
I’m in CA new install 5.7kW topping at 3.6kW month of Oct.
I’m on a 4.9 kW (AC) (5.4 kW panel rating) system and am getting about 3.7 kW today. My peak since install in May was 4.85 kW.
Hi Scott
3.37kW was the top today for 5min.
It seems that even tho the WR802N supports WISP and will wirelessly connect to “Public” wifi, it won’t connect wirelessly to a home/private network. Is that right??
Eric, have you considered upgrading to a PVS5? There are a few new open-box on eBay.
Peter, Have you figured out how to get your NANO bridged from your home network to the PVS? If so, can you share the settings? Thanks.
Something you might try to increase your production is to clean your panels. Mine were quite dirty with ash from all the fires and some construction dust from my neighbors. I cleaned mine and thanks to panel level monitoring there is a 30 watt per panel increase which on my system means almost a 1000 watt increase overall which is significant! I cleaned two panels at first and compared the production to the dirty panels. I almost couldn’t believe there was a 30 watt per panel difference. I had read somewhere that cleaning wasn’t that important but in my case it sure made a difference. My system is about 1.5 years old and this was the first cleaning. I will clean them once a year from now on.
Hi Scott,
I followed your post and it worked perfectly. Can you please tell me how you calculated the From Grid, To Grid data?
Hi Prateek,
Thats great that it worked! I actually don’t calculate From Grid and To Grid. I use a box from Rainforest Automation that talks to my electric meter. If the number from it is positive, that is from grid; if it is negative, it is to grid. So for total usage, I combine it with the solar production to get usage.
Aha..Thanks for the clarification. I do have a consumption and production meter hooked up with my solar. Wondering which “key” from json would give me those values.
Look for the power meter in the JSON that ends in a c (consumption).
Found the JSON node, but would you know which tells the information about grid usages?
ISDETAIL : true SERIAL : “PVS6xxc” TYPE : “PVS5-METER-C” STATE : “working” STATEDESCR : “Working” MODEL : “PVS6xxc” DESCR : “Power Meter PVS6xxc” DEVICE_TYPE : “Power Meter” SWVER : “3000” PORT : “” DATATIME : “2020,11,10,18,48,13” ct_scl_fctr : “100” net_ltea_3phsum_kwh : “976.23” p_3phsum_kw : “0.4642” q_3phsum_kvar : “-0.111” s_3phsum_kva : “0.5667” tot_pf_rto : “0.8202” freq_hz : “60” CAL0 : “100” origin : “data_logger” OPERATION : “noop” CURTIME : “2020,11,10,18,48,14”
I believe you want to use “p_3phsum_kw”.
Thank you so much for taking the time to post this and thank you to everyone who provided such helpful comments!
I was able to follow the instruction and get this up and running with my PVS6 and home assistant.
No I still haven’t… I’ve settled to just connecting to the wifi directly and pulling the data once a month just to see how its producing
No problem. Has anyone noticed the change in the SP monitor data reporting? It looks like data/monitor is shut off for 15 mins or so, then turned on and for 10 mins, or so. But the data is still not posted until several hours after it’s measured. Seems the system it was changed circa Nov 12/13.
It appears that they pushed an update to the PVS6.
"SWVER": "2020.9, Build 6415"
I have no idea what the changes are; it would be nice if it added a direct local interface, but I doubt it.
Scott, I have the same issue with everyone else. I can’t tell if all my panels are working since SunPower no longer provides that information. All I want is to able to see if my panels are working or not. I’m absolutely new to this, do you know if this will work with PVS5X? I’m planning to order Raspberry Pi3 (B+) from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=raspberry+pi+3&crid=1RJM8DHY2YHHJ&sprefix=ras%2Caps%2C297&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-a-p_8_3
Hi Pat,
Unfortunately I don’t know if this works with the PVS5X. You could give it a try, but I have no idea if it runs the same firmware as the PVS6 and if this monitoring is possible. Sorry I don’t have better news.
Thank you Scott. I will give it a try. By the way, how does SunPower knows that you were monitoring your own panels and are you able to view to this day?
Hi Pat,
I don’t know if SunPower knows about my monitoring; I suspect they don’t, but could change things via a firmware update later. I’m still able to monitor on the SunPower site as well as my local monitoring.
Thank you for this excellent write up. I have very little coding experience and have a few questions. I have set up the rpi (cut and paste the code) but do not know how to pull the http request. I connected a computer to the same network as the rpi and put the http://10.0.3.55/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList into a chrome browser (it didn’t work). I was trying to figure this out but haven’t found a good resource. I’m not that interested in continuous data but want to ensure I don’t have a bad panel. (we had a bad experience with our prior roof and I have little trust in contractors). Can you point me to a good reference to learn this next step. Thanks.
Hi Max,
Unfortunately I don’t have any good references for you. However, the 10.0.3.55 just happens to be the IP address to MY Pi got. You’ll want to look at the IP list on your router to figure out what it is for your Pi. Once you figure it out, you’ll want to set a static DHCP reservation for it. Maybe that will be enough to get you going.
Hi Scott,
Long time no talk! Before I can try any of this I need to enable Sunpower to reach the PVS6. The Orbi firewall blocks all incoming requests by default… do you know what I need to open up and route to the PVS6, Sunpower is less than helpful :-(
Thanks
Hi Maurice,
It sure has been a long time! SunPower isn’t making any incoming connections to the PVS6; the PVS6 establishes outbound connections to SunPower. I wouldn’t think that the Orbi is blocking outbound requests by default as that would be pretty annoying!
Are you sure that your PVS6 has been properly configured by the solar installer?
Hi Scott,
How would I tell if it’s been properly configured? (and I’m definitely willing to entertain that possibility… after all they didn’t seal the power cable coming into the roof… wet!)
Hi Maurice,
When they turned on my system, SunPower sent me email to setup an account. Using their website, I was able to see the production. If you don’t have a SunPower account, I’d start with your installer to get that.
They did the same thing but the system never showed up despite being connected to my WiFi. My first theory was firewall because the installation instructions specifically say that the customer should turn it off. If it isn’t that, I’m not sure what it could be. The PVS6 is connected to the Orbi satellite which is in turn connected via WiFi to the Orbi base station. Unfortunately there’s very little access to the kind of info I’d like on the Orbi (decent logs, configuration, etc.)
I’m assuming it’s configured correctly as I too got that email and have an account. Sunpower says they can see it over the cellular backup, so again, it’s probably configured correctly.
The only thing I can think of is something to do with the network configuration: ORBI RBR850 base –> Satellite –> PVS6. If there’s no incoming, I don’t know if the firewall is aggressive about outgoing and there’s no advanced features that I can find for checking that (the web UI is still lacking.)
Any hints/pointers/suggestions appreciated.
I’d check the device list on the Orbi as it should show up. It would be highly unusual for a consumer router to block outgoing connections on standard ports (SunPower is likely using the standard SSL port, 443, for a connection to their server). I’m not sure that cellular is setup for most users as there is a cost involved that I’m sure they want to avoid. I think the SunPower dashboard lets you configure the WiFi, but I’m not sure as I hard wired my PVS6.
Hi, I have a SunPower 11.5 Kwh system - 29 - 410w Panels. and2 Tesla PowerWalls. I just connected my notebook w/ a wired connection to the BLK Ethernet port on the SunPower Module. BTW - it pushes out DHCP, so any can put a Dummy switch in between and connect via that. I went to 172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList and it gave me the raw data. Any Idea how I can covert this to graphical UI mode and have it update in real time.
Hi Rengy,
That’s great that you were able to grab the data! How you graph it and show data is going to depend on what other infrastructure you have in your house. I’m using Home Assistant, Node-RED and Grafana to update my data. Basically Node-RED polls the PVS6 every 60 seconds, parses the JSON and pushes the data (as sensors) into Home Assistant. Then I use Grafana to graph the data from Home Assistant. Since I wrote this entry, I’ve changed my Node-RED to publish to MQTT and then Home Assistant picks that up.
I wish there was a turnkey way to handle this data, but it is really going to depend on your setup.
If you like tinkering, I’m sure you’ll find a solution that works for you!
Hi everyone, rengy here,
Had a long talk with my Solar Installers from Solar-Fit in Ormond Beach FL and we were on the phone with SUnPower.
They will be releasing a update to the APP that will show individual solar panels output. They were getting a lot of calls with current APP as customers who own their product cannot see or know if a panel or inverter was not functioning. I asked the support Eng. why this not offered as all other Solar Panel manufacturers do this. I told them you are not monitoring my system nor are the installers, so why can’t we as customers who own the product do it. Also FYI if you can connect to your SunPower Module straight via Ethernet (via notebook or similar - it does push out DHCP) then open browser and go to - sunpowerconsole.com. VIOLA go thru prompts and you will see each panel power generation.
VIA wireless you should see a SSIS w/ Sunpowerxxx - password is first 4 numeric values and the last 4 numeric values. LOL.
My installers gave that tidbit.
Hope this helps.
Happy New Year everyone. Stay safe and healthy.
sorry to clarify.
SSID password is on SunPower PV module (open it and the first 4 numeric and last 4 numeric)
LED - RED is bad LED - Blue boot Up LED - Green - s/w update (takes a freaking long time) LED - purple - all systems ok
Hi Rengy,
This is useful! When you say SunPower PV module, do you mean the PVS6?
Thanks!
Thanks Rengy - i was able to connect to the PVS6 via wifi.
When you walked through the prompts, after it checks firmware (step 2), I get “Are you updating an existing site” with an option to select yes or no. Did you get this and which one did you select?
Also, step 6 (commissioning site) indicates Sunpower monitoring credentials are needed. Are those the same used to login to the app/website for sunpower?
OK got it; first 4 and last 4 digits of the PVS6 serial number. Anyone know of a way to disable the WiFi and the cellular connections? I’m thinking of disconnecting the antennas, but would like the WiFi to stop broadcasting.
The only way I could disconnect the Wi-Fi and cellular was to pull the connections at the board level. There was no software way I could find. You have to open the PV6 and remove the little connectors for the antenna. If you just disconnect the antenna it will still broadcast Wi-Fi and cellular
You can configure the connections on the sunpowerconsole.com site
Hi Alan,
I’m not sure you can disable any of the interfaces through that portal.
Hi Garu,
If I disconnect the antennas, I can at least attenuate the signal and in the case of cellular, might be enough to disconnect it. It seems like a poor design to keep broadcasting an SSID when not needed. Also it seems like a waste to have a cellular connection when it isn’t needed.
I tried disconnecting the antennas by unscrewing them. It did attenuate the signal a little bit but it was still strong enough to transmit the SS ID throughout the house. I even tried wrapping the unscrewed ends with foil and grounding them but the signal still came through. The only way I could halt the signals was to unsnap the lines on the board. The signals are still there but very weak.
Thanks for the info. I’m not quite ready to break anything, so I’ll probably just unscrew the antennas and see how it goes.
Yes
Hey Rengy, you mentioned were you able to see panel level production after connecting directly to the PVS6 by going to the sunpowerconsole.com site. Can you provide more detail on those steps for that site. I started, but held off going any further when I got the message “Are you updating an existing site” and given the choice of yes or no. I got this after it checked for firmware updates.
Alan,
Yes - you select “Updating a existing site.
But do not select - REDISCOVER
Rengy, My router pickup several SunPower SSID in the area. How can I tell which is mine? Also, if you can please list a step by step on connecting to my PVS6 (wireless) that would be greatly appreciated. My goal is to see if all of the panels are working since SunPower doesn’t monitor panels or even alert you when the panels are not working. Thank you!
Alan, Curious to know, are you able to complete the setup?
I was, thanks to Rengy! To save you all some trouble, connect directly to the PVS6 (I chose to connect wirelessly per Rengy’s instructions) and trying going to: http://www.sunpowerconsole.com/#/summary I am able to type that site in and it pulls up my panel level production.
If that does not work, here are the steps I had to complete to get to the summary page:
Go to Sunpowerconsole.com and that will redirect to landing page:
http://www.sunpowerconsole.com/#/landing Select Residential
http://www.sunpowerconsole.com/#/network/config Click continue
http://www.sunpowerconsole.com/#/firmware After firmware is checked / updated click continue (this will take several seconds before going to next screen). The first time doing this updated the firmware of my inverters.
“Are you updating an existing site” Click Yes
http://www.sunpowerconsole.com/#/rma-device-selection Select your PVS and click continue
http://www.sunpowerconsole.com/#/devices Do not click “rediscover”
I was not able to click continue, had to click on “configure” for the AC Modules and it takes you to this site: http://www.sunpowerconsole.com/#/devices/inverter-micro
I did not change anything, just clicked done and that takes you back to: http://www.sunpowerconsole.com/#/devices
Then I was able to click continue
Then get a popup indicating the inverters are being claimed and then you can click continue and it takes you to the summary page
http://www.sunpowerconsole.com/#/summary You can hover over the “info” to the right to get more details on each panel/inverter
It appears it is point in time data.
For those of you you have setup a bridge with an old router or with a pi you can access it by replacing “http://sunpowerconsole.com” with the ip address. For example my pi bridged to my PVS6 is 192.168.10.105, so I can go to 192.168.10.105/#/summary from any device on my network to get the results.
As I already have a pi setup that is pulling data, I don’t see using the summary page myself very often, but for those of you wanting an easy solution to see panel level production without setting up a bridge, then connecting to the PVS6 directly (wired or wirelessly per Rengy’s instructions) and going to http://www.sunpowerconsole.com/#/summary may be exactly what you are looking for.
Thanks to Scott and Odin I’m monitoring the PSV6 using the Pi Zero W in the PSV and a Pi 3+ running hass.io (Home Assistant) collecting the data.
Scott, a relatively simple question. For Grafana, I think the queries are sum() based, not mean() based… is that right?
Tks
Hi Maurice,
That’s great that you got it running! For Grafana, I think it depends on what you want. As I’m usually looking for an instantaneous measurement, I typically use mean() and not sum(). I don’t understand everything about Grafana, so I experiment to get what looks right!
FYI, I changed the Node-Red flow to capture the solar cell info only during daylight hours. I put a timerange node between the timestamp and Get Solar Info function. The start time is dawn and the end time is dusk.
That works!
Hi Scott,
Are you saying your PVS6 is constantly broadcasting and the Wifi Network for PVS6 is always available? I am not seeing that behavior, and was also told by my installer that Wifi is enabled for 4 hours after the system is switched on, so if you want the wifi network enabled again then switch the system off at the breaker and then switch it back on. If there is any option for constant Wifi, I would prefer that so that I can monitor panel level info without going through any complicated setup. Right now I am using the Sunpower Rest API to track panel level total generation.
Hi Nirav,
My PVS6 is always broadcasting its WiFi network (as well as a Bluetooth connection). I’d prefer that it switches off after 4 hours (though that seems like a really long time for setup), but unfortunately I don’t know how to turn that on (or in your case, turn it off!).
Hi Scott,
DO NOT UPDATE YOUR PVS6 FIRMWARE
I believe SunPower is at it again! My PVS6 just updated its firmware to the latest Version 2021.1, Build 9197. Now when I log into the PVS6 it tells me that SunPower is dropping the PVS Management app come April 30th 2021 and will be replacing it with a proprietary SunPower App “SunPower Pro Connect” https://us.sunpower.com/products/software/sunpower-pro-connect that only installers will have access to. I do not know if this will disable our panel monitoring but it will for sure stop those who check their panels using the http://172.27.153.1/#/summary . We really should start a class action lawsuit against SunPower to force them to provide the panel level information we paid for and need to insure our panels are functioning properly. I will post any additional information I can get on this seemingly malicious firmware update.
Thanks for the tip! Does it automatically update? I’m still on 2020.11, Build 8616. I’m not sure if I understand; did it disable http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList?
Hi Nirav,
I posted the links to the installer documentation above. The installer is correct about the 4 hour limit but that’s not the whole story in two different ways.
First, although the command WiFi switches off after 4 hours the LAN1 Ethernet port is always active. There may even be a command to keep the setup WiFi active though I don’t know if there is.
The second is that there are two different WiFi connections on the PVS6, just line there are two different Ethernet ports. The second one is for connecting to the remote SunPower monitoring system. Unfortunately they have a really poor setup that requires “no firewall” on your router which is highly risky. There “technical” support is anything but and so far I haven’t found out how the communication between SunPower and the PSV6 happens. Worse, the flood of connection attempts across many TCP (I think) ports looks like a denial of service attack.
There ineffective WiFi monitoring is why I do my own. They get some report info over the cellular connection.
The update has not changed anything yet related to monitoring the PVS6 and will not until April 31. The PVS6 automatically updates firmware if you progress through the steps of the 172.27.153.1/#/landing , when you choose “Residential” then “Communication” then it automatically “Checks Firmware” and updates. My PVS6 now has a window that opens and states that SunPower will be “sunsetting” the app April 31, 2021, and at that time all will be forced to use the new “SunPower Pro App” with an installer account and password. I talked to my installer about this. His response was that he just found out about this mandatory update a few days ago. He also said that he has used the new app and that “the app is trash”. He did not know how it would affect our panel monitoring. I guess we will have to wait and see. But I wish I had not updated my PVS6 and would warn others not to do so especially if they use the simple method to check their panels of http://172.27.153.1/#/summary as it looks like this will go away with the new app.
Thanks. I wonder if the PVS6 updates its firmware automatically. I hope not as I want to keep my local monitoring!
I am not sure if SunPower can force a firmware update, but I know that the first thing the technicians do on a service call is to check and update the PVS6. So you might want to have a chat with your technician beforehand.
The question is whether that update will prevent the current information reporting URL over LAN1/configuration WiFi. I know it’s speculation, but it seems unlikely that the feature will be turned off. To do so would require significant code changes to the firmware which is a very expensive thing to do (read: requires a lot of testing to minimize risk.)
I suspect they’ll just change the main configuration page to show content directing the installer elsewhere and leave all the other infrastructure in place.
I also suspect that the CGI commands that produce the data are code shared between the configuration WiFi and the external reporting WiFi/Cellular connections. The external reporting is definitely based on connecting to a web server on the PSV6 from the outside (hence all the “turn off the firewall” requests.)
Another reason for saying this is that the overall competence of the SunPower software engineering staff seems average at best. There’s lots of bad design decisions and blatant security holes, something that an experienced team would never do.
Let us keep our fingers crossed that all the update changes is the app and not the way the PVS6 communicates as SunPower has notoriously done whatever it takes to block consumer panel monitoring (recently doing away with sunpowermonitor.com consumer access to the panel level monitoring website). As my PVS6 has already updated its firmware, I will post if anything changes to my panel monitoring come April 31.
I just had my system installed. I was able to check the summary by connecting a laptop to the PV6 LAN, and going to http://172.27.153.1/#/summary. Can confirm Garu’s comment about the app going away end of April. However, I can’t connect wirelessly since the SSID doesn’t show up. I read that the SSID is only available for 4 hours after the PV6 is turned on so guessing that’s why I can’t see it. Any ideas to connect wirelessly?
Hi Marc - my PVS6 consistently broadcast wifi. However, if yours doesn’t, you can create a bridge to your network using a small travel router and/or use a pi. I believe both of those options are listed in the above comments
It looks like my PVS6 automatically updated to firmware version 2021.1, Build 9199 and I still have my local monitoring. I’m not sure if the status light colors changed, but mine is showing green most of the time.
After my PVS6 updated to the latest firmware I noticed a few changes:
- Like Scott’s my monitor light is now green.
- The panel information refresh has been slowed on my unit and has gone from 5 minutes to 15 minutes. (Bad)
- The PVS consumption/productions meters seems to refresh faster under 5 seconds now. (Good)
- The below information showed up on the consumption meter. Note I guessed on the meanings, but it seemed to fit with my data. • “i1_a”: Amps on CT 1 • “i2_a”: Amps on CT 2 • “v1n_v”: Volts on Line 1 • “v2n_v”: Volts on Line 2 • “v12_v”: Volts Total Line 1&2 • “p1_kw”: K Watts + or – Line 1 • “p2_kw”: K Watts + or – Line 2 • “neg_ltea_3phsum_kwh”: Total Negative KWH consumed • “pos_ltea_3phsum_kwh”: Total Positive KWH Consumed
Thanks for the info on the panel refresh; that’s really too bad that it has slowed so much. I really don’t know why it isn’t updated much faster.
Scott
This is the first time I’ve this and I’ve have hit a road block. I’ve got as far as connecting the PI to the PVS6 but the only response I get i node-red is “ no response from Server”. I can ping the PI and both network lights are flashing at the jack, what might I be missing?
Hi Bill,
You’ll want to make sure that this call: http://10.0.3.55/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList works (replace the IP address with that of your Pi). If it doesn’t, then your bridge isn’t setup correctly.
Hi all, just to chime in with my relatively simple setup. I have a wired connection to my pvs6. So I bought a pair of RJ45 splitters (you can find them for $8 on Amazon). RJ45 splitters allows you to send 2 ethernet signals over 1 ethernet cable at the same time. No additional power adapters are needed. First splitter is in the pvs6 box, LAN1 and LAN2 from pvs6 are connected to a splitter from one side and the ethernet cable that connects to my router is connected to the other side of the splitter. Second splitter is connected to the other side of my ethernet cable (that was previously connected to my router). And then I connect LAN1 output from splitter 2 to my Pi and LAN2 from splitter to my router. It was easier then drilling anther hole in the house and pulling another ethernet cable. My Pi runs prometheus and grafana directly communicating to my pvs6. I connect to grafana on my pi when I need to check the data (pi connects to my local network via wifi).
Also to report my system is 5.8kw, max AC is 4.8kw, max ever produced so far 3kw AC (only have the system for 2 months).
Hi Gary,
Could you be more specific on what these lines mine and how to interpret them? I am looking for the fields that show my current and lifetime power consumption. I have:
“neg_ltea_3phsum_kwh”: “9856.6974”, “pos_ltea_3phsum_kwh”: “10005.0955”,
But also “net_ltea_3phsum_kwh”: “14535.2303”, “p_3phsum_kw”: “0.8852”,
On two different monitors.
Thanks.
On your consumption monitor “C” - the 10005 indicates you have used that many kwh from your utility and you have sent 9856 back to your utility for a net use of 149kwh. The net_ltea_3phsum_kwh on your “C” monitor should be 149.
The 14535 on your production monitor “P” indicates your lifetime production. You should see this on your sunpower site.
When I change it to my PI’s address I get the following
Error: connect ECONNREFUSED
Hi Bill,
You’ll want to double check that the proxy is setup correctly; I suspect it isn’t. If you use a browser, you should get JSON returned.
I believe you already received an answer from Alan, but this is what information I have on the PVS6 and inverters. Most of this info was from previous comments.
Inverters • freq_hz: Operating Frequency • i_3phsum_a: AC Current (amperes) • i_mppt1_a: DC Current (amperes) • ltea_3phsum_kwh: Total energy (kilowatt-hours) • p_3phsum_kw: AC Power (kilowatts) • p_mpptsum_kw: DC Power (kilowatts) • t_htsnk_degc: Heatsink temperature (degrees Celsius) • v_mppt1_v: DC Voltage (volts) • vln_3phavg_v: AC Voltage (volts)
Power Meter • CAL0: The calibration-reference CT sensor size (50A for production, 100A for consumption) • ct_scl_fctr: The CT sensor size (50A for production, 100A/200A for consumption) • freq_hz: Operating Frequency • net_ltea_3phsum_kwh: Total Net Energy (kilowatt-hours) • p_3phsum_kw: Average real power (kilowatts) • q_3phsum_kvar: Reactive power (kilovolt-amp-reactive) • s_3phsum_kva: Apparent power (kilovolt-amp) • tot_pf_rto: Power Factor ratio (real power / apparent power)
Supervisor • dl_comm_err: (?) Number of comms errors • dl_cpu_load: (?) 1-minute load average • dl_err_count: (?) Number of errors detected since last report • dl_flash_avail: amount of free space, in KiB (assumed 1GiB of storage) • dl_mem_used: amount of memory used, in KiB (assumed 1GiB of RAM) • dl_scan_time: (?) • dl_skipped_scans: (?) • dl_untransmitted: (?) Number of untransmitted events/records • dl_uptime: number of seconds the system has been running • panid: (?) Panel ID
Some New Items showed up on the Power Consumption Meter when I did the latest PVS6 firmware upgrade • “i1_a”: Amps on CT 1 • “i2_a”: Amps on CT 2 • “v1n_v”: Volts on Line 1 • “v2n_v”: Volts on Line 2 • “v12_v”: Volts Total • “p1_kw”: K Watts + or – Line 1 • “p2_kw”: K Watts + or – Line 2 • “neg_ltea_3phsum_kwh”: Total Negative KWH consumed (from utility) • “pos_ltea_3phsum_kwh”: Total Positive KWH Consumed (to utility)
Thanks Garu.
A quick follow-up.
The following comes from my Consumption Power Meter: “p_3phsum_kw”: “6.9333”,
When this number is positive, I means I am consuming 6.9kW of power and then it is negative, I am pushing this number back to the grid, but this represents the “net” (production - consumption).
Is there a data field that shows the raw consumption (before netting out the production). (I can get the production by summing the inverters). Alternatively, if this is not track, I guess I could calculate it from using the net value and then subtracting the sum of the current inverter production.
Please let me know if this makes sense.
Thanks.
Hi Everyone,
Just got a notice SunPower is updating their APP. ios users will get it by Feb 16th as will google Play, rest by end of spring 2021
On my unit the Power Meter p_3phsum_kw only reads the solar power being produced. It does go negative at night when no solar power is being produced. Only about -14watts as the panels consume some power to run the inverters. On my Consumption Meter side the p_3phsum_kw will go negative if I am producing more solar and positive when I am using more grid power than solar produced. I subtract the two p_3phsum_kw(s) to get how much power my house is actually using. The Power meter has current sensors (CTs) on the mains coming from Solar panels and can only read solar power produced. The Consumption meter is a separate entity in the PVS and has current sensors (CTs) on the mains coming from the grid. It can only read net power being used by the house. It is negative when my panels are producing more power than I am using and it is positive when I am using more. Right now, because it is somewhat cloudy, my system is producing 6468 watts of solar, 5312 watts to the grid and my house is using 1156 watts. I hope this helps and is not making your setup more confusing.
You can sum the inverters but is not as accurate as the information from the CTs. There are some line losses and the inverters have low-end current sensors. They provide information mainly as a reference to panel operation. Also the inverters update much more slowly than the PVS meters.
Does anyone have the list of commands and definitions for the PVS6? http://10.0.3.55/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command= …………… I had it but I can not find it
https://github.com/ginoledesma/sunpower-pvs-exporter/blob/master/sunpower_pvs_notes.md
Start Stop Get_Comm Device List CheckFW DeviceDetails (Extra parameter SerialNumber required) GridProfile GridProfileRefresh GetCellPurchased GetDiscoveryProgress SetCellPurchased
I do have this on my home network now. There may be different ways to do it but I have an extra wireless router that connects to the namo router in client mode and has a static IP on the home network side. Then I set up routing in my main home router to send any traffic for 172.27.153.1 to that static IP. ( I also route traffic to the nano router subnet that way too so I can access the router if I ever need to do so.) Works fine.
Very useful information and discussion. While struggling with lack of data in the SunPower monitoring dashboard, I noted that there is still an API call to SunPower’s server under the browser’s covers that retrieves the panel-level data. The dashboard doesn’t display that data anywhere, but the API can be used (until SunPower disables it, anyway) instead of hooking directly to the PVS6.
You can see the call in a browser like Chrome by turning on Developer tools and looking in the Network tab. There is a call to https://elhapi.edp.sunpower.com/v1/elh/address/{address id}/components (where {address id} is a 6-digit code for your system). There are other parameters that must be sent in the header including an authorization token. The return JSON has rows with detailed data for AC_Module_Type_E (22 in my case), and a row each for PVS6M0400c (consumption, right?) and PVS6M0400p.
The next step is to write a little app to call the API every x minutes, store the results locally, and visualize the data.
Nice find Jim! I was looking around at the different calls in the networking tab and see a few (device status, energy?), including the one you referenced (components). My address is a 5 digit one, the same one from the SunPower partner site. Where are you finding the authorization token?
Hi Alan, one option is to click on “components”, a pane will open to the right. Click on the Headers tab and scroll down to the Request Headers section. I’m not sure whether this auth token is fixed until you change your password, or has to be refreshed at some interval. Earlier in the list you’ll see a “session” request that passes in and returns the auth token, and returns the address number.
Those other calls to energy, power, etc. are providing the data used by the javascript to populate the graphs. devicestatus has the status for various components of the pvs6 itself.
Thanks for the reply, guess I’m not going to figure it out without more detailed steps. Under the Request Headers, I see an “authorization” with the following value: SP-CUSTOM xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx When I’m on the networking tab and I log into the site, i get an “authenticate”, then my address number, then a 6 digit user number, then a “session”. Am I anywhere close? Would you mind sharing what you are passing in the url? You mentioned you had to pass the token plus some other parameters.
What tool do you use to generate a request? In Chrome developer tools, if you right click on “components”, hover over “Copy” to get the list, and then for example choose “Copy as cURL (cmd)”. You can use that to run a cURL command. Or I use Postman and import the cURL to set up the request.
Looks like the authentication times out after some period which means you’ll need to sign in again and grab the new token, or you can trace the sign in, locate the “authenticate” call, and copy that into a request.
Scott when I add in your step #11: Add the following to /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg
the haproxy load balancer fails to start, any suggestions?
Hi Bill,
You might want to check the tabs/spaces for the lines. Look at what the errors are in /var/log/haproxy.log to see if it tells you what is wrong.
I double checked my running configuration and it matches what I posted.
can you given and example of a cURL command you are using? I’m confused by the content of the “Copy as cURL (cmd)”.
You should design an app and sell it for money I would definitely be interested. I’m just surprised no one has created a 3rd party app.
How do you power the raspberry pi? The PVS5x/PVS6 usually mount near the breaker panel or power company meter on the outside of your house unless you are running a long ethernet cable from LAN1 port on the PSV5x/PVS6 to bring the signal inside the house to the pi. Is this how you have your pi power? inside the house or outside near the PVS5x/PVS6?
Hi Hai,
My PVS6 is located in my garage and I have Ethernet runs from my switch out to the garage. I’ve located my Pi in my equipment rack, so I just power it right at the switch. I’ve read that others use one of the USB ports on the PVS6.
I would pay MONEY for this as a third party app. I played around with setting this up but I don’t understand network traffic well enough to build this out without haproxy. For some reason I can’t run haproxy as I have a Pi running Pi-hole.
Scott, this is an amazing article and I’m glad to see someone take initiative to be able to get the data they are seeking.
It’s a bit weird to me that SunPower would not provide that information to Homeowners due to the fact that it’s more information than needed. Again, I’m quite impressed with the alternative you have provided and it’s something worth the test.
Fairly new PVS6 installation running Build 9210. DeviceList does not show any of the micro inverters. Just the Supervisor, the Production(p?) and Consumption(c?), Am I missing something or has something changed where SunPower is restricting that information?
Mine is running 9210 and http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList gets me the inverters also.
Not for me. Wonder why that would be different for my installation?
It could be the installer did not claim the inverters when he did the installation. Do they show up when you do command http://172.27.153.1/#/summary
No they do not.
You can try configuring your PVS6 but you probably will not be able to save the changes. You should request your installer claim your inverters as they did not finish your installation. You could just ask them to verify your panels as you suspect one of them is not working. They will not be able to do this unless they finish your installation and claim your inverters. You can try claiming your inverters yourself by entering: http://172.27.153.1/#/landing choose “residential” Click “continue” It will display a notice that SP is shutting down this app. It will then check the firmware Click “continue” Choose “yes” “updating existing site” Select your device and site then click “continue” Click “rediscover” Click “discover” it may take awhile as is discovers your devices After it is done it will take you back to the same screen Click “configure” your panels should show up Click “done” at bottom of page It will take you back to the same page Click “continue” Your inverters will be claimed Click “continue” Your devices should all show up and you can click on them to get additional information. When you click “continue” it will ask you to login but you will not be able to as you need an installer password & user name. So you probably will not be able to save the changes but at least you can see them this way.
http://172.27.153.1/#/power shows total system power for me. However, I can’t seem to get the details on the inverter. http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceDetails&SerialNumber=”” I get { “success”: false, “result”: “error” }
Is there anything wrong with my URL for DeviceDetails command?
For inverter details, either try http://172.27.153.1/#/Summary or http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList, where you will get a JSON file with the PVS6 info, the production and consumption meters and each inverter.
Try http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList
Should give you all the details of all the devices
I have this same error on all of my microinverters. Did you ever figure out what the problem was?
When there is no sunlight, the individual panels will be in “error”. In Ricardo’s post, the time was 23:56:44, which depending on time zone, would likely be dark out. In my case, that would have been 7:56:44 which based on the time of year (Sep 25), that is plausible.
I got this working well and get data for about 12 hours, then the Pi started getting 503 errors when accessing the ConnectedDevices end point. A reboot of the pi fixes it but its frustrating to have to do that so often. Any idea where to start to debug this issue?
My system does not have any power measuring devices for production (only consumption.) So I assume the supervisor lifetime energy is simply summing what is reported by the inverters. I am curious why the energy reported by supervisor is 1.6% less than the sum of the energy values reported by the inverters. I would think it would match exactly. Any idea?
My only guess is that it is calculating total energy based on the periodic power values received from the inverters instead of summing the inverters’ reported energy values. This won’t be as accurate as I assume the inverters are reporting true energy based on nearly continuous power output over time and not just samples taken every longer time interval.
Yes. I believe it’s an error caused by the sampling rate of the monitor versus the rate at which the inverters produce energy (i.e. continuously) - probably “aliasing error”.
Do you plan to update the setup to work with the new Home Energy Monitoring in HA 2021.8?
Hi Ed,
I updated my flows last weekend and now have pretty pictures in HA 2021.8! I’ll try to update the Node-RED flow on the post soon.
What is the new Home Energy Monitoring in HA 2021.8 you are talking about. Not familiar with that version
Gary,
You get nice looking graphs if you setup your production and consumption entities correctly. Like this:
Thanks for posting this!!! It annoyed the crap outta me that I couldn’t see the individual inverter statuses.
I had an old “beaglebone” lying around that I used. I slapped a $10 TP-Link N-150 USB wifi adapter in it, installed the latest debian image, configured the Ethernet and Wifi settings (through the connmanctl command line interface) and followed your steps for the haproxy setup exactly.
It took some fiddling with the beaglebone connection manager but I got it working. I had to enable simultaneous connections over Ethernet and Wifi, the default settings were just selecting one or the other. I plugged into the sunpower USB ports for power using a USB A to mini USB cable. Using a USB A to barrel plug on the beaglebone surprisingly didn’t work, maybe it failed to handshake the power requirements with the sunpower controller?
With the USB mini power connection the entire assembly fits in the sunpower box. Your Node-red flow worked perfectly once I updated the URL with my IP address to the beaglebone.
Anyone know what causes the gaps in the daily SunPower data? It occurs at the same time in my real-time readout. Trying to attach a screenshot but how?
Awesome stuff. Is step 10 necessary if I ran haproxy from a docker container off my NAS instead of a PI? Not well versed in any of this so if you have any suggestions I would appreciate it.
I’m not sure if step 10 is necessary, but I used it in my original setup and my current setup (a Pi 2 B with Ethernet and a USB Ethernet dongle) and things are working fine. I’d suggest using it if there is an issue.
I have an old Pi 1st gen sitting around. Think I’d be able to use that for this with a USB wifi dongle?
I don’t see why not. HAProxy doesn’t take a lot of computing power to just forward the request.
Using your new flow, I am unable to get any sensors to be generated. The get entities steps shows 0 devices.
I updated the IP address for my Pi (http://172.16.12.31/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList) and the production meter Serial Number
Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
Hi Jeffrey,
You’ll want to make sure that MQTT is setup and integrated. If you’re not familiar with MQTT, you might want to go back to the old flow and just add customizations to make it work with the energy dashboard, but that’s not the route I took.
Hi Scott,
I’ve been trying to set this up and educating myself along the way. I’m running into an issue with MQTT, and wondering if you could share some of your settings/setup details.
Since I’m doing this all in containers on my pi, the add-ons are not available. My HA instance cannot connect to the running MQTT server, and I’m a bit lost as to why.
Thanks.
I’m using HassOS (or whatever it is called these days), so I just use the add-ons. It makes things super easy. Unfortunately I didn’t like containers as it required too much maintenance, so I don’ve have any suggestions. Sorry.
Dang. I’ve been using Balena Cloud to maintain my pi projects, and while I enjoy the pipeline aspects it’s proving to be more of a hinderance for this project than a benefit. Quite unfortunate that the AH add-ons are not available in container environments.
Well, I finally figured out what was going on (kind of). MQTT 2.x containers default to a local only mode, which breaks them. There should be config work-arounds that would allow for anonymous connections, and force listening on the right port/interface, but I couldn’t get them to work correctly. Ultimately I was able to get mqtt to do its job by reverting to an older image.
Now it’s time to figure out how to config HA’s energy monitoring and/or graphana to display the panel level data I’m interested in.
Thanks a ton for your writeup.
Another quick follow-up. How were you able to configure the native HA energy dashboards? Node-red does not appear to be configuring the right entities to populate them as shown in your image as configured. Did you happen to make changes to get the right entities to populate as energy statistics?
I probably cleared my MQTT and let the entities rebuild and setup the dashboard, but honestly I can’t recall now. I didn’t make any changes other than the Node-RED.
Interesting. Do you have any sensors other than the PVS6 that are being polled for consumption (as it relates to grid/solar - I see you have some other stuff going on there)?
I’m getting consumption using a Node-RED flow for my Eagle Energy device that talks to my electric meter; my PVS6 wasn’t setup for consumption.
It seems I don’t have a /etc/dhcpcd.conf file. I am running the latest raspbian release. Any idea why that might not be there?
None of the above sites can be accessed.
I’m in support of that. SunPower is not giving panel-level access because their inverters are not producing what they are rated to produce. For example, if an inverter is replaced on an existing, previously installed panel, the power output increases by appx. 16-19% IMMEDIATELY. Is it any wonder why SunPower does not want the customer to have access to this data?
Did you experience this power increase with your system? If so what age panels do you have? I had heard that some of the older SunPower inverters we’re failing and needed to be replaced. Maybe the lower power output is a sign that the inverter is starting to fail.
I just tried, it still works for me. Have you connected directly to the PVS6 either wired or wirelessly?
I wanted to setup the RPi solution and did quite a bit of research and captured everything I found in one document. (Got this working easily and integrated with HA). It includes detailed API documentation for both the direct connection to the PVS6 as well as the Web site API. This can save people from having to wade through all the comments and multiple web sites: https://starreveld.com/PVS6%20Access%20and%20API.pdf
I purchased a raspberry pie zero for this. A bit concerned leaving it in the PVS6 since it will be enclosed. I live in Phoenix so summers are brutal. I am new to raspberry pi but my gut says this might be a fire hazard. I plan on running this 24/7 do what reliability or fire risk is this setup?
Hi Justin,
You can always mount it outside of the box if you’re concerned. Mine is inside my house connected via Ethernet.
I think the system time is GMT. Is this a correct assumption? I notice if I am pulling the data at say 12:00 noon my time but the system show CURTIME as 19:00 and DATATIME at a little bit before 19:00. So it looks like 7 hrs ahead of my time which is GMT for my time zone.
I believe this is correct. Just now I pulled from my PVS6 at 12:25 PM PDT and it returned 2021,11,03,19,25,58 which corresponds to UTC (we don’t call it GMT anymore :-)
Ryan,
Did you ever figure this out? What did you do to solve?
Gave up on the Pi for this! Tried troubleshooting, also tried adding a cron to reboot every night at 2AM, but still had this way too frequently!
Got the GL-iNET device, it has been running flawless since I installed it about a month ago! More info on how to setup here: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/options-for-sunpower-solar-integration/289621/6
This stopped working for me yesterday right after I had gotten a 2nd inverter replaced due to issues I only found due to per-panel info obtained from this method. There is no response at all from the IP address now. Perhaps Sunpower shut this interface off for me to avoid any more warranty inverter replacements?
It still works for me @ Firmware Version: 2021.11, Build 60203 which is quite recent.
Sorry, false alarm…technician had apparently opened monitoring box when he was replacing inverter and reconnected ethernet cable to wrong LAN port.
My firmware is considerably older…2020.1, Build 3008. I have PVS5. Do they push firmware updates remotely usually? If so is that done by Sunpower or by installing company?
If you have a connection to the Ethernet port, or through a proxying Raspberry you can browse to the console’s IP address and then access the page that check for firmware updates. This is true for the PVS6, and I assume PVS5. In more recent firmwares, after you go through the network check page, there is a warning that this is no longer supported, in favor of an installer app, but if you append “/firmware” to the URL you will get what you need. I had a failed FW update and did this to update it again.
you could use python
This is great stuff! I am putting together my Christmas shopping list… Question for Dolf Starreveld - I think the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B appears to do the job and has both ethernet AND Wi-Fi. It also appears that they have a “B+” version and the only thing I can tell that is different is that it would allow POE, which I do not think I need if using the USB power source in the PVS6. Thoughts? Also, in your great separate write up, you have a short connector cable that combines the necessary power and ethernet connections into one cable. Does this work well and do you have any suggestions for where to pick one up? Thank you!
I originally used a Rpi 3 because I had it lying around. It fits, but requires some finagling. PV6 does not supply PEO, so that option is useless to you. Since I decided to do this kind of monitoring permanently, I decided to substitute a Rpi Zero instead: lower power drain on the PVS6, needs less space, and less heat generated inside the space that is otherwise not (well) ventilated. So that is what I have now. What I used: LANDZO Raspberry P Zero W case ($7.50), OTG Micro B Ethernet Adapter ()$15.27) (both from Amazon), Raspberry Pi Zero W from villas.com ($16.95), total just under $40. For connections I bought (Amazon), one extremely short flat ethernet cable (flat because easier to bend in tight space), and ditto usb cable. I’ll update my write up with that info.
I should have shared this along time ago, but instead of uploading the data to Home Assistant, I’m doing the following 3 outputs via 3 node-red flows. I don’t have the details on exactly how I did it, but wanted to share as an idea to others, but I’m happy to help answer questions if I can if anyone is interested. 1- Exporting to a text file and have setup a excel data connection to bring the data into excel. 2 - Exporting the data to PVOutput via their API (using GET method with HTTP Request node). PVOutput has good instructions on how to do this. 3 - Exporting the data to google sheets via a google form (using GET method with HTTP Request node). I tried exporting directly to a google sheet, but didn’t have any luck, but others may. A quick google search indicates there may be some nodes that now allow you to export directly to a google sheet.
I just wanted to thank you for this great document. Much appreciated.
hi Scott, how did you setup this. Can you please provide more information on the graphs
I have had issue with my system recently where inverters intermittently and frequently during the day often all report in state “error” instead of “working”. (This error state previously only happened at night when there was no production.) When this happens the data from the inverters in the json does not get updated. However, the production meter data (energy and power) does continue to get updated. I do not have production CTs in my system, so I believe the production meter is simply summing all the inverter data. I guess even though the inverters are showing error in the json file, they are continuing to report their output data to the production meter and it is just not getting to the json for some reason in this “error” state. (Curious, does an anyone have documentation from Sunpower that says how the production meter (monitoring) works without having CTs? I guess it is obvious but I don’t think I have seen it. Thanks.)
I’m seeing an error state on all my panels as well, but I think it is due to the panels not producing (rain and clouds). The LED on the monitoring unit isn’t green indicating something is up. I’m going to see what happens when the sun comes back.
Yes, LED is red on my unit too. Repowering turns it off but it comes back after a while. This started after an inverter was replaced for me. I think they messed up something up in config because I am seeing an inverter in my json data that no longer exists in my system… actually an earlier replaced inverter. I think/hope my actual production is ok.
This happens for me, occasionally, and when it does it is for all inverters, and its shows during the day time. The light is solid Amber in those cases (which I have not found documented). In that scenario, the mySunpower app reports 0kW as well, but inspecting me sense.com meter shows actual production is going just fine. Power cycling the PVS6 resolves the issue for me. Based on above it is my conclusion that it is a PVS6 firmware related problem. I am running the latest.
My installation has been operational since Nov 1, and has had no replacements. If the “old” inverter show up it should always be in error state (after all it isn’t there anymore), and I agree that they didn’t do the replacement cleanly. They should have unregistered the old one.
With respect to production meter: My installer installed two CT tied in to the PVS6 for production metering, but I also installed a “Sense solar” with two CT on the solar production side, and two on the combined loads of both phases in my panel (could not hook on the busbar due to lack of space). I really only use what is measured by sense, but I know the PVS6 production meter is physically there and hooked up. So I cannot say if they can add all the inverter data if even that meter is not there.
In one of the cases where I had “error” status on my inverters during the day, I could see from my panel level tracking (using the Raspberry and HA for logging), thatchy never came out of error status after daylight appeared. It was sunny though. The previous time this happened, I used the console connection to upgrade the firmware because I thought the light meant “firmware update failed”. It did actually install new firmware. The second time I did not try this, but just power cycled.
Thanks! Power cycling the PVS6 got it to now report the production. I’ll know tomorrow when there is sunlight if the inverters report again.
Dolf, Scott, etal. I really appreciate you posting this information and the dialog. Just set up the RPi Zero 2 W in the kitchen (before installing in the PVS6), with power and Ethernet adaptor so we can test it. Power is good, Wi-Fi is good, but the wired Ethernet connection is not showing up on the router as connected. We are just beginning to troubleshoot… any initial thoughts as to why no eithernet connection?
all cables are connected to the router and have power. Having problems getting the ethernet connection to show up on the router. the wi-fi component shows up very clearly. Any suggestions for what we might have done wrong?
follow up… in Scott’s instructions, you do not suggest connecting to the LAN (only connect to the WiFi). In Dolf’s instructions, you suggest connecting to both. We are bogged down trying to get a connection to the LAN (via ethernet adaptor) and wonder if there is a difference between using the Pi Zero vs. the Pi 3 (that has built in ethernet). Any assistance would be appreciated.
Testing “on the bench” (in the kitchen) if you installed and configured the proxy is not going to work. My suggestion to connect “both” is early on, before you configure for this specific function. The idea here is to just confirm you can reach both interfaces properly and that hardware is all function. That would also confirm that your ethernet adapter with the Pi0 is working correctly. Other than that there should be no difference between the Pi models.
