Reporting and Monitoring

ggmf

Can I ask what you use for reporting and monitoring of your systems please?

As per my signature, I have a Growatt SPH5000 hybrid inverter coupled with a Growatt 6.5kWh Hybrid battery, there are Tigo optimizers on the panels and I have the Tigo TAP and CCA data logger & cloud.

The web based Growatt Dashboard is pretty poor, I'm not sure that it has been configured correctly. I'm guessing there will be others who have a Tigo optimiser, TAP and CCA configuration, if so do you have your inverter linked to your CCA? On my new install, I have the communications cable between the inverter and the battery, and a CT connected between the inverter and the supply. This all seems to be working correctly.

There is no link from the inverter to the CCA using the RS485 port, should there be? can I connect via RS485 from the inverter to the CCA and will it record meaningful statistics?

Both Growatt manuals, installation and user are pretty poor and give no info on the RS485 port.

What can Home Assistant do? I have an old laptop that I can use, but what additional hardware will I need? is there an idiots guide anywhere where I can research?

Many thanks,

ggmf

Sorry but giving this post a bounce.

I've been speaking with Growatt UK (oh my!), and having to go it alone by linking the "RS485 port from the inverter to port-1 on the Tigo CCA" to see if I can obtain data to analyse and dissect.

Done some reading on Home assistant, and happy to get a Raspberry Pi if really needed (and it will work with the rs485 from the Growatt).

QrizB

Sorry I can't help, I've got a hodgepodge of standalone systems of varying vintage that just about give me enough info to manage my installation.

I'll be interested to see what you can turn up.

nologo

Sorry cant help either! my Growatt monitoring is just on the app which is not much help & means I have to look at my phone to see if there is enough generation to run something (for example dishwasher) not a lot of help if I'm at work!

Spies

I've recently started noticing big gaps in the 5 minute data, seems they might be having server issues?

ggmf

Spies said:

I've recently started noticing big gaps in the 5 minute data, seems they might be having server issues?

Indeed, the app also gives 'timeout'' issues. Its so frustrating, the information I'm after is clearly being collected by the inverter and fed to the ShineWeb reporting server(s) to produce the fairly useless graphs, but trying to get to the actual data is proving problematic. You can 'view' some of the data via the app but there is no way to download it.

Spies

I've got a proxy in place now to intercept the data sent to the growatt servers, I'll let you know how it works tomorrow. 

ggmf

Thanks, very interested if your solution works out.

confusedpaul

I haven't had my PV or battery installed yet, but have already set up Home assistant and researched what it can do. I like it a lot. If you have other online devices in the house it can pull it all together.  I haven't done too much yet but have already got
1. Energy data pulling in from the DCC data feeds using Hildebrand glow module
2. All my lights and thermostats in one place
3. Smart plugs that turn on the phone charger and tumbler when off peak electricity starts
4. An Ikea movement sensor on the landing turning on the Philips Hue light, hard to get them ot play nicely together without home assistant.

and I plan to set things up when they are installed to monitor
myenergi Eddi
Solaredge Inverter
Tesla powerwall

So that i can see all the information in one place and potentially have automations when I am pulling from or exporting to the grid which could be turning things on, or just changing the colour of a light.

ggmf

I've had a very quick play with Home Assistant, whilst it see's our other online devices it fails to see the inverter (it's not really online it just pushes out data to a reporting server). Trying to get info out of Growatt is proving to be extremely difficult, lets just hope that there is no need to try and contact them for a warranty issue. Hence I've been trying to link via RS485 from the inverter to my Tigo data logger.

ggmf

@Spies how are you getting on with your proxy?