SolarEdge Monitoring w/Tesla Solar Panels (Using GWY10 Zigbee Gateway)

[takedownca]

I got my wifi extender, and it did the trick perfectly. I had to create an installer account with SE to login to the inverter and change the connection setting to Auto so it would detect the ethernet. I also had to pop open a couple panels and unscrew the existing antenna and grommet in order to feed in the ethernet cable. Whole thing took about 20min. A $16 wifi extender definitely beats running ethernet through the walls.

 

[Cheburashka]

Following this, as I also have an SE inverter

 

[BrettS]

I got my wifi extender, and it did the trick perfectly.

That’s great. I’m glad it worked for you. Interesting that you had to change your setting to auto and mine was already on auto.

 

[TheDon]

So I’ve been playing around a bit more and I’ve discovered a few things. Apparently anyone can sign up for an installer account at solaredge.com. I used a different email than the one I use for monitoring, but I used my same name and address. It also optionally asked for an inverter serial number during the sign up and I just skipped that part. But with the installer account you can sign in to Set App and not need to do the work around of connecting through the browser.

I spent a bit of time trying to get the inverters connected through WiFi, but it doesn’t look like it’s possible. I spent a lot of time reading the documentation and as near as I can tell the inverters either need a separate WiFi module (which mine don’t have) or a SolarEdge WiFi gateway box that I also don’t have. It doesn’t look like a WiFi connection will be possible without getting some sort of additional hardware.

However, I did discover that you can connect multiple inverters with RS485 and then only run an ethernet cable to one of them. That way if you have a number of inverters you only need one ethernet connection. I’m debating whether I want to go back and reconfigure my two inverters this way or not. I’m a bit tight on ethernet ports, so getting one port back wouldn’t really be a bad thing, but I’ve already run the two wires anyway, so maybe I should just leave well enough alone.

Finally I also was able to find the P(f) settings in the inverters and I configured that. This should allow it to work with the powerwall to scale back solar production as the powerwall gets full rather than just cutting off solar production entirely. As as been previously discussed, when you are off grid, as the powerwall starts getting full it will slowly start raising the frequency, In my case as the powerwall gets up to 98% full I saw the frequency rise to 60.1 and 60.2, then as it continued to charge the frequency would keep rising until it got to the point where the inverters would shut off.

However the solaredge P(f) setting allows the inverter to scale back as it sees the frequency rising. You set a low point and a high point and it will linearly scale back between those settings. For example you could set 60.2hz to 100% and 62.2hz to 0% and as long as the frequency is 60.2hz or less the inverter will supply 100% of the available power. But if the frequency rises to 61.2hz (which is halfway between 60.2 and 62.2) then it will only supply 50% of the available power. If the frequency gets all the way to 62.2hz then the inverter will shut down entirely.

Normally when you are off grid the system will charge the powerwall to 100%, then turn off the inverters to let the house run on the powerwall until it drops down to about 97%, then the inverters will come on again until it gets charged back to 100% and keep cycling as long as you are off grid and there is more solar power than your house can use.

Instead, using P(f), as the powerwall charge nears 100% it will slowly increase the frequency which will cause the inverter to slowly scale back the amount of power it’s feeding to the system. In theory it should reach an equilibrium where the power being fed in from the inverter is about equal to the amount of power actually being used by your home. So the powerwall will stop charging and the home will just operate on solar power. Obviously there may be a little fluctuation as your home’s energy use rises and falls, but this should still allow the system to increase and decrease the solar output as needed without going through that cycle of turning the inverters off, then turning them back on over and over.

I was hoping to test this today, but as luck would have it today has been very overcast and rainy and there’s no way my powerwalls will get up to 100%. Perhaps I can test tomorrow if it’s sunnier.

Also, note that this only comes into play when you are off grid and have nowhere to send any excess solar production. If you are on grid and the powerwalls get to 100% then things will continue to operate normally as the excess power will just be fed into the grid.

So have you been able to test this out?

 

[BrettS]

So have you been able to test this out?

I have not, but I still intend to. I have had clouds or rain for at least part of the day every single day since I posted that and I haven’t had enough solar generation to fill up my powerwalls. Some days they have gotten close... into the 90’s, but not quite there. As soon as I get a sunny day I will let you know how it goes.