I suspect you were trying both after you followed the proxy configuration instructions. You confirm you can connect to the Pi using WiFi, which is what I would expect. The way networking is setup, the ethernet (through the adapter) is explicitly configured not route any traffic to the PVS6 gateway at 172.27.153.1, but it tries to get a DHCP address on the network connected to that port. The best way to test, after you confirm you can reach the Pi over WiFi is to hook it up inside the PVS6 (leave the cover off for now, and make sure you use the right port). Then, from your browser connect the the Pi using “http://192.168.1.50” replacing the IP address with that of your Pi. You should now see the installer console screen on your browser.
If you see that, everything is setup correct. If you don’t, you can try using ssh to login to your Pi (again using the IP of the WiFi side). If you then issue an “ifconfig” command you should see something like this:
eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 172.27.153.254 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 172.27.153.255
inet6 fe80::890f:ebbd:1723:3160 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20
... other stuff
wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.10.189 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.10.255
inet6 2603:3024:b07:3ff1:bfaf:6dbf:52ea:5b99 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x0
You may not have ipv6 addresses, and your local IP address on wlan0 should correspond to your network. If your output is not something very similar (the eth0 IPV4 address may vary within 172.27.153.0/24) something is wrong. Re-read and check everything.
Hi Aaron, To help troubleshoot, a few questions: Are you sure the usb to ethernet adapter is working (have you tried it on another device) or on the pi just running the default os without any modifcations ? Do you have a usb wifi adapter to try running 2 wifi connections vs a lan and wifi? Have you tried a clean install are reconfiguring the pi? Lastly, have you connected a monitor/keyboard/mouse to the pi or setup a remote desktop to the pi and see if there is anything in the network connections you can see that is causing the issue?
Dolf and Alan (I tried responding to you, but it would only let me respond to me). Got both of your responses with ideas. We are running a few of these to ground and will respond with greater detail later. Thank you!
Hello Dolf, thank you for your response and suggestions.
I want to clarify that I was testing the Wi-fi and wired ethernet connections for the Pi Zero W exactly as per your document, that is, prior to any additional configuration steps. I downloaded the Raspberry Lite image to the micro SD card, created the wpa_supplicant.conf file with appropriate settings for my wireless network, and created the empty ssh file at the root level. Upon power up of the Pi, the device appeared as a Wi-fi connection, but not as a wired ethernet connection. I tested this multiple times, including a direct connection to the router itself (vs. the wall jack in the kitchen), but the router never saw the wired connection appear. (Likewise verified the router was working correctly by connecting my laptop to the wired port, and confirmed that it appeared.) I was able to successfully ssh to the Pi over the Wi-fi connection, as well as to subsequently run the update and upgrade commands, so that is working as desired. All of this is prior to the step to install the ha-proxy in your instructions.
I assume that your suggestion to test both the ethernet and wireless connections, prior to configuring the Pi for networking with the PVS6, are primarily to confirm that cables, etc. as all working as expected, so I appreciated the opportunity to debug the connections before I have it installed in the box. I wondered whether your instructions, as they were originally written for the Pi 3 with onboard ethernet port, might have missed any necessary steps with the Pi Zero W to configure the data port to communicate over the USB as an ethernet connection. Did you need to make any additional edits to the cmdline.txt or config.txt files?
Also Alan - agree that maybe one of the connectors was suspect. we have since replaced.
Thank you.
Sorry you are having problems. I did not have to do anything not written down. It sounds like there is/may be a problem with your Ethernet adapter or, somehow, with its configuration. What is perhaps unwritten is that I tested with RaspBerry OS. I you used something else, e.g. ubuntu, this might be slightly different. Suggestions: 1) Plug the adapter into a laptop or desktop and see if you can get it working. Debugging and configuring will be a little easier. Getting it to work (or not) will confirm whether the adapter itself is perhaps broken. If it turns out not to be, it must be a configuration or driver issue on the Pi. What adapter did you get? 2) Use the apparently working WiFi connection to ssh into the pi and produce the output of the “ifconfig” command, and share it. It may give some clues 3) Use the ssh connection to snoop around, triple check error logs etc. 4) Does your Pi have appropriate power? If you are not using an approved power supply it is possible that the Pi boots, but USB may not work 100%. Unlikely, but worth asking
This is not the best time of the year to test, but I am keeping graphs of the CPU temp on the Pi inside my PVS6. Can’t share pictures here, but I can tell you that during 70+ degree days the CPU never goes over 100F. At these temperatures the outside of the PVS6 feels cool (i.e. not even close to 100F). The Pi will tolerate 140F no problem. You should have a heatsink attached to the CPU. You can buy those separately, or they often come with a Pi case. If you remain uncomfortable, you can use a cable instead and house the Pi elsewhere.
If anyone tries to get this working on a Raspberry Pi 4, you may find that it won’t connect to WiFi once plugged into the USB port on your PVS (I have a PVS5). It appears that the USB ports don’t provide enough power for a Raspberry Pi 4. Symptoms of this problem include failing to join WiFi, red power LED off or flickering, and “Under voltage” reported in the syslog (use “journalctl –no-pager -b-1 -xe” to show the last boot log).
Spent a weekend trying to figure this out, so sharing here in case anyone else runs into the same problem. I was eventually able to get it working by disconnecting the case fan and disabling Bluetooth, HDMI, etc. (see https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=257144&start=50 for suggestions).
Thanks for sharing! That may well be consistent with my experience since I only tried this, initially with a model 3, and finalized with a Pi Zero. Both of those seemed to work on the USB power. Both of those would also produce less heat.
Since there are multiple USB ports in the PVS6, could you try a usb joiner (2 male usb to 1 female usb port) to increase the power output (amps)? I’ve used one for other purposes (to power a fire tv stick as it needed more amps than 1 usb port could provide)
I hadn’t gone that route since I eventually got it working, but definitely something worth considering. I was also thinking about going for a less power-hungry Pi like Dolf suggested.
Also reminder, Pi is not the only option. I am using TP-Link N300 Wireless Portable Nano Travel Router(TL-WR802N) and it works fine. Maybe other options too?
Yep. The N300 Nano is a gem! Check production and performance through it with a query from Excel. A little VBA program and formatting gives a nice chart output.
Hello Dolf and Alan,
Again, thank you very much for your assistance. I appreciated the confirmation that you did not do additional configuration of the Pi device to get the ethernet connection active/recognized. I had done trouble-shooting to the extent that I determined the problem was in one of three places:
- Configuration of the Pi (thus my post to you)
- Adapter hardware
- A faulty Pi (seems from online searches that this does happen) You helped to eliminate #1 from the options list. I had jury-rigged the adapter by putting together some existing cables - Micro-USB to USB2.0 cable | USB to RJ45 Ethernet adapter | RJ45 cable. I was able to troubleshoot the latter two parts independently, but couldn’t be absolutely certain the first one was working as needed or that they were all working in combination. While I was posting my prior message to you, I went ahead and purchased from Amazon the adapter you referenced in your help doc, to try to close the loop on the hardware question. When it came, I wiped the image on the microSD card to start fresh, redid the initial steps, and everything worked. The Pi showed up on the network on both the Wifi and wired connections. As they say, Whoohoo! With that problem solved, it was extremely quick to complete the configuration, then plug it into the PVS6, where it worked exactly as intended. Thanks again for your helpful instruction document, as well as for your subsequent help! I only might note that the default username for the Pi is “pi”, not “raspberry”. :-)
You are most welcome. Thanks for catching that password problem. I have corrected that, included mention of the PVS5 which is also known to work, and included a paragraph about there not necessarily being enough USB power for a model 4, and that only the Ethernet adapter that I mention has been tested by me and that at least one other had problems.
Where do I find your modified write-up?
Same place. Just replaced the prior one.
Thanks for the effort and write up. I followed the recipe for my HA, and it works great. I had fun building some PI devices, and learning grafana.
Which USB joiner do you have? I’ve checked around on Amazon and Monoprice, but couldn’t find anything that seemed to fit the description.
I’ve switched to a TP-Link TL-WR802N v4 and I’m still running into power issues: it’s rebooting at least every 2.5 hours while connected to the PVS5 USB, but never reboots on a portable battery. I’m trying to see if reducing the Tx power and the LED help. Some quick searching hasn’t turned up other tips.
There are lots on Amazon for around $7 - you need a y cable - 2 male, 1 female. Usually one of the male ports says power only, the other male is usually usb 3.0 for power and data. Just search for USB power combiner or enhancer.
I don’t believe I have had any issues like that with my TP-Link. Are there any firmware updates available? Is this rebooting causing you any issues? Mine might reboot every now and then and I would not even be aware of it, as long as it goes back to the proper state and lets my client reconnect.
I’m using OpenWrt 21.02.2, the latest available. The main problem I’m having is that WiFi doesn’t consistently connect on boot. I’ve posted on the OpenWrt forum about it (https://forum.openwrt.org/t/tp-link-tl-wr802n-doesnt-connect-to-wifi-on-boot/121818) and will followup with a bug report if that doesn’t go anywhere.
Are you also using OpenWrt? If so, could you share your config (network and firewall, at least) files so I can see if there are any config differences?
Got it, thank you! I’m going to give https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NIGO4NM/ a try.
No, I am running the stock tp link firmware. (I have an old router running dd-wrt in client mode that connects the tp link AP to my home network.)
Bill, would you mind sharing how you configured the TP-Link to work with stock firmware? I couldn’t figure out which mode to use to get it to connect to my wireless network and the Sunpower wired network.
I am simply running it as an access point. I have another router in client mode ( dd-wrt) that connects to the AP SSID and routes via ethernet to my network. I am not sure if the stock firmware allows you to connect directly and route properly.
OK, thank you for the info.
Would this work if I hooked the PVS up to the machine running Home Assistant through a separate NIC?
Thanks for the write-up. I was able to get my new SunPower installation talking to Home Assistant via the network. I was able to get the plug-in added to Home Assistant too. It now shows all of my devices.
What I am not certain of is what to do next? How do I get the system graphing properly? I took a stab at adding devices to my “Energy” Dashboard, but I am pretty sure I don’t have it configured correctly. It does not match what I see in My Sunpower app. Here is what I have:
== Electricity grid == “Grid Consumption”
- Power Meter PVS6xxx KWH To Home
“Return to Grid”
- Power Meter PVS6xxx KWH To Grid
== Solar Panels == sensor.inverter_e0xxx1_lifetime_power sensor.inverter_e0xxx2_lifetime_power sensor.inverter_e0xxx3_lifetime_power sensor.inverter_e0xxx4_lifetime_power added every panel.
== Home Battery Storage == I don’t have a battery. I left this blank.
== Gas Consumption == I don’t have a way to monitor this. I left it blank.
== Individual devices == I assume this would be for individual devices in my home if I had more monitoring on my main panel? If I had an additional power monitor for each branch circuit, so I could see what my washer draws, etc…?
Any help with getting the correct devices in the correct places would be greatly appreciated. Or am I even using the correct tool? Is “Energy Dashboard” the right thing?
Thanks in advance!
Just want to let everybody know that an updated version is in the works which also details on how to do this when your setup has a SunVault ESS battery backup system. Networking details are subtly different, and more “devices” show up on the PVS6.
SUNPOWER UPDATE! You might be interested to know that SunPower now offers individual panel monitoring! My installer just turned it on for me. You must use the MySunPower App. The data is not real-time, updates every half hour or so, and it does not show all the groovy information you can get on our systems, but it does show how the panel is performing and its total out puts. This looks to be a beta trial so if you want it ask your installer and demand it. Good luck and I cannot believe SunPower is finally offering this information after so many years. I guess that’s what competition does as most of the other solar companies have been giving this information for years.
Hi Scott - I have a PV panels + SunVault battery backup. The PVS Ethernet port must be connected to the battery unit (called ESS). I re-connected both PVS and ESS into a switch and ran another cable from the switch to a second WAN port on my router. The router’s NAT handles translation from the PVS’s network to my home network. You don’t need a RPi, only ethernet cables and a switch. If you don’t have a SunVault, then just one Ethernet cable is all it takes! I get all the PV production/consumption data plus a bunch more stuff about the batteries.
Correct. I have worked with somebody who has SunVault and updated my document: https://starreveld.com/PVS6%20Access%20and%20API.pdf
I just had it enabled as well. Thanks Garu. I called Sunpower corporate and the person I spoke with knew nothing about it. However when I punched in the number on my android smartphone, it gave me the option to chat. I sent a message and the chat rep eventually got back to me an enabled it immediately. Here is a link to more detail on sunpower’s site: https://us.sunpower.com/products/software/mysunpower/panel-level-data
My installer Empower wanted $100 to enable. You got sunpower to do it for free?
Coincidentally, my panel level reporting stopped working 3 days ago.
/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList is reporting errors for the individual inverters, but the system is reporting total power generation and it is working.
I’ll have to see if my installer can turn on that data; not sure if they are related.
My /cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList is working still and was working before it was enabled on the app/website.
@ Chris, yes, it was enabled for free - Try emailing sunpower with your home address asking for it to be enabled
I chatted with their support and they told me to talk to my installed empower.
I flipped the breaker on the PVS6 and now I’m getting panel level data again. I really need an alerting system.
My alerting system is that I upload data to pvoutput.org. So when my pi stops uploading data to that site, i get an alert from pvoutput that data hasn’t uploaded in a certain time. I think you can set it as short as 15 minutes. I’ve never had an issue with the PVS6, but have had issues where I needed to reboot the pi. I’m using a node-red flow to upload to PVoutput- you could probably set it up so if the data is error/0, not to upload and you would then get an alert from PVoutput
Has anyone had a problem with mySunPower monitoring not working anymore? I’m wondering if my poking at DeviceList has triggered some OS bug in the PVS that broke it.
I have a dashboard that queries DeviceList once a minute from my PVS6. It works great. But about a month ago the official monitoring stopped working. All SunPower can say is the device isn’t connecting. I’ve verified the PVS does have working Internet access. I’ve disabled my monitoring for a week+, rebooted the PVS a bunch of times, etc. Wondering if it’s just some other SunPower/PVS bug or if my monitoring may have broken something somehow. You’d like to think requests to a read-only API wouldn’t hurt anything!
My PVS6 did something similar. It stopped reporting to mySunPower but my home system was working fine. After a while, 6 months, the PVS6 failed completely. I had to have my installer install another PVS6. According to the installer they have many PVS6 failures.
SunPower system installed Nov. 2016, operational Feb. 2017. Had a power surge April 2017 system would not turn back on because a screw caused failure. Then Inverters failed then were replaced.
My SunPower PSV5 quit all monitoring on June 8, 2022. I tried to update my wifi in new application, it would not let me. Telephoned SunPower and they stated because 3g ceases to be used I cannot logon or update my wifi.
The response from SunPower was, “They are working on it…” . No time frame or resolution.
Do you see data if logged into your account on the SunPower website? Another thought: My SREC broker has their own SunPower login which can see far more info about my system than I can when I’m on SunPower’s website. My experience with SunPower customer support is unsatisfactory. The most technically accurate and thorough answers have come from my installer.
Has anyone noticed, as I have, that there is no way to select the installation type on https://172.27.153.1/#/landing? Without being able to select commercial or residential it doesn’t seem possible to proceed.
Hi - I got a Sunpower installation with a battery in August ‘21. I’ve had good success setting up HA and connecting with it. But then I found the support for the BATTERY missing. So it is needed.
Where do things stand with the battery support which you wrote was “in the works”?? I’d love to try it out, provide feedback, etc.
