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

[ArizonaJon]

takedownca, after you get on the roof, check if each panel has a little box (poweroptimizer) attached that has a serial number on it. This may help. My installer, a third party, made a map with the stickers from the poweroptimizer to create the layout. Unfortunately, I am still waiting for the power company to place the meters so I can operate. By Tuesday the 9th, everything should be operational so I will know more.

 

[woferry]

The best I can think of is to climb onto my roof and and cover each of my 24 panels with a piece of cardboard for 30min one at a time in a specific order. I'm thinking 30min because the SE data seems to be in increments of 15min. Then I could correlate the momentary drop in production with a particular physical location. After that if I can get an installer account I'll create my own physical layout. But I'd rather not do this since it means spending hours on my roof

Can't offer a better overall solution, but I will note that if you have enough cardboard (12 pieces, specifically), a simple binary search should identify all of the panels in 5 30-minute periods instead of 24. =) First cover half of the panels, then move half of those covers to panels that weren't covered, that'll get the initial group of 24 down to 4 groups of 6. Then within each group of 6 cover half of the panels, now 8 groups of 3. Gets a bit harder to describe from there, the attached picture captures the scheme, and each panel identified by the result of the 5 tests (0 = dark/covered, 1 = light/uncovered). Easier if the panels happened to be in a grid, but even if they're sprawled out you can assign each one of the grid locations, and just ensure you cover/uncover the right ones each time.


Edit, cleaned up picture to involve a few less cardboard moves per turn, and let Excel compute the final table rather than doing it manually.

 

[takedownca]

takedownca, after you get on the roof, check if each panel has a little box (poweroptimizer) attached that has a serial number on it. This may help. My installer, a third party, made a map with the stickers from the poweroptimizer to create the layout. Unfortunately, I am still waiting for the power company to place the meters so I can operate. By Tuesday the 9th, everything should be operational so I will know more.

Last time I was up there I couldn't see any optimizers because they're placed directly under the panel. Maybe if I had an endoscope I could peak underneath, but that's a big maybe.

 

[takedownca]

Can't offer a better overall solution, but I will note that if you have enough cardboard (12 pieces, specifically), a simple binary search should identify all of the panels in 5 30-minute periods instead of 24. =) First cover half of the panels, then move half of those covers to panels that weren't covered, that'll get the initial group of 24 down to 4 groups of 6. Then within each group of 6 cover half of the panels, now 8 groups of 3. Gets a bit harder to describe from there, the attached picture captures the scheme, and each panel identified by the result of the 5 tests (0 = dark/covered, 1 = light/uncovered). Easier if the panels happened to be in a grid, but even if they're sprawled out you can assign each one of the grid locations, and just ensure you cover/uncover the right ones each time.

View attachment 546998
Edit, cleaned up picture to involve a few less cardboard moves per turn, and let Excel compute the final table rather than doing it manually.

While this sounds like it could work in theory, I don't have faith in my ability to properly shuffle cardboard. Instead of 24 sequential and easy to track moves, this involves 60 (5x12?) coordinated and specific moves - all while precariously bouncing back and forth on my 4-peak roof. Nah

 

[jakestgermain]

While this sounds like it could work in theory, I don't have faith in my ability to properly shuffle cardboard. Instead of 24 sequential and easy to track moves, this involves 60 (5x12?) coordinated and specific moves - all while precariously bouncing back and forth on my 4-peak roof. Nah

Did you hardwire your SE inverter? If not that is alot of work to have Tesla stop sending the information over to the SE servers.

 

[takedownca]

Did you hardwire your SE inverter? If not that is alot of work to have Tesla stop sending the information over to the SE servers.

Not sure what you mean. I haven't connected the ethernet line yet. I'm thinking of using a powerline adapter since fishing a cable through to my garage isn't really feasible. And I'm not trying to get Tesla to "stop sending" info to SE. Like everyone else in this thread has realized, Tesla stopped sending info to SE several months ago. I'm trying to figure out a way to get my inverter to START sending info to SE and for me to figure out the physical layout so I can correlate individual panel data with specific locations on my roof.

 

[TheDon]

I just got my install. My SE inverter has NO display on it to see what going on or to change anything. Ideas on how to even know if all the panels are actually paired?

 

[BrettS]

I just got my install. My SE inverter has NO display on it to see what going on or to change anything. Ideas on how to even know if all the panels are actually paired?

So I’m in pretty much the same situation. My system was just installed with two SE7600H inverters that have no display. This is still a bit of a work in progress and I don’t have access to monitor my system yet, but I think I’m close. Here is what I’ve discovered. Hopefully we can figure this out together.

On Friday I contacted SolarEdge and asked about getting access to their monitoring app. They told me that there is nothing they can do from their end and Tesla would need to provide access for me. I called the Tesla tech support number (877-798-3752) and asked if they could get me access to the SolarEdge monitoring portal. They ran through a script saying that Tesla can provide access, but I’m pretty much on my own with it. Tesla will under no circumstances provide any support for using the SolarEdge monitoring portal. I agreed and they submitted a ticket and gave me the ticket number. They said that the request needed to be approved by a Tesla supervisor and then I would get an email with details about setting up my SolarEdge account. Sure enough, yesterday afternoon I got an email from SolarEdge with a link to click on to set up an account.

I set up the account and downloaded the SolarEdge monitