I find the standard Sunsynk app to be somewhat lacking. I’ve tried connecting my Hubble Riot device, but it only gives me stats for one inverter. No combined reports or anything for the two.
I’ve now bought the solar-assist software on an Orange PI which I can use later on for smart devices or something (i.e. turning the swimming pool pump on only if there is enough PV to carry it).
The SunSynk inverter is rated very well but if you want to get a nicer app and onboard control system, look at the Deye inverters. Same factory but different display panels and software used by the company that produces them. They are quickly gaining market share due to this.
My solar-assist device should be arriving today. It is ready for smart home integration and everything and the stats are live (and more importantly, combined), which should be sufficient.
Ok, got it installed and configured. Will make the cabling neat tomorrow. First wanted to make sure that I’ve connected the cables to the right ports and that everything is working. However, now my system isn’t behaving like an off-grid system (it is drawing power from Eskom in the evening instead of the batteries).
Will post some stats on Monday once there is some data on the dashboards. At least the stats are now live and I’ve got totals of everything combined.
Ok, here are some screen prints. Looks and works nice thus far.
It is an Orange Pi with the software installed with cables that run to both inverters and the first battery in the bank. The data is collected and stored on the device that is connected to wifi and I’m able to go online to view my stats and even change any of the settings on my inverters.
The device also has a hdmi port so I could plug a screen into it, but it’s a bit of a mission getting a monitor.
Detailed inverter stats when clicking on the Inverter icon on the dashboard. Shows the load handled by each inverter and how much PV is generated per inverter and per string.
I have 28x 455w (15 facing true north and 13 facing slightly north-west), so about 13kw. The idea was to go 99% off-grid, so extra panels and batteries are to try and survive the cloudy and rainy days and winter. The system was also planned around our usage in the previous house which turns out isn’t too accurate since we’re now using way less power because we don’t have/need aircons in this house.
I’m still waiting for the swimming pool pump to be installed though (1.1kw) and then I have two pressure pumps (0.75kw and 0.37kw) that I haven’t really started using yet. That combined with charging my car, vacuum cleaner, tumble dryer, etc. are all things that run exclusively during the sunlight hours. So I suspect we’ll regularly run around 8kw during the day. We’ve ran over 9kw the other day and the solar was able to handle it without drawing from the batteries.
Dude that is some nice dashboard info! Now you have a lot more granular details to use when investigating power draw. I’ll look into it, I love stats in a useful manner
It works quite well… You look at the dashboard and memorize the current load, turn something on and see the difference. No need to run back and forth to the inverter to see the effect anymore.
We currently have loadshedding and I made coffee. Now twitter and whatsapp people don’t have to listen to me complain about not having power the whole time.
Welcome to the club! I honestly could not go back. Yesterday there was 8 hours of load shedding during the day, plus around another hour and a bit of outage from a trip, then another 2 hours in the night and not once were we without power.
I wish everyone could get it. But it made me think. In the rest of the world and for us back in the day, electricity is just a given. It really is something that we all need.
Yay! Glad all got installed without issue. Once you get solar it is impossible to go back or go anywhere without it. Ive already saved so much on my monthly electricity bill and i never have load shedding. Its the best decision I’ve ever made to get solar.
DieGrootHammer