I am not sure what you mean with “battery support”?
The latest version of the document (https://starreveld.com/PVS6%20Access%20and%20API.pdf) contains a full description of an installation with an ESS battery system. It describes how things are hooked up etc.
The PVS6 integration then shows whatever it shows (this integration is not mine, and I do not have a battery so I do not know what additional sensors, if any, show up). If you feel the integration lacks battery information, you should contact the integration author.
Does anyone else no longer have connection to their site’s data via the App and the website? Been off for several days days now.
If you mean the sunpower website, the answer is yes. For over a week now it says I am not generating power. My own monitoring solution still works perfectly fine. PVS6 is showing amber light. Waiting for my installer to resolve with sunpower.
Dolf: Yes, the SunPower website. My own monitoring sys works fine too. I know people who do not do their own monitoring that are connected to data via the SP site and are getting data. I was therefore wondering if this outage is limited to only those running a personal monitor.
I am now testing your theory. I have completely unplugged my Raspberry and power cycled my PVS6. It may take a while until SunPower now realizes that I am “working” again, so may have to wait a day (and forgo my local data; but I’ll still have my high level sense based data).
What is interesting is that the mySunpower app does report “system online” (indicating some communication to the mothership), both before I disconnected, and after.
If this makes things work again it seems that newer firmware chooses to not upload to the mothership if it is being interrogated on the local port. That could be simply a bug introduced, or an attempt by Sunpower to sabotage local monitors. Don’t like it one bit either way, but if push comes to shove I’ll stay with my local monitoring (until of course they sabotage further by blocking that).
If the PVS6 is reported offline, shouldn’t we expect our installer or SunPower to contact us? That’s kind of what I was told why it needs to report back.
My app shows it as offline; I didn’t notice until it was mentioned as my local monitoring is still working fine (I had some weird data spike that I had to fix the other day, but that was minor).
Yes, I too was told that installer/Sunpower would alert if there was a problem. Chalk to up to promise, promises…
I too hadn’t noticed for over a week until I noticed the amber light, which caused me to investigate.
SP website and app are working for me. PVS6 SWVER is 2022.1 build 60422. It has been running that version since Feb 2022. My HWVER is 6.02
Ala: are you also running your own monitoring system? Scott: SP has never contacted me about any problem. I have had to tell them of a problem several times. Dolf: Look forward to your results. The app and web site can’t connect to my PVS. The PVS reports the PLC and the Wifi connections are fine, no cellular connection. I don’t know if and how SP can even see my system without the latter.
With all proprietary monitoring unplugged for almost 24h, and now certainly in the daytime, and producing (confirmed with my meter), the light on the unit is still green, but… mysunpower still reports no production. For now my conclusion is that the presence of the raspberry in the ethernet port is not the issue.
Thanks for the info. I also unplugged my connection to the ethernet port and still no data showed up on the SunPower app or web site. PVS light still green. I see there was a earlier post that the problem is due to 3G going obsolete. I’m sure it’s true that a site’s data to/from the app requires a cellular connection, so I suppose that means the “mothership” also gets a system’s data via cellular to report on the web site. How else could they see the system? If loss of 3G is the issue, I wonder how SunPower can fix the problem without a hardware upgrade. Can a SIM card change alone raise the comm link to 4/5G and fix the problem?
If 3G is the issue, it requires a hardware upgrade. A SIM change won’t help as there is different physical hardware.
Maybe no one actually monitors their output and only complains when they get a power bill!
Certainly in my case loss of 3G would not be the explanation as my PVS6 is connected to WiFi. Besides the MySunpower app tells me that my system is online (meaning something was picked up from the PVS6, confirming the WiFi connection works).
Not sure if this is related but, SP did a major system update back in June and July. Some of that work was not complete as of today. SP got my online data back online in August, but was missing a couple of years. I spoke with them about it. About a month later, all my data (online) was gone again, so I spoke with them again. This year’s data showed up again, but the first couple of years was gone. I am told that my data should get “fixed” by the end of this month.
Has data via the SP App and internet site returned to anyone who has been without it? Although the estimate from the “firewall” (i.e. telephone # “support”) was for it to return “at the end of the month”, it has not. Judging from the blank monthly report I just received, SP is not able to get any data from a site that does not have a cellular connection. My PVS reports “sim card error”. The PLC connections to the inverters and the WiFi connection to my network are fine. Makes sense that SP can’t get any data without the cellular link, but how to fix it?
My system talks to SP/Internet via WiFi (configurable in App under Profile tab). I’ve also tried hardwiring the PVS ethernet port to my network. PVS detects the hardwired internet presence and automatically switches to it. My installer recommends ethernet first, WiFi second and cellular last as connection options. But I stuck with WiFi.
I self-monitor PV status via HTTP requests to PVS every 30 min. All data logged in InFluxDB, dashboard integrated into Home Assistant. No data outages (locally) during SP’s data base upgrade and no need for the SP app or their website.
For those not getting data in the SP website/app, what version is your PVS6. My software is 2022.1, build 60422. Hardware is 6.02. I have been pinging my pvs6 every 5 minutes daily for over two years via NodeRed and a PI with no interruptions in data (except when pi needed a reboot) and still no issues with my SP website/app data. I also have panel level monitoring enabled by SP. As far as connections go my wifi and cellular are both active when I look at them on http://172.27.153.1/#/network/config.
UPDATE:
I continued to have monitoring problems on the SP web site until I noticed, approximately on Saturday 10/29 things appeared to be working normally (nothing changed on my end over that period). I had some sporadic data reports on Thu and Fri showing a single 1hr period with data (for the whole day up to that point).
You may recall I had done/forced a firmware update earlier, which put me on 2022.4, build 60630. This Monday my local installer came out, as a result of a service call related to this I setup earlier. While things were working, he connected his installer app to check everything out and was told a firmware upgrade was available (again?). He performed it and I am now on 2022.9, Build 61002.
I don’t know how to interpret the version numbers, but that update was apparently not available a week ago and it suggests 5 versions newer, or 5 months newer. Either way, they apparently found reason(s) for firmware changes.
I also heard from my installer that the activities over the summer were not announced to installers, but involved moving “everything” over to a new(er) server. Data loss resulted for some customers (historical data), and we’ve seen that reported here. Also reported here is that some customers were ultimately able to get their data back. He also reported a much higher than usual service call volume from their customers related to all this.
Meanwhile I am only missing data for about 1.5 weeks and I have an ongoing tickets through my installer (Top-level SunPower dealer/installer) to see if I can get my data back. I strongly suspect, however, that the firmware issue caused it to never be sent to the mothership during that period.
So, at this point I firmly put all this on Sunpower’s activities over the summer and their lack of quality control before rolling this out.
Meanwhile, my self-monitoring through Homeassistant integration to a Raspberry Nano via WiFi, plugged into the PVS6, is working just fine, and mySunpower is now also reporting normally.
Thanks. I also self-monitor and it is fine. I couldn’t get into the app or the web site for data or even to change my profile. Called support - again. Apparently data access between the server, app and website was turned off. After some quiet time on the phone the agent came back and data magically appeared. System is connected to “mothership” via my WiFi network (or PLC into the network if it is active). Cellular is backup, but is not working because, it is claimed, that AT&T shut down 3G service. Also, a SP “migration to a new database” is underway that is limiting access to some data… or so the agent said.
In my case, the SP agent claimed panel level data is inaccessible until the database migration is completed. Not sure why and not sure why everyone is not involved… neither was the agent. I had SP panel level data until 2 weeks ago when all data from SP stopped. Although they enabled it before they couldn’t enable it now…. Strange. Fortunately I can get it with local monitoring.
Has anyone successfully reverse engineered the new panel-level data APIs to grab the data from the SP servers instead of the local monitoring? I’ve done some basic work to capture the data requests and see the graphql queries, etc, but haven’t had time to get much further than that. Sadly I have a PVS5 that seems to crash anytime I enable my local monitoring via rPI Zero W. I really want to get panel level data feeding into my HA energy dashboard reliably.
Scott. First, I wanted to say “I really like your software!” . When I came across this site, your name looked vaguely familiar. After going through your blog, I realized that you originally created DocumentWallet which I have been using continuously since 2007.
Back to this topic. Your project is similar what I have been trying to do myself with my Sunpower + SMA Sunnyboy TL based system and HA. For the last several years, I had a decent set up using Ted5000, PVOutput, and HA. However, with my two SMA SB5000TL-22 each with 2 strings, I always wanted more visibility to the system beyond just output as I had no idea if Sunpower was really monitoring the system or not and if one of the inverters or strings failed. However, like another user in this discussion, I had the older non Modbus based Inverters with the SMS-PVS20r1 supervisor. After multiple attempts to use the installer web interface, I was never able to get the same data as the newer PVS5/6 that most of you are using. I was able to solve getting the data in HA by terminating the RS485 bus with Network RS485 gateways. Basically this solution requires purchasing at least 1 (but likely 2) ~$20 gateways and running the Yasdi2MQTT software (or docker image) with the Yasdi IP driver to query the inverters over UDP through the gateways . This collects every bit of data that Yasdi collects from the SMA inverters, sends it via an MQTT message for HA.
For others that come across this: Software - Yasdi2MQTT on any linux host ( github /dockerhub) Gateways: I used Waveshare RS485 to Eth(B), but also works more simply with the USR-TCP232-304 related devices (and clones).
Setting it up is relatively straight forward using the directions on how to configure the UDP Client/Server settings on the gateways to communicate with each other and the Yasdi2MQTT program using the Yasdi IP driver. Inverters are happy connecting at 19200baud, and the PVSupervisor wants to connect to its RS485 gateway at 1200baud… and it works. I can now monitor and alert on any errors the inverters report over the bus and track performance on the strings using grafana. Here is an example of the JSON values reported in MQTT. SMA publishes as document explaining each value. { “sn”:XXXXXXXXX, “time”:1667780271, “values”:{ “A.Ms.Amp”:1.1010000522946939, “B.Ms.Amp”:1.1370000540046021, “A.Ms.Vol”:416.35999069362879, “B.Ms.Vol”:364.48999185301363, “A.Ms.Watt”:458, “B.Ms.Watt”:414, “Pac”:832, “GridMs.W.phsA”:416, “GridMs.W.phsB”:416, “GridMs.W.phsC”:0, “GridMs.PhV.phsA”:124.04999722726643, “GridMs.PhV.phsB”:123.82999723218381, “GridMs.PhV.phsC”:0, “GridMs.PhV.A2B”:247.89999445900321, “GridMs.PhV.B2C”:0, “GridMs.PhV.C2A”:0, “GridMs.A.phsA”:3.3600001595914364, “GridMs.A.phsB”:3.3600001595914364, “GridMs.A.phsC”:0, “GridMs.Hz”:59.979998659342527, “GridMs.TotVAr”:0, “GridMs.VAr.phsA”:0, “GridMs.VAr.phsB”:0, “GridMs.VAr.phsC”:0, “GridMs.TotVA”:832, “GridMs.VA.phsA”:416, “GridMs.VA.phsB”:416, “GridMs.VA.phsC”:0, “GridMs.TotPF”:0.999000047449954, “Serial Number”:1913069271, “E-Total”:64595.131068103947, “GM.TotWhOut”:0, “Op.EvtCntUsr”:15187, “Mt.TotTmh”:34065.9578104291, “Mt.TotOpTmh”:33506.823379693815, “Op.EvtNo”:0, “Op.EvtNoDvlp”:0, “Op.TmsRmg”:0, “Mode”:”Mpp”, “Error”:”——-“, “Op.Health”:”Ok”, “Op.Prio”:”NonePrio”, “Op.GriSwStt”:”Cls”, “Inv.TmpLimStt”:”NoneDrt”, “InvCtl.Stt”:”On”, “PlntCtl.Stt”:”On”, “Op.BckOpStt”:”ModGri”, “PCM-DigInStt”:”None” } }
Hope this helps somebody else coming across this blog that has an older system that did not natively support capturing detailed data from the PV Supervisor
This is great Nihar.
I had my old PVS6 replaced today because it ran into issues. The replacement PVS6 no longer included any ethernet ports. Looks like I will have to use the RS485 port. I’ve never done this before so it will definitely be an interesting experience.
Has anyone tried connecting the system running HassIO directly to the PVS through a secondary NIC?
That’s going to be interesting. Not completely unexpected as SunPower has migrated away from installers plugging in a laptop towards them using a mobile phone application.
I think it will require an RS-485 “hat” for a Raspberry and then the serial bus interface to everything will need to be used. I think I do have a link to its documentation somewhere in my document, but it will require an interesting effort. Most interesting approach would be to create a library to communicate with it, and a layer on top that presents that data in the same manner as the current http based API does. That way current integrations in home assistant will not need updating.
I did do my initial testing with a RPI4 and USB/RS485 on the bus that had both the PVS and the SMA inverters. It would work ok for a while, but eventually, the inverters would go offline on the bus and both the Yasdi and PVS would show the inverters in ‘Error’ as they would lose communication with them. I suspect it was an issue with either multiple masters on the bus, or overloading the inverters. The gateways seem isolate the bus on each side and the IP connection from Yasdi2MQTT to the inverters is quite a bit faster. I did have to get a couple of cheap DB9 breakout modules to break out the serial connection.
The best part is that since it is using MQTT, making sensors for HomeAssistant was simple and should allow to convert the sensors while keeping the same names.
I think soon after my inverters were sold, they started to support modbus on newer models. This may require different gateway option to get it in to HA.
Talk about “sabotage!” The business model that sells a monitoring system but drives SP to purposely prevent customers from seeing detailed data about their system is a real disincentive to installing a solar system in the first place. Are they trying to protect their dealer base by guaranteeing more customer-billed service calls? But how does that work if they purposefully limit customer awareness of production/performance issues? Even though there has been failures, never once has SP informed me of a problem with one or more of my inverters. Also, if they accept responsibility for initiating service calls, do they include the customer’s expected service cost when they hype the savings local generation from solar systems can provide. Is it time for regulation that requires solar companies who limit local data collection to periodically certify that the system as-installed is performing properly? If energy conservation is a concern and solar is one way to get it, it would seem some form of oversight should be required.
Does anyone know if Enphase (or other manufacturer) offer panel level power monitoring?
Sunpower has made panel level energy and power monitoring available to end users, about 3 months ago. Does not provide as many parameters as private PVS monitoring though
Nihar, do you have more information about how you connected to the RS-485 interface? I’m not sure what the pinouts should be - either I’m not searching for the right things, or there’s no documentation about it, so I’m hoping to learn more about what you did.
I’m confused re the RS485 interface in the PVS5/6. Is it poll-response communication to/from each inverter and the meters? If not, does a specific command initiate specific output as does the USB DHCP gateway? Is there a source for the data formats using the standard RS485 protocol?
Stan. Depends on the inverter and brand. I THINK newer SMA use Modbus/RS485 or Modbus/IP . The older ones used SMAData protocol and is documented by SMA. https://256stuff.com/solar/scripts/smadat-11-ze2203.pdf SMA released YASDI library/application to read this format.
At least in the PVS2 case with my SMA, the PVS does scan the bus to determine which devices are on the bus, and then queries directly the inverters at regular intervals.