 

[TheDon]

I have not, but I still intend to. I have had clouds or rain for at least part of the day every single day since I posted that and I haven’t had enough solar generation to fill up my powerwalls. Some days they have gotten close... into the 90’s, but not quite there. As soon as I get a sunny day I will let you know how it goes.

Cool - it would be interesting to see if its 100% full and the a "power failure" happens. Will the powerwalls just jump to 65Hz setting off UPS units or still ramp up?

 

[BrettS]

Cool - it would be interesting to see if its 100% full and the a "power failure" happens. Will the powerwalls just jump to 65Hz setting off UPS units or still ramp up?

In that case I believe they will still jump right to 65Hz (or whatever they are configured for).

Also, after like a week of cloudy rainy weather it looks like today is finally going to be the day I can test this. My powerwalls are currently up to 91% and the sun is out. Unless some random rainstorm comes out of nowhere (which is still a possibility given that I live in Florida) I think the powerwalls will make it up to 98% within the next 45 minutes or so. 98% is where they start raising the frequency, so with any luck I’ll be able to report back shortly how the P(f) settings affect things.

 

[BrettS]

Also, after like a week of cloudy rainy weather it looks like today is finally going to be the day I can test this. My powerwalls are currently up to 91% and the sun is out. Unless some random rainstorm comes out of nowhere (which is still a possibility given that I live in Florida) I think the powerwalls will make it up to 98% within the next 45 minutes or so.

So, apparently I jinxed myself. Shortly after posting this the sky filled with clouds and this happened:

The powerwalls had gotten up to 94% before the big dip just before 4:00. Then the house drew a bit from the powerwalls during the clouds and they went down to 90%. The clouds have been disappearing and the sun has been coming out a bit more, but I don’t think I’ll get enough power to fully charge the powerwalls today. Hopefully soon though.

 

[BrettS]

So, good news and bad news here. The good news is that the rain held off enough today that I finally got a full charge on my powerwalls. The bad news is that my attempt to use P(f) to lower the inverter power output failed miserably.

I had configured the inverters using P(f) to ramp down their power output starting when the frequency got over 60.2 and then stopping at 0% output when the frequency reached 62.2. (Given that my powerwalls were configured with a max frequency of 62.5 I figured this was a good stopping point).

So this afternoon my powerwalls got up to 98%, which is when they start to raise the frequency. I was watching my Tesla app and my kill a watt anxiously to see what would happen. I saw the frequency start to come up... it hit 60.1, then 60.2, then 60.3. I was watching the Tesla app to see if the solar production decreased when I saw the inverters shut off. Apparently the inverters are configured to turn off at 60.5hz and the higher P(f) parameters didn’t override that.

So I guess I have a couple of options. I could try to look through the settings to see if I can change the max frequency that the inverters will operate at. If I can raise that from 60.5 to 62.2 then this might still work, but I don’t know if that is something I can change.

I could try to configure P(f) to only operate between 60.2hz and 60.5hz, but there’s really not a lot of granularity there, so I’m not sure how well it would work. Especially because the powerwalls seemed to raise the frequency from 60 to 60.5 pretty quickly, so even if the inverters did lower their output I’m not sure it would happen fast enough to stop the inverters from getting shut off anyway.

Or, I could just leave it as is and do nothing. And the more I think about it, the more that makes sense. Psychologically I don’t like seeing the inverters shut off, especially when it’s the middle of peak production, but that’s more of a psychological issue. I mean in the end there’s nowhere for the power to go and power is going to be wasted either way. In one case the inverters would run at 50% power for 10 minutes and in another case they would be off for 5 minutes and then run at 100% for 5 minutes, but either way 50% of the power would be wasted. I’ll probably just set the P(f) settings back to the default and be happy that I learned something new.

 

[TheDon]

You said that your powerwalls were configured to only rise frequency to 62.5Hz. Did you do that, and how, or did you have to get Tesla to do that?

My install team didn't know what I was talking about - not going to 65Hz and tripping all my UPS units - and said they couldn't help me. The head electrical guy said - gee, that makes sense. Not much help though.

 

[BrettS]

You said that your powerwalls were configured to only rise frequency to 62.5Hz. Did you do that, and how, or did you have to get Tesla to do that?

My install team didn't know what I was talking about - not going to 65Hz and tripping all my UPS units - and said they couldn't help me. The head electrical guy said - gee, that makes sense. Not much help though.

There’s a huge thread that talks about this here...

Powerwall 2 + UPS Connundrum - and solution

It has to be done by the powerwall support team, but it can be done remotely. In my case, I was aware of the issue and asked my installers about it and they didn’t really know what I was taking about, but they called support and were able to get support to make the change for me. It sounds like most people need to call support on their own and request the change though. Someone mentioned that I was the first one they had heard of that was able to get it done on install day. You should be able to call them at 877-798-3752.

 

[JeremyWhaling]

Fresh install of a 4kW system, I would like to have individual panel monitoring via solaredge, but also still have Tesla monitoring. Is this possible? I have the papers of where each optimizer is in my array. Everything is currently off, no inspection or PTO yet. I have the Tesla gateway in a box as well, ready to install.

 

[takedownca]

Fresh install of a 4kW system, I would like to have individual panel monitoring via solaredge, but also still have Tesla monitoring. Is this possible? I have the papers of where each optimizer is in my array. Everything is currently off, no inspection or PTO yet. I have the Tesla gateway in a box as well, ready to install.

You'll need to ask for a SolarEdge monitoring login from Tesla. After that, you'll probably need to submit the panel layout to SolarEdge.

You're lucky Tesla gave you the layout. I never got that out of them. They basically just neglected to record that information, and now I have no simple way of figuring it out short of awkwardly climbing around my roof or using a drone to move some cardboard over my panels.

 

[BrettS]

Fresh install of a 4kW system, I would like to have individual panel monitoring via solaredge, but also still have Tesla monitoring. Is this possible? I have the papers of where each optimizer is in my array. Everything is currently off, no inspection or PTO yet. I have the Tesla gateway in a box as well, ready to install.

If this is a solar only system then this may be difficult. The solar only systems use the little black box gateway to report data back to Tesla and is necessary to for the Tesla app to monitor the system. Apparently at one point Tesla would then forward this data on to SolarEdge and you could get a SolarEdge account and use that to monitor your system through SolarEdge, but at some point within the past few months Tesla stopped forwarding that data to SolarEdge and even though you can still get a SolarEdge account there is no data in it.

You can connect your SolarEdge inverters to the internet with an ethernet cable and they will start reporting to SolarEdge as discussed above in this thread. However, I don’t believe that the SolarEdge inverters can report to Tesla with the little black box gateway and to SolarEdge with an ethernet cable at the same time. I think it’s only one or the other. This is the problem that you have with a solar only system.

However, if you have a powerwall, then the big electrical panel gateway (It’s kind of confusing because there are two different devices called gateways) will report the data to Tesla and the little black box gateway isn’t necessary for reporting to Tesla, so in that case connecting the SolarEdge inverters to the internet with an ethernet cable won’t affect the Tesla reporting and you can have both at the same time.

It does seem like the SolarEdge inverters will store the production data for some period of time and then report all of the stored data to SolarEdge when they get an internet connection, so one workaround might be to leave the inverters connected to the little black box gateway most of the time so the data is reported to Tesla and the Tesla app works, and then periodically connect the ethernet cable to the inverters so they can upload their data to SolarEdge. It would be a pain to do this manually every week or so and it means that the data at SolarEdge wouldn’t be current, but it might be the only way for someone with a solar only system to get data to both companies.

 

[BrettS]

It would be a pain to do this manually every week or so and it means that the data at SolarEdge wouldn’t be current, but it might be the only way for someone with a solar only system to get data to both companies.

Actually, I did have one other thought about doing this in an automated way. Theoretically you could connect the SolarEdge inverters to an ethernet cable and connect that cable to a small ethernet hub that was then connected to your router. You could put the hub on a WiFi controlled outlet or switch and then program it to turn on the hub for, say, an hour a day. Theoretically, the inverters would stay connected to the little black box gateway most of the time, but for an hour a day while the hub was turned on the inverters would have their internet connection and be able to upload that day’s data to SolarEdge. Then the hub would turn off again and the inverters would start reporting back to Tesla.

This is all speculation and I have no idea if or how well this would actually work, but from what I understand about how the SolarEdge inverters connect I believe that it would work. You might even be able to program the hub to come on several times a day to keep the SolarEdge site more up to date.

 

[willow_hiller]

Actually, I did have one other thought about doing this in an automated way. Theoretically you could connect the SolarEdge inverters to an ethernet cable and connect that cable to a small ethernet hub that was then connected to your router. You could put the hub on a WiFi controlled outlet or switch and then program it to turn on the hub for, say, an hour a day. Theoretically, the inverters would stay connected to the little black box gateway most of the time, but for an hour a day while the hub was turned on the inverters would have their internet connection and be able to upload that day’s data to SolarEdge. Then the hub would turn off again and the inverters would start reporting back to Tesla.

This is all speculation and I have no idea if or how well this would actually work, but from what I understand about how the SolarEdge inverters connect I believe that it would work. You might even be able to program the hub to come on several times a day to keep the SolarEdge site more up to date.

When I get my system installed, I'm going to do some more investigation to see if you can cut SolarEdge out of the equation entirely, and draw the data directly from the inverters over a local area network or direct wired connection.

People already seem to have found out how to get aggregate level real-time monitoring via RS232 or patch cable with this code: jbuehl/solaredge and in the issues there's some discussion of getting optimizer-level monitoring via RS485 but nobody has figured out how yet: Optimizer data via modbus · Issue #150 · jbuehl/solaredge

EDIT: Or another implementation here dave92082/SolarEdge-Exporter And this repo explicitly states "Modbus TCP is a local network connection only and does not interfere or replace your connection to the SolarEdge monitoring service. As per the SolarEdge documentation, the two monitoring methods can be used in parallel without impacting each other."

 

[BrettS]

When I get my system installed, I'm going to do some more investigation to see if you can cut SolarEdge out of the equation entirely, and draw the data directly from the inverters over a local area network or direct wired connection.

People already seem to have found out how to get aggregate level real-time monitoring via RS232 or patch cable with this code: jbuehl/solaredge and in the issues there's some discussion of getting optimizer-level monitoring via RS485 but nobody has figured out how yet: Optimizer data via modbus · Issue #150 · jbuehl/solaredge

EDIT: Or another implementation here dave92082/SolarEdge-Exporter And this repo explicitly states "Modbus TCP is a local network connection only and does not interfere or replace your connection to the SolarEdge monitoring service. As per the SolarEdge documentation, the two monitoring methods can be used in parallel without impacting each other."

Yes, this is definitely possible. I don’t believe I saw anything about the inverters supporting RS-232 as I was looking through the documentation for communication, but it’s possible I missed it, since I was more looking for network connections. They definitely support RS-485.

I have installed a plugin for my home automation system that communicates directly with my inverters over TCPIP using modbus. It doesn’t provide panel level details, but I’m not sure if that’s a limitation of the plugin or a limitation of the data that’s available through modbus.

 

[swegman]

View attachment 485902 Worked instantly, no more solar edge issues!

For someone that is waiting for the Tesla solar install using the SolarEdge inverter, what is this picture showing. I would like to be able to monitor energy production per panel, which I understand the Tesla app will not do. Hoping a solution arises to enable simultaneous communication with the Tesla portal (for overall system analysis) and the SolarEdge portal (for specific panel analysis).

 

[swegman]

I'd do that, Chancellor32, but I don't want to void my warranty by cutting off data to Tesla. My understanding is that if you connect the data and do NOT have a powerwall to send data, then this may cut off data flow Tesla... And void out the warranty.

Especially the production guarantee which they will blow off if you're not sending any data.

My Tesla warranty for an owner owned (not leased) system specifically states “Provider is not providing you with a performance or production guarantee.”

 

[takedownca]

For someone that is waiting for the Tesla solar install using the SolarEdge inverter, what is this picture showing. I would like to be able to monitor energy production per panel, which I understand the Tesla app will not do. Hoping a solution arises to enable simultaneous communication with the Tesla portal (for overall system analysis) and the SolarEdge portal (for specific panel analysis).

The picture shows an ethernet cable (blue wire) that was run through the grommet in the bottom of the lower enclosure and then up to the upper enclosure and then plugpged into the ethernet port on the bottom of the PCB in the upper enclosure.