Inverter reporting question

oldskoo1

Been thinking of a pet project

My Samil inverter has a wifi link which reports various stats to a portal but i fancy having a go at more in depth reporting pushing it to pvoutput.

The only way i can see this is possible is to connect a raspberry pi via cable with a wifi adapter to push the data.

The B+ spec board is low power and will do what i need, but i need a way to power the board.

My inverter is outdoors and quite a bit away from the house and any power sockets. The cables for the inverter are routed under some slabs but i did put a separate piece of trunking down for another cable to the meter box.

It of course needs to be weatherproof, i can install the board in a ip66 box but i need power, so wondered if anyone had any suggestions apart from the obvious

Not sure if the inverter ports are powered for example.

thanks

theboylard

The likelihood is that the data you're after is already being pushed to the Samil portal. You just need to extract that as it's likely not displayed in the portal, as Samil have arbitrarily decided that is info you don't need?

Do Samil publish an API? If so, then that be where the gold is buried!

How does the inverter get its power?

There must be an ac feed to it somewhere, could a sparky fit a plug socket drop, obviosuly outdoor rated?

As to the Pi - having had a quick look you could power the Pi from a chunky external USB "emergency" battery, as intended for recharging mobiles away from a fixed power source.

There are a number of caveats though, so would need some research but plenty of info is out there on the subject.

Keep us posted!!