Ryan, The pinouts from the inverter should be in the inverter (or its daughterboard) documentation. IF you are using the SB5000TL-22 with the RS485 interface, its pins 2,5,7 (D+,Gnd,D-) and your existing serial connection should be connected to the inverter . You will need to find the matching pins on your PVS. In the case of my PVS2x, within the web interface, there is a documentation library. The connection document there showed that on the PVS, that Pins (3,4,5) are (D+,D-,Gnd) respectively. I purchased a couple of extra DB9 (male and female) breakout modules that allowed easy termination of those wires to the appropriate pins on the PVS and RS485 Gateways. (They will be labeled either + or - or possibly A or B)
For the PVS5 (and maybe PVS6), this may be helpful. https://us.sunpower.com/sites/default/files/sunpower-pvs5x-install-and-quick-start-guide-522351_0.pdf For the -22 inverters with PVS5 , you can see what pins 2,5,7 map to on the RJ45 . If your PVS is using an RJ45 interface, then just cut the end off of an ethernet cable and terminate the appropriate pin wire color on the inverter.
It seems like the -40 inverters went to direct Modbus TCP. You can probably get a RPI or other device on that private network to query the inverter using Modbus directly using other packages and then send the results to MQTT. No need for gateway devices for the newer inverters. Hope this helps.
Thanks. I tried this but can’t figure out how to make meaning of the data from the RS-485 adapters. I tried with different baud rates, with the Yasdi library, and Modbus tools but they both failed. I’m giving up on this lost cause :(
Ryan. Sorry to hear it is not working out for you. If you have a docker server (or run it locally on your laptop) that may simplify running the yasdi2mqtt ip driver and mosquito mqtt. It took me way, way too many hours to get it working reliably. If you want to keep trying, post exactly which model inverters and PVS you have. All the PVS6s have ethernet ports, so maybe you have an older one. Make sure you are running an MQTT server as well.
My replacement PVS6 lacks any RJ45 ethernet ports. The only ports available are the D-AUX, RS-485 ports, and a couple of USB ethernet ports that don’t seem to be activated. I tried using a USB ethernet dongle but it did not work. I’m wondering if this needs to be manually set up and enabled during provisioning. Someone posted this on Reddit as well. https://imgur.com/a/JoMGphX
I’ve tried a variety of different settings with the RS-485 adaptor, and tried both Yasdi and Modbus. I’ll try a bit more, but I don’t think I have more time to dedicate to this.
Wow, so they seem to have saved $1.00 by deleting the ethernet ports and just depending on wifi. Well, if you later decided to try to get this working again, I will share some more detail that hopefully helps. Of course, make sure you do this during daylight hours, after the sun goes down, my inverters totally shutoff.
I suspect the serial pins in the link I provided earlier still apply.
My first step was finding the right settings for the RS485 Gateway facing the inverters, So connecting the 2,5,7 pins to the +,GND,- on the gateway device facing the inverters. As for the configuration with Libyasdi, Configure the gateway as a UDP (or UDP Server) on port 24272 which is the default SMAData Port This is what the gateway device listens on. For the Destination IP/Port , use your host IP and port 24273
Depending on your brand gateway device, (I am using Wavelink for now), on advanced settings, I UNselected RS485 Multi-host and Bus Conflict Detection. Also, not sure if it does anything but if you have an section in advanced settings where you can list additional Multi Dest-IP and Port, enter the port of the Gateway device you will later connect to your PVS6 with Port 24273 also. Start with 19200 baud for now. 8/No Parity/1 Stop bit / No flow control.
Next, shut down your inverters. Both the DC and AC side for 2 minutes. I noticed that with my specific SMA inverters, they can basically lock up for the day if they get overwhelmed or confused with requests.
Power up the inverters .
Configure the yasdi.ini with the driver and IP address of your RS485 Gateway.
[DriverModules] Driver0=yasdi_drv_ip
[IP1] Protocol=SMANet Device0=192.168.1.58
[Misc] #DebugOutput=/dev/stdout
For docker-compose.yml , I have this:
version: “3”
services:
yasdi2mqtt:
# You may also check out :latest, :stable or build: ".", if :latest fails
image: “pkwagner/yasdi2mqtt:alpine”
volumes:
- “./devices:/etc/yasdi2mqtt/devices”
- “./yasdi.ini:/etc/yasdi2mqtt/yasdi.ini:ro”
- “/etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro”
- “/etc/TZ:/etc/timezone:ro”
ports:
- 24273:24273/tcp
- 24273:24273/udp
environment:
YASDI_CONFIG: "/etc/yasdi2mqtt/yasdi.ini"
YASDI_DRIVER_ID: 0
YASDI_MAX_DEVICE_COUNT: 2
YASDI_UPDATE_INTERVAL: 31
MQTT_TOPIC_PREFIX: "solar/inverters"
MQTT_SERVER: "192.168.1.25"
MQTT_PORT: 1883
MQTT_USER: "mqtt"
MQTT_PASSWORD: "MQTTPASSWORD"
TZ: "America/Los_Angeles"
Fire up your docker container with docker-compose and check your MQTT server for the topics updating.
If nothing populates after a couple of minutes, shut it down, and try a different baud rate (1200).
If you get this working, then the next step would be to integrate the PVS as a client with the 2nd RS485 gateway device. Happy to provide more detail if you decide to eventually keep trying and successful with the steps above to talk to the inverters.
Thanks Nihar.
Yep, those were the settings I had for RS-485 adaptor and the yasdi.ini config. I did a quick test with yasdishell and ran the device detection option, but it did not show anything at all. I assumed then it did not work. Should I have fully set up the mqtt server?
I had to have my PVS6 replaced this week and received one of the updated ones without the LAN and USB ports that some others are seeing. Turns out SunPower has updated manuals that reference how to access the LAN port using one of 2 “approved” USB to Ethernet adapters. Here’s the updated manual. https://fccid.io/YAW539848-Z/User-Manual/Users-Manual-rev-6022499.pdf The updated ones are the ones with a “W” in the serial number. Scroll down to page 2 of 4 for info on the adapters. I’ve been using the Pi Zero 2 W setup and simply had to purchase the Cable Matters approved dongle for $10 on Amazon and plugged that into the USB2/LAN port and from there plugged the ethernet cable into my existing Ethernet to USB dongle in the Pi Zero and I’m back in business. Hope this helps and thanks to everyone for the great info and write ups here that have made this all possible!
Since the comments here about the news style PVS6 without Ethernet, I have collected information, including about the approved dongles, and updated my document to keep a single source of all information available: https://starreveld.com/PVS6%20Access%20and%20API.pdf
Thanks to all who contributed.
Thanks Dolf! Appreciate your documentation which I referenced extensively for my setup.
My website/app stopped reporting data mid-day on Dec 19. I just noticed yesterday. I contacted SP - they ran a test while I was on the phone with them - said all was fine but, they asked me to restart the pvs6 by shutting off the breaker and then turn it back on after a few minutes and wait 24 hours. No success. I called back the next day, they continue to troubleshoot. They are thinking they may need to replace my pvs6 (installed in April 2020 and installed indoors). They are supposed to follow up with me on next steps.
When I log into the dashboard - I get a message “One or more of your devices is not communicating properly”. However, it also shows the systems is connected. Device is connected via wifi, but my cellular connection also is still active and is used for backup as indicated at http://172.27.153.1/#/network/config
My self-monitoring continues to work fine.
I was running swver 2022.1 until it upgraded on its own to 2022.10 on 12/2.
Sounds like others who were having the issue earlier it resolved on its own. Neither SunPower rep mentioned anything about database migration issues.
I’ll update this one I know more
I haven’t had data on the website for months. My self-monitoring works fine and as long as my system generates power and I can track it, I’m going to leave it alone. Somewhat disappointed that neither SunPower nor my installer has contacted me about not seeing data which likely means it is just the website that doesn’t work.
I was told, at the time when I observed that SP did not report panel level data, and did not contact me when there was a problem, that the installer had full access and SP expected them to also monitor and alert on issues. Of course the installer and SP would need a functioning web site to be able to see something going wrong…. Catch-22.
Neither has ever done so for me. This seems to be par for the course, so you should be happy you are monitoring yourself.
To think that SP or its dealers would be monitoring customers’ data and alerting if there is a problem is more than wishful thinking. SP itself has never reported a single issue regarding my system, and there have been several. To think that most dealers would spend the time and money to do so is nonsense. Dealers in the solar business in this area have been like shooting stars, flashing in and out of business on a monthly basis. Those who are long-lived have no time to spend on the poor economic return of monitoring. Let’s all hope a means to self-monitor remains an option that is not “disabled” by a horrific SP business model that, on the one hand, doesn’t doesn’t identify and report problems and, on the other hand, has rotten customer service.
I sort of agree with not having the expectation. However, having built quite a few high performance, high reliability web solutions I would say it is also not that hard to add some automated monitoring that alerts the right personnel for out of the ordinary conditions, such as a panel not producing at all, or the whole installation not producing at all. Even just an email to the customer would suffice.
So yes, they’re all much more focused on the sale, and not the after sales experience. This is where a good installer will still pay off. I elected to pay a little more, but have had great service.
Selecting a reliable, responsive dealer paid off for you. Unfortunately, mine went out of biz and SP won’t (or can’t) re-assign the responsibility. I guess whatever “reserve” that dealer maintained for after sales service went with the “out of business” sale. In any event, getting service now, especially in-warranty service, is a massive headache.
Follow up in case it helps anyone: Sunpower support was not able to resolve it and told me to contact my installer. Technician from local installer came out today, said he had to “clear an error” to fix it. I did see the swver updated to 2022.11 Build 61204 after he had left. It was still on 2022.10 build 61120 as of yesterday.
Also, the cellular data connection now shows as not available - so maybe he also did something with that or the firmware update disabled it. It was showing as working both before and after it stopped reporting data on 12/17/2022. http://172.27.153.1/#/network/config
Data is now showing again in the app/website . The technician thought my missing historical data should show again after 24 hours or so (from Dec 19 to Jan 17).
SP no longer depends on cellular since their system is 3G, which no cell service supports anymore. SP hasn’t figured out how to fix it, or hasn’t even decided to use/upgrade it. Since everyone’s monitor has 3G hardware, Dependence on cellular ain’t coming back anytime soon, if ever. Data reporting stoppage has been happening lately. They told me it was due to maintenance on their servers, storage, etc. I wonder what “error” the dealer had to clear….
I have a local connection to my PVS via the ethernet port. Using the command “Get_Comm” (instead of “Devicelist”), I get a list of the connected communication interfaces and networks. Does this give access to my network via the PVS interface?
Yes. The PVS is connected to your home network as that’s how it talks to SunPower. Personally I have my PVS6 on a separate VLAN that has no access to my internal network.
So yes, since your PVS is on your network, theoretically it can talk to other devices on your network. Putting it on its on VLAN (which may require a switch to allow it to appear not to be a VLAN (to the PS6) because the PVS likely does not support VLAN tagging), and attaching the VLAN to your router/firewall will give you control over what it can actually talk to. I use WiFi, so this would be more involved (need separate IoT SSID, and possibly dedicated WiFi HW). On the other hand, I have done some extensive packet captures observing the PVS6 on my network. I have never seen it attempt to talk to anything, except the DHCP server on my router, and the DNS server (both of which are to be expected). That does not mean it could not have been sniffing my network traffic (would not show up directly), and uploading that somewhere, but not using the protocols and data sizes I have seen it use. As they say past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but personallyI wouldn’t worry, unless setting up an IoT VLAN is easy enough for you to do (knowledge and HW and $$ wise).
Thanks to you all. Yes, my PVS (on my wifi network) talks to SP for data reporting and etc. to/from SP. However, my LOCAL data acquisition system is on the LAN ethernet port in the PVS (per Dolf’s “Monitoring…” paper). It’s adapted to wifi and is also on my network. I’ll have to poll the PVA again with “Get_Comm” to see if my net shows up twice. I didn’t notice in the first result. If putting my local data acquisition on a VLAN would work at all, I suppose I would still have to “bridge” it to my main network if I still wanted to run my main logging and analysis programs from my main computer. Would that still give traffic on the PVS access to my network? NETWORKING!! WOW!
…. continuing my first…. I guess the bottom line is – can the local connection be masked from detection by the PVS?
Hi Stan, if you do things as in my write-up, your local data collection is through the Ethernet port, where the PVS6 wants to run a DHCP server. Your own network likely does as well so directly cabling this port to your network would cause a problem. As you may recall I use a Raspberry Pi with Ethernet dongle plugged into the PVS6 Ethernet port. What that does is it lets the rPi get a DHCP address from the PVS6, on its network. We then use the rPi’s WiFi to let it connect to “my” network and it proxies requests from my network, to its Ethernet side and back. This prevents to confusion I mention above. If you want to cable directly, with Raspberry, you must solve this problem, and VLANs can be a solution (if you know enough and have capable equipment). You must create a new VLAN just for that cable between the PVS6 and your switch/router. You must tell your router to NOT run a DHCP server on that VLAN (because PVS6 provides one already), and how to route traffic to and from the subnet running on the PVS6. You must also setup/modify firewall rules that if you contact the PVS6 on the address it has on the separate VLAN (not the one on the WiFi), it will not only be routed correctly, but also not be blocked. With that setup the PVS6 will continue to think of the WiFi and Ethernet as being on two different networks, even though you can reach both. Again, this requires networking expertise (which I have, but you may not and I cannot possibly give detailed guidance here), and equipment that can do it. If you lack either, I would suggest not trying this and stick to the proven raspberry approach. If you really want a cable, still, you can equip the Raspberry with two USB/Ethernet dongles and connect that way. The proxying remains the same, but the setup on the rPi would be ever so slightly different (configuring second ethernet vs. Wifi). Get_Comm in my case shows the PVS6 WiFi connection for outbound reporting purposes as connected to my WiFi network. It does NOT show the connection to the rPi, eventhough it is there and works. This is meant to be an internal/installer network so I suspect that is the reason.
Dolf: Yes, I am not proficient in networking and am certainly confused by the connections and their implications. I’m sure my ignorance of networking and its lingo is evident and may be causing confusion. No, I am not cabling directly from the PVS ethernet port to my main network router. Although I am not using a Pi, I am connected to the ethernet port in the PVS with a travel modem running as a “client”. I have the DHCP server in that “client” disabled so it is getting a DHCP address directly from the PVS’ DHCP server. The “client”, then, is connecting by wifi to my network. Additionally, I set a static route in the main network’s router with it as the gateway and the PVS base address as the destination. As such, I have a wifi connection between the PVS-client on the PVS and my network. I am successfully sending commands and receiving data. I was concerned that I might be exposing my network to unauthorized access. Your comments and your Get_Comm result have helped allay that concern. Any further comments would be appreciated and would certainly help me better understand the interconnections and their implications.
You are not that network knowledge-less! With that solution you are fairly well protected, but not by any firewall or VLAN preventing the PVS6 (or anything else on that subnet) from routing into your WiFi network through the travel router. Like I said before though, I consider this “risk” minimal. Also, considering the PVS6 is also “directly” on your network (through its primary WiFi hookup), most of all this is essentially moot. I you wanted to prevent that too, you would need an isolated WiFi on VLAN for that PVS6 connection as well.
Checking here to see if it is just me - but on 3/1, all of my panel information stopped updating for all panels. I am producing power normally. 1) I have panel level monitoring enabled from SP - after 6 AM on 3/1 - get N/A for both power and energy. 2) /cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList shows error state, all values are frozen at 2023,03,01,13,14,18 (datatime). CurTime refreshes, but that is the only value that changes for the micros when refreshed. 3) Consumption/Production monitor is working fine. 4) No recent version upgrades - running 2022.11 build 61204 since 1/18.
Thank you again. To your point, it’s moot.
Mine also stopped a week or so ago. The claim it’s associated with a “DATA MIGRATION” and don’t know when it will be back. That’s what they said last year – circa mid year. Who knows what’s going on? They sure don’t. Apparently the secret is also kept from “support”.
