Is your system performance within normal limits? Without good monitoring you will never know.
As an installer, there is one thing I have always tried to explain to customers. You need to keep an eye on your solar system. This is not just about economic aspects, but in many cases a legal obligation. Read on as I explain why monitoring is important, how to get it, and how to keep it going.
Back when solar cost $12,000 per kilowatt, having the inverter out of sight and out of mind risked surprise bills and angry customers if something went wrong. The first inverter I owned only had four red lights and an LCD meter, but it is checked regularly and still works after more than 14 years.
Don’t laugh, this inverter is monitored every day. Photo credit Crap Solar – Mladen Simunovic
Monitoring is now standard
A monitored solar system is a safer solar system. Offers of “free WiFi” when purchasing solar are to be understood in the same way as a dealer offering free seat belts with every new car. Few customers are aware that they are legally required to have a ground fault alarm. The idea is that potentially dangerous grounding problems can be investigated in a timely manner. Email notifications are permitted. Therefore, do not ignore the emails from Mr. Fronius, Mr. Sungrow or their friends.
However, monitoring is about more than the early detection of safety-critical errors. It can also detect damage to your wallet by recording long-term trends. When you purchase solar energy, your quote must include an annual yield estimate divided into 12 months. If the system doesn’t do what it says on the tin, you’ll need records to make a warranty claim, but the linchpin is a stable internet connection.
Annual totals can clearly illustrate excessive deterioration in production. To me, this increase looks like a loss of more than 1% per year.
Wi-Fi problems
While connecting the inverter to Wi-Fi on the day of installation can be quick and easy, wireless internet can be anything but easy. Commissioning modern inverters is not possible without the Internet. I would keep a spare phone for a hotspot and a WiFi network extender in my bag because sometimes you just can’t keep your mouth shut. Even if we had to gift an extender to a customer, $100 for the hardware saved us face time and a return visit.
Things get even worse when someone decides to change telecommunications company, router, or move things around the house. Once the Netflix works, no one will notice a lack of solar monitoring. However, once excessive bills begin to arrive, things can get ugly for whoever unplugged the network extender in the garage.
This is a Ubiqt bridge. It’s a decent WiFi extender with a range of more than 100 meters and a specially made cover to protect it from the elements.
Help for dedicated networks
Generally, when customers upgrade their Internet hardware, everything that is physically connected gets reconnected. This is why I always recommend people connect a LAN cable directly to the solar inverter, but with some things this is impossible, like a Fronius Wattpilot EV charger.
Hardwired connections are the best.
Experienced installers use a dedicated WiFi router to create a secure network for energy management hardware. This ensures that a new NBN deal or a visit to a relative doesn’t accidentally deactivate anything. A single piece of hardware is cheaper than a phone call to get your inverter connection, pool heat pump, water heater, electric vehicle charger, etc. etc back online.
As we’ve written before, reliable internet will be critical to the security of the entire power grid.
Buying a house with an existing solar system?
Real estate agents struggle to give you the correct keys when buying a home, making it nearly impossible to obtain WiFi access, account transfers, logins and passwords.
The best approach is to contact the old owners directly. Get nominated as a new owner, change your email address and reset passwords. Companies like Tesla prefer this DIY approach because it doesn’t require phone support. However, some require setting up a new account through official channels.
Do not rely on your solar retailer to report problems
With Solar installed, you will receive an app and your dealer will also receive remote access. This is a boon for diagnosing problems. It saves you from trading appointments and provides you with evidence of network errors and outages that can lead to insurance claims. But don’t let the seller fool you. No one is in the office every Monday checking how your system is working.
The best monitoring is automated, like Solar Analytics, which uses intelligent algorithms combined with local averages to predict performance and raise an alarm if they go out of balance. This is a very clever thing and I know first hand that they can even identify a heat pump water heater that is running at night.
In operation, different devices have different voltage, current, and power factor signatures. SolarAnalytics can identify them and with CatchControl you can automate them.
If your retailer goes bankrupt
Unfortunately, thousands of solar dealers have disappeared. Even Solar Depot pulled the pin after 20 years of solar coasting, so there are now over 1000 more Fronius systems that are virtually homeless. In my experience, it is completely straightforward to call Fronius and have your system released by a previous owner or defunct installer.
Not all systems are simple
I have to call Enphase here. Not only are they reportedly running a walled garden by charging $10 per month for API access,1 but charging a high fee to give a new homeowner access to their own monitoring is ridiculous. Click here to know the process in detail.
At an exchange rate of 65 cents, Enphase is worth 306 Australian dollars
Switching to a solar retailer with Enphase is at least a DIY process. The steps are as follows:
Menu > Account > My Access Control > Under Existing Companies, add the email address of the person you want to grant access to, then use the drop-down menu to change the PV maintainer.
To be honest, I’ve never had to set up an Enphase Enlighten account before, but a customer told me a horror story about a tenant who didn’t monitor it while the house was rented for a few years. Without internet he told me the Envoy was broken and the warranty was in jeopardy.
Enphase has redeeming features.
Just because the Gateway/Envoy is offline doesn’t mean the system stops producing. The Enphase battery controller has a built-in backup 4G dongle, which is a great idea. Although it cannot be used for commissioning, the factory-installed redundancy is excellent.
Enphase is a huge, well-resourced company. I’m told there’s an entire project team working on reconnecting offline IQ gateways, but response rates are reportedly low.
For commercial solar installations, monitoring can save thousands each year
This image shows a poorly maintained 100kW system. A 27 kW inverter works. An intermittent ground fault will cause inverter #2 to shut down most of the time and #3 to simply be dead. These mistakes will cost thousands over the course of a year.
The Fimer Aurora monitoring platform appears to have taken a step backwards, with tiny text and no contrasting colors that require me to highlight numbers to explain.
Knowledge is power
Even old systems can benefit from a standalone monitor. By adding CatchControl, which comes with free Solar Analytics, you make electricity visible, which can enable the most affordable form of bill control, behavior change and efficiency.
Not all monitoring apps are intuitive to use and not everyone is energy conscious. If your monitoring isn’t there, was never set up, is failing, or simply isn’t understandable, it’s worth having it looked at by an expert.
Footnotes
- Application Programming Interface is the language that computers use to communicate with each other, which is essential for connecting various components for intelligent energy management ↩
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