Yup, mine has been down (again after an episode last year). They claim the PVS6 is not communicating to them and to power cycle it. Of course I have done so without making a difference.
I ran an Ethernet packet capture in my router and explained and sent it to them. If proves, conclusively that the PVS6 is on my network, has an IP address, and communicates, using that address and using MQTT to communicate to SunPower. It also uses DNS to ask for various host IP including google clients and AWS systems. They keep ignoring that, asking me to power cycle, and have my local installer come out to trouble shoot. Sigh…
A friend has a SP system with PVS. He is running fine. He does NOT do any local monitoring. My paranoia is running rampant again – are they up to something?
Only receiving the “PV Supervisor”, “Meter-P …” and “Meter-C …” fields from the DeviceList command. No Panel data. I wonder what’s going on.
Update: So I have a no panel data situation (in fact: no data. period) with SunPower and the app as well (reported earlier). I am able to receive anything I want through the rPi solution though, so I know everything is working.
SP has been insisting I need to reboot my PVS6 which I have done multiple times. So today I had my installer out here to troubleshoot with SP on the phone (because they will not listen/understand me when I tell them me findings). Their conclusion: something wrong with the PVS6. I will get a new one, which will take up to 10 days.
I suspect, at best/worst, that the internal WiFi is broken, at least intermittently because it works in the first few minutes after a power cycle. My monitoring relies only on the Ethernet port and that all works fine.
My PVS6 is connected via Ethernet to my network and I haven’t gotten data in the SunPower app for maybe 6 months, so if our problems are similar, your WiFi may not be broken. I gave up caring as my local monitoring works and my panels are generating power.
Yup, my sentiment exactly, but I first wanted to hold their feet to the fire for saying the problem is in my end.
Interesting comments. I can consistently access the PVS via my local connection and get a response. But the data terminates after the Supervisor, Meter-P and Meter-C groups - never any panel data. The web site shows “exported to grid” numbes, but no production or individual panel data. If something is broken in the PVS it has something to do with the comm to/from ALL of the panels. I’m still producing. Getting more and more impatient with SP’s lack of action. As with everyone else’s experiences, talking to Support is useless. I haven’t run into anyone there who can or wants to put 2 and 2 together. Gotta “hold their feet to the fire”, tho.
The PVS6 communicates with the inverters (I assume you have one micro inverter per panel, as opposed to inverters as part of an ESS setup), using PLC (Power Line Communication; think of it of Ethernet over the power wires from inverters).
The fact that you a registering production means that power is flowing from panels to your main panel. Production is measured using a CT clamp around these wires, but there is no direct connection to the PVS6 (which is also why you can switch it off without affecting production to the house or grid). The PVS6 itself takes a separate breaker on the panel and through that it can attempt to use PLC to talk to inverters. It might be that that communication is failing in your case.
Is the PVS6 breaker on the same set of bus bars as the connection to the panels? Overall your problem seems of a different nature than mine or Scott’s, although the side effect of both kinds of problems is the same: No panel level, or perhaps even totals on the SunPower app.
I am currently getting panel level data via SP, but missing all energy use data from 2016 to 2020. I have been hounding SP for about six months since they “lost” the data during the current data migration project (still ongoing). They said, they should have mine fixed in April 2023.
Yeah. The electrical connections are fine. Been running for years. To your point, I also believe the PLC between the monitor and panels is the culprit. Getting them to come to the same conclusion and fixing it on a timely basis is the real problem. “Data Migration” takes forever…Ha!
Has anyone who is not getting panel-level data been informed that a so-called “data migration” is underway and when it will be completed? I was told April - but, then again, in Feb I was told Mar, in Jan I was told Feb, etc…etc…etc… since Oct. Does anyone know if anyone that does not NOT self-monitor is also involved in the data shutdown “migration”
I was informed the first time around this happened (about 6 months ago), and things started working, inexplicably, a month or so later. Second time around there was no such acknowledgement. They insisted my installer come to locally troubleshoot the reported inability for the PVS6 to report to the mothership.
I was able to see it was actually reporting something, but within 5 minutes after rebooting it would no longer respond to pings. The installer found the PVS6 to be “defective”. This was based on very minimal information from his app, and telephone conversation with SunPower. A new unit is being sent…
Meanwhile I had this “brilliant” idea: change the DHCP reservation from returning 192.168.10.62 to 192.168.10.188. Should not have made any difference… but it did. Unit stays responsive to ping, and mothership says everything is OK. I did this within hours of installer leaving so possible it had nothing to do with this, but mothership corrected something on their end.
Holding off on replacing unit. Suggest you try same DHCP approach on your end to see if it makes a difference.
We noticed that we had “missing data” middle of last year - SP indicated that is was a problem with the infamous data migration. They kick me down the road one month at a time for six months and closed the open ticket without resolution. I contacted them via social media and I now have a dedicated person assigned to my case. I was told it would be resolved by April 24, 2023. They report to me every five business days with status.
Hello, Was hoping someone here would have some advice for me. Couldn’t find anything online. I am not tech savvy at all! So I have a pvs5 that has stopped communicating with the app. Sunpower tell me it’s because of the switch from 3g to 5g and I have tried their fix by connecting phone to pvs to update. Nothing happened. Someone at sunpower told me I need to get a 5g wireless dongle. Local dealer wants $280 just to show up. Don’t want to pay that just for monitoring. Anybody got any ideas on what I have to do or some sort of quick easy fix. Thanks in advance
If 3G > 5G is the problem, no firmware update is going to fix that. You will need new, more capable hardware, either as a dongle (if supported), or by replacing all or part of the PVS5 with a more modern PVS6. Arguably they sold you a system with a promised functionality that now no longer exists, through no fault of yours. I would refuse to pay for anything and hold Sunpower and its installer responsible for correct functioning of monitoring (also promised to you), whatever that takes.
I thought primary communication with PVS was via wi-fi and cellular (3G or higher) was considered back up???
Thank you for your reply. Funny thing is, the pvs5 is covered under SPs 10 year warranty (labor included) but the installer wants to charge a service call to come out and maybe install a dongle (at my expense) and SP won’t honor the PVS5 warranty until the installer is on site. You couldn’t make this up!
I believe you are getting the typically ignorant answers from so-called tech support. If you’re system is connected to your wifi system and that is communicating and in an account with SunPower, you should not need to depend on the cellular connection. If your system is still under warranty and you purchased a solar system that includes a monitor that reports data both to SP and to you, SP is responsible for it not performing to specification. The situation with SunPower gets worse and worse. Are they in trouble?
Updated my document at https://starreveld.com/PVS6%20Access%20and%20API.pdf
- to reflect that using a Raspberry Pi Zero (instead of a Pi 3/4 or Zero 2 W) is also a workable option. I replaced my Zero 2 W so it, as a more capable machine, is available for other projects
- Zero W uses less than 500 mA and dissipates less heat, and is cheaper
- currently (May 2023) many Pi models are “hard to get” so Zero W as an option might help
- instructions to (optionally) set hostname, locale, and timezone for the Pi
- modified haproxy.cfg instructions to allow gzip compression of its output for more efficiency (things work without it though)
You can power the Pi using a USB port in the PVS6!
Does anyone doing self monitoring have Enphase IQ7 or IQ8 microinverters on their panels? If so, does the PVS5/6 communicate to them using the same data format and report data via the PVS ethernet port?
Yes. I connect to PVS6 (needs dongle version) via its LAN port. And it returns the same JSON format. Thanks everyone who contributed in this process.
Thanks. Do you know that you have Enphase microinverters on you panels?
From the installer document, it says “Inverter (brand and model number): Type H / SPWR-A5 (IQ 7HS)(27)”
THANKS. Per the model #, it looks like Enphase IQ 7’S. Since you are self monitoring per the commands and process in this blog, data access and format are the same as the prior brand.
Dolf: A long time ago we communicated about my monitoring process with a travel router. That has since been abandoned in favor of you Pi process. My old Pi died and am not trying to set up a Pi 4. I am running into problems with your “Setup Networking to access the PVS” section. I got to step 3 and found that I can’t edit dhcpd.conf to add the two lines required. Nor can I add to haproxy.cfg. Neither file can be found. Do your instructions still apply to the current generation Pi OS? I know the need for the wpa_ supplicant.conf and ssh files are no longer required since the the necessary setup can be don’t in the Pi OS download. Any suggestions?
As far as I know, the instructions still apply. You have to make sure you edit the files using sudo as they are owned by root.
I haven’t touched this since my original setup and documentation. Consequently I know nothing of the new PiOS requirements. I am sure it is possible, but can’t help you with how.
Thanks for the response. Yes, sudo gets me to the /etc/ files. It seems there is no longer a dhcp.conf file in the newest PiOS. The only file is dhclient.conf. I’ll edit it and see what happens. haproxy.cfg is still there.
I have updated the document at https://starreveld.com/PVS6%20Access%20and%20API.pdf
Updated (5/29/24): Documented new knowledge about other open ports, add configuration to haproxy for those ports, included a reference to “sunpower-ess-monitor” (monitors a Sunpower ESS system and publishes to an MQTT broker). Also included information about a known and confirmed firmware problem with logging storage filling up and causing reporting to Sunpower to stop.
Well, it is official: SunPower is in chapter 11 bankruptcy, leaving us all with an uncertain future. It stands to reason that our systems will continue to function, but SunPower monitoring may not. That further increases the value of our custom monitoring.
https://app.pv.sunpower.com/e/es.aspx?s=1631&e=9557814&elq=b6cf9f251b4d4859a5f4720787a01b87
Not a surprise. That is one screwed-up company full of false promises, had horrible customer service and couldn’t objectively assess the idealistic promises of solar energy. … … don’t have much hope or recourse for remaining warranties.
Hi Dolf, FYI, several of the SunPower links (including the pre-2022 PV6 Installation) in your document are either gone or moved (404). I’ve got a pre-2022 PV6, but on quick glance it appears the newer version might cover both. Thought you might want to check/update as appropriate. BTW, thanks for the summary. I plan to build myself one of these implementations in the next few months.
Given the Chapter 11 and the current state of my system (broken, no answers from SunPower support), I have been poking around on my own. Does anyone know how they set the Schneider Electric battery inverter admin password? The user and guest accounts were the default password, but I’ve tried the default for the admin account and it is not the default.
Was your system installed by a contractor to SunPower? (mine was) If so, maybe they would have or know the answer.
Hi, Somewhat off this subject, but I would appreciate any info on how everyone is faring through and handing this SunPower situation. My problems are worsened by the fact that my SP installer (assigned by SP) promptly went out of business after he installed my system. After much agony SunPower arranged for another of their installers to handle my frequent inverter failures (1/year for the past 4 years). I’ve got another one malfunctioning now. But, and probably due to the SP bankruptcy, other service companies are not accepting “3rd party” customers. If there are any others in service limbo right now, I’d appreciate any info, help, condolences, etc. … … I wonder if we will ever get any compensation for our now uncovered warranties. I also wonder if warranty coverage will be part of the so-called restructuring. I don’t have a legal contact to find out.
I was told by my representative at SunPower (I have had an ongoing monitoring problem for a couple of years) that, my “panels are manufactured by Maxeon and the microinverters by Solar Bridge. Ultimately, it’s always been up to them to decide if something was covered but now you or the dealer will just speak with them directly. Your microinverters serial numbers are viewable in the app if you need them but unfortunately when it comes to the panels, a tech will have to get on the roof and lift them to get that information.” Suggest that you narrow down who the manufacturer is of your micro-inverters (might be the same as mine) and start speaking with them directly. I thought at some point in time, that Enphase picked up the microinverter contract from SunPower. I know I have one panel / MI going bad right now and plan to take that conversation to Solar Bridge in the near future.
Unfortunately not, installed directly by SunPower. I don’t even know who to turn to besides my own tinkering, I’m guessing no third party will touch it and starting yesterday, SunPower isn’t even taking support calls at all any more from what I can tell.
Yes, I know who supplied my panels and inverters to SP - for all the good it’ll do. Please let us know how contacting Solar Bridge works out for you. I wonder if individuals can buy replacements directly from them or need to go through a solar contractor. Unfortunately, Enphase inverters are not interchangeable with Solar Bridge from what I can see by studying my neighbor’s Enphase inverter system. An educated guess tells me SP’s change to Enphase was for their higher reliability. It seems it was one reason and a belated attempt to head off the bankruptcy the low reliability microinverters were causing - only a guess considering their rotten support was probably also a contributor. In my case, I now have had 6 failures, two them repeats. Considering the warranty and service hassles, solar companies flashing in and out of business, the fact that net metering is becoming a thing of the past, and the utilities are beginning to soak solar system customers with higher rates than those without — there are lots of regrets.
…further comment/info… SolarBridge was bought by SunPower and subsequently sold to Enphase. They no longer exist and I think Enphase discontinued the SolarBridge inverters. Let me know if you find any, if you determine there’s an Enphase model that is compatible in an existing system, and if you find anyone to install them. Beware of “used” ones.
Huh. Maybe I should be talking to Enphase about SolarBridge? Sounds like I should prepare myself for a bit of a run around. Bummer about your continued problems. We had 100% of our first MI’s replaced and so far, decent except for one. Mostly decent because the new one’s peek output is a bit less than the original ones. Stupid question… I have one MI that needs replacing… why could I not install any MI (Enphase or other) if AC is AC… if I already have some Romex in the attic and run the new MI on a dedicated circuit in the combiner panel - it would be nice to have it monitored by the SP system, but I could get over that as long as it is sending kW’s to my house. If Scott would prefer this conversation be held elsewhere, I am ok with that.
Hi Aaron, here is fine to talk about this as we’re all trying to learn what happens next. For me, I have Maxeon panels and EnPhase (branded SunPower) micro inverters, so if I have a problem it would appear that there is some type of warranty. However, I’m not sure my installer is still in business. If there is an issue, I’ll likely have to pay someone to troubleshoot it and then try to get someone to cover the cost under warranty. Knock on wood, my system has been working fine for the 4 years since I had it installed.
It’s pretty hard to tell the players in the solar industry. Enphase is/was not owned by SunPower. SunPower now uses Enphase’s inverters, not the opposite. From the news releases I saw from over the past 10 years, SolarBridge was bought by SunPower circa 2014 then SunPower sold it to Enphase in 2018 and began sourcing and using the Enphase IQ7/8. Perhaps Enphase continued to supply the SolarBridge version for a while, I don’t know. If anyone has a more precise sequence, I think we all would benefit from it. Also, If anyone knows if Enphase’s IQ inverters are compatible (mounting, connectors, DC/AC electricals, data communications protocol, PVS5/6 monitors) in the SunPower SolarBridge installations, that would be great. If the inverters can be replaced it would sure be nice to be able to continue to use the self-monitoring that has been designed, communicated and discussed on this forum.
SunPower Players and their relationships - well, I did get an email off to both SolarBridge and Enphase yesterday seeking information about warranty coverage. We’ll see if I get a response anytime soon. If not, I’ll give them a call and see if I can get something out of them. Enphase has gone on record to say they will cover SunPower / Enphase MI (so Scott is covered), but I have not found anything that defines warranty coverage for SunPower / SolarBridge MI. I too am interested in what options (compatibility / monitoring / wiring / connectors) there are if the currently installed products are no longer available - warranty or not. I guess the conversation begins. I appreciate you folks and your willingness to share your experiences along the way.
Has anyone received a Notice of Claims Bar Date letter re the SunPower Bankruptcy from Epiq Corporate Restructuring, LLC? It requires a response for claims against SP to be filed in Bankruptcy Court. I am interested to know if anyone else is filing claims for the remaining time on warranty periods (panels, inverters, battery backup systems) and on any currently open failure cases. Claims must be received by 10/18/2024.
I filed a claim for a new MI failure earlier this week after determining that sunpower or solar bridge can’t help. Related… Enphase says they can replace a bad solar bridge MI with an enphase MI outside of the warranty process. I will be following up with them to get more details. Enphase also says that they can install new enphase monitor that can see solar bridge MI. Again, still collecting info.
The replacement monitoring solution will be Enphase Envoy. It will cost approximately $700
Thanks, Dolf/AaronJ. I guess the self-monitoring process will be kaput when Enphase MIs are used. I presume any remaining SolarBridge MI’s can still be accessed via self-monitor. Any idea if a claim for the remaining warranty periods would beneficial? Perhaps a reserve fund could be set up for those of us with long in-warranty periods left. Considering the SolarBridge MI failure rate I’ve experienced (greater than 1 per year), and the same brands/models are still in place, statistically I’m sure they’ll continue to fail.
They replace the PVS6, so yes you lose that integration. I believe there is a solution for enphase out there though.
FYI: I tapped the Gruby monitoring system to evaluate a single panel problem that allowed to diagnose the issue as a panel problem - DC output was about “v_mppt1_v”: “57.94” (what appears to be normal volts) and “i_mppt1_a”: “0.01” (what appears to be VERY low amps). Download occurred while weather station was reporting 650 W/SQ meter and adjacent panels were pushing out 10X that amount. Long story short, I think I have a panel problem and not an MI problem, so I checked Maxeon’s website - https://maxeon.com/us/sunpower-warranty. They are honoring SunPower’s warranty, but you need to register your system by December 31, 2024.
I called Enphase and they gave me the impression that they could replace an existing SolarBridge MI with an Enphase MI (one for one). I am not ready to push this issue yet as I think my MI are working relatively well, but this appears to be an option should one need it. I have an email from them with recommended troubleshooting steps and measurements that they need to further determine what options are available should anyone want it.
AARONJ:
- If you are in full sun, then, yes, if the max power point amps (mppt1_a) are 0, the inverter is dead, outputting power.
- I was also told that the Enphase IQ inverters can be used to replace the SolarBridge. But I believe you will not longer get access to it via the PVS monitor link, i.e. “the Gruby monitoring system” as you called it.
- Thanks for info on Maxeon.
AaronJ The Maxeon registration site specifically states the warrangty coverage is for the PANELS ONLY. Is that also your understanding?
That is correct. Maxeon warranty covers SunPower panels (made by Maxeon) ONLY per my understanding.
1) I think the three mppt1 lines are for DC, so if the Amps are zero on the DC side, my panel is dead (not the MI), right? Although, until you take the components apart and test each one separately, I might not know for sure. 2) Yes, monitoring might be problematic with different manufacturers of MI in the mix. 3) You are welcome.
AaronJ: For a particular, unshaded solar position, the MI’s AC output current is dependent on the DC input current, and the DC input current is dependent on the AC output current (the load). If the inverter is working, the AC power out should be about 96% of the DC power in. After having been through more than my share of MI failures without any panel failures, I seriously doubt the panel is the problem.
Thanks Scott and Dolf. Great writes up and information.
Scott - any chance you can post your Grafana config and ini files?
Many more thanks if you do ;-)
I added a zip file to the end of the post with my Grafana panels. Hopefully that helps you get started.
Thanks Scott!
Cheers John
I’m getting HTTP/1.0 503 Service Unavailable when I cURL the endpoint. I’ve tried the PDF (from a different person), but both result in the same
That indicates the web server itself is still running, but some kind of error (5xx series error) occurs when processing your request. If you are absolutely sure your request is correct, I would power cycle the PVS6 and try again. If it persists, it may be that your PVS6 is broken. Either legit broken, or some firmware issue.
Does anyone have a way to access the commissioning process on the PVS6? I can logon the local network that’s assigned using the serial number of the PVS6 (it stays on), but cannot enter the commissioning console. Now that SP is in bankruptcy I can’t find a solar service company willing to service my system. The original installer is also out of business. Other service cos won’t service mine since they are not the original installer or claim they can’t commission SP systems. One would think that SP would grant access now that they are defunct. (I know it silly to expect them to think of their customers.) A few additional questions: 1. Do I need to be commissioned for power production from a different panel/micro-inverter of the same make and model?
- Since I have a spare SP micro-inverter, if I have it installed will it not product power and be recognized by my self-monitor (not the PVS6)?
- Does anyone know where to get SP service in N. Texas?
I am still learning about what might be compatible with what myself. In the process of trying to get service out to look at one most likely bad SolarBridge MI right now. It is taking longer than expected, but Freedom Solar (out of Austin) has taken on the task. I hope to get a proposal from them soon to fix it. Suposedly, Enphase has a plug-n-play MI that should work, but I have not seen it, nor have I seen them commission it, nor do I have any clue about how to get it to produce - sorry, not much help there.
AARONJ, If Freedom Solar did not do your original installation, I am amazed that they will service you. They refused me twice (as I said, my original installer went belly-up, too). I am in dire straights. Can’t get anyone to work on my system that currently has two bad members. Enphase said that an Enphase dealer will install their monitor system for approx $900, if you want. They told me they would not/cannot install Enphase micro-inverters to replace failed SunPower, SolarBridge MI’s. I cannot even get an independent dealer to look at my system since they can’t or are afraid of getting involved with the intricacies of the bankruptcy. Also, since an independent can’t commission the system after changing a micro-inverter, they seem to think the power production is dependent on commissioning. This is an utter mess!!
Yup. Just got the call from Freedom - they said they could look at it, take some measurements and charge me $500 for the experience, but could not really help more - they recommended that I do not fix it because the cost is more than the production output of a working panel. Based on what they know, the only way to fix ONE Solarbridge MI is to replace ALL of the MI with a new monitoring system. I am now in contact with Atma Energy (Enphase dealer) to see what they can do. I am curious… if the MI output is 240V for most MI, do I care if the brands match? Maybe I cannot monitor them… Maybe I can put the new (different) brand MI on a separate string to the same combiner panel? I gotta do some learning and some reading and make some phone calls - yes, this is an utter mess!!
Well, to support your findings, I am continuing to go in a circle as well. I was also finally told that Enphase cannot install a new MI inside a SunPower system (with Solarbridge MI). I got a quote from Atma (Enphase dealer) for about $4,300 to replace all 18 MI with new Enphase MI and install a new Enphase gateway. This is WAY more than I was hoping to spend, but at least it’s an option and puts SunPower in my rearview mirror. I gotta chew on this a bit.
AaronJ Except for the total cost, your comments are consistent with my findings. The price I was given for conversion of a slightly larger system to Enphase MI’s and their monitor was twice as much after labor was included. Also, as you found, I also found that the cost of service to replace an MI is economically unjustified. That fact contradicts all the claims for the economic benefits of roof-mounted, residential solar systems. Th SunPower bankruptcy announcement included a statement that info would be forthcoming to customers on how their in-warranty systems would be handled. Well, I got no info other than about Maxeon honoring the warranty on their panels. Nothing will be done regarding MI’s and service. Ex-SunPower dealers won’t even service the systems. Also, I believe that the time to file a claim to the bankruptcy court has expired. I suppose no further action can be taken, but I will see if claims can still be submitted – for whatever good they will do.
@Stan. It appears that we are learning something here. Yes, the economic benefits of roof-mounted, residential solar systems were tough to swallow at install, but we could justify with a 10 to 15 year ROI and bonus savings after that date. The supposed 25 year warranty and what appears to be a fairly simple kit of parts with “plug and play” components that can be installed in a day is what gave me the peace of mind. But, given the proprietary components that are not compatible with other systems, require dealer programming, and rooftop accessibility concerns, it makes it kind of difficult to make even the simplest of repairs without expensive contractor assistance.
Given that SunPower’s business plan has led them into bankruptcy, and we are left without support, I struggle with my emotional vs. pragmatic logic for what options are available to us and if shelling out even more cash to keep the system operational is warranted. But, maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel – not sure if you have seen the SunStrong email yet. Email states, “SunStrong Management has taken ownership of the mySunPower app.” Email also mentions “support”, but not sure what that means.
I also struggle with the (hear me out) idea that the ROI has to be justified – I’ll drop $2,000 a year in repairs / service on my ’95 jeep (valued at about $6,000), but I won’t spend a few thousand to maintain the “appliance” on my roof? What I know is that I either have a loose wire (maybe critter chewed wire), or a bad MI (valued at less than $150) and I am looking at a bill to fix it somewhere in between $1,200 and $4,300) to fix it. If my system were ground mounted, at least I could see it, touch it, multimeter measure it. Putting an “appliance” on the roof was my choice (and cheaper than ground mount), but getting on the roof is my primary problem in the absence of warranty support or at least a reasonable and proportionate contractor price to make the repair.
I would never have installed the system with a “10 to 15 year ROI”!!! Anything beyond a reasonable 7 years (an approximate 10%/year investment) would have kept me away. I also would have never installed solar if I expected to give my savings in electricity to a solar repair service company (if there is one). Unfortunately, I swallowed the propaganda and what has tuned out to be outright lies around warranty, reliability, service and business viability. After belatedly witnessing the fly-by-night and technically ignorant business models, the proprietary nature of the technology, the cost of service (especially of rooftop installations), the lack of standards and the inherent unreliability and periodic service requirements of individual power generation, it’s now obvious that in my case residential solar is a long term “loser”. In as much as the replacement of malfunctioned single elements in a system can’t be economically justified, I expect that there are many thousands, maybe millions, of systems out there that are not performing near their designed, age-related tolerances. Mother nature assures nothing is free.
Stan - I too, share your frustration with everything you have stated. I have lost many a nights of sleep agonizing over the difficulty of either not understanding how to document whether the system was actually performing as advertised (hence my subscribing to Mr. Gruby’s blog) or convincing the manufacturer that warranty work was required. And to top it off, we are now faced with SP’s bankruptcy that obviously complicates things further. I feel your pain, brother.
So, we are left with a few options: 1) follow SunStrong’s insertion into our lives and see what they bring to the table. 2) Jump ship, drop some (a lot of) cash to employ a different MI / monitoring system (with the assumption that maybe the panels are holding their own), and chalk this one up to lessons learned. 3) Keep in touch with SP’s authorized installers and see if they are able to provide service once the bankruptcy comes to a close. 4) Consider more education - I am thinking about taking the NABCEP course (basics, site assessment, and system design). Maybe if I knew more about the engineering and system components, I could better evaluate my options (for my existing array and a future one planned - I know, crazy).
Again, the industry has led us to this place and either industry steps up and makes this right or the “thousands, maybe millions, of system” owners revolt and take things into their own hands. Note: I have a neighbor who installed his own system (DIY). It is pretty impressive (probably 7 to 10kW) with three central inverters and battery backup - they are now 100% off-grid. He learned by watching Utube videos. I think it is also pretty cool that there are a few suppliers out there supporting DYI kits and even a few “plug in” balcony PV systems. The economics are thin right now, but getting better.
I appreciate everyone’s input into this situation.
SunStrong is only the “monitor” app that we will eventually have to pay for. 2.Jump ship when it’s economically justified after losing several years of solar energy production and paying the electric utility. 3.SP dealer support if it happens is part of .2, above. i.e. the economics. 4.Education is a good idea if you’re considering another system. But without total independence from existing service, commissioning, regulatory and proprietary property restrictions it’s useless. A fundamental fact remains - Considering all factors over the long term, I have come to learn that it is more economical to “mass” produce 1Watt-Hr of energy than it is to locally produce one unless you are your own service and supply agent. Good luck.
Can the Raspberry Pi still communicate with the PVS? Since SunStrong took over monitoring, I think the endpoints changed. I’d like to hear from someone who was using a Raspberry Pi bridge to see if it still works.
It is still working for me.
I just pulled it up manually. Working for me too.
I also just got SunStrong’s latest email outlining free / basic services vs. premium services at $9.99/month or $99.99/year. I ‘ll probably pay the subscription fee for the convenience even though I don’t like it.
Working here as well. What is your firmware version. Mine is “SWVER”: “2024.6, Build 61707”,
I cannot check if mine is still working since I am traveling. However, recently, it was. My main concern is that not only do they want us to pay $99 for the service that used to be free, but more importantly, I have not read anything regarding guarantees they will not “cripple” the firmware. If they do, we are SOL. If the expected lifetime of your system is 8+ years it would seem an EnPhase conversion would reach break even or better, provided it will give us local monitoring as well. Has anybody researched this?
Why not just block Internet access to the PVS? That’s what I’m going to do. I don’t need firmware updates for it.
That depends on what you mean by blocking Internet access. You can block inbound, outbound, or both. I think we know that the current firmware can choke on large logs without outbound access? Lack of access might exacerbate this if/when it cannot unload monitoring data as expected. I am sure it buffers it in case of a temporary outage. If the “choke” happens, you will lose local access, too.
So I think blocking outbound access may create problems. I don’t think inbound access is an issue because the device is typically behind your firewall, and no holes are punched, so inbound access is already limited to cases where the device initiates a connection.
None if this is sure, but I am also not convinced that the blocking would not create just another problem. A more sophisticated block to specific URL for firmware downloads might be a solution, but do we know what those are?
I wasn’t aware of an issue with logs. Has anyone contacted SunStrong?
My local access is running. How can access to the internet be blocked? Does anyone have access to the commissioning setup they can share? Since SP is out of biz, one would think an owner should be able to access his own system setup. If they re-program the firmware to block local access, does anyone think successful legal class action feasible?
Access to the Internet can be blocked at your router. I don’t have the exact steps you’d need for your particular router, however.
For those interested in an alternate energy use monitor (other than the Gruby monitor or the Sunstrong PVS 5/6 monitor), Emporia makes a pretty good product that not only allows you to monitor PV production, but also net usage, out to grid, in from grid AND individual circuits. Instructions are pretty good for DIY installations and uses a set of circuit transmitters to measure various points within your electrical panel. It does NOT monitor individual panels. I installed mine in January and it has been working pretty well so far.
I’m still getting data via the rPi method. PVS6 HWVER: 6.02 SWVER: 2024.6, Build 61707
I received a letter stating my (prepaid) lease was ‘rejected’, and the system was now mine to own. I assume that the output guarantee and Sunpower backed warranty no longer applies so I shut down my PVS2. My system is from 2015 using the Sunpower branded SMA TL string inverters.
For anyone using the older Sunpower (SMA) based string inverters, Yasdi2Mqtt using an older Pi and usb rs485 adapter has been a great solution for me for the last few years. It provides a ton more detail down to the DC string and AC phase than Sunpower app ever did and easily integrates in to most home automation systems.
I also use the https://pvoutput.org/ which is a free (optional donation) service thats provides tools to analyze and graph solar data . It has all my solar data going back 10yrs from when I installed.
So with a little extra effort and a bit of technical know how, there are cheaper options to provide as good as (or better) monitoring than Sunstrong provides.
hi Scott. Wanted to firstly thank you, your blog gave me a kick start to solve my brothers own monitoring challenges. I used the information you kindly shared, as well as some of the comments within your post from users like Eric - who have the same SMS-PVS20R1 unit.
I managed to throw togther some poor nodered code snippets and fumble my way through the HTML output from the SMS-PVS20R1 (not JSON like other PVS 5/6 units).
Should you want to circle back to the users who asked about the SMS-PVS20R1 options. Happy for you to include my reference info.
Has anyone gained administrative access to the PVS6 yet? Given that no one is available anymore and my authorized dealer will not service the equipment, I need to replace a microinverter and need access to the commissioning section using direct access or maybe the SunPower Pro Connect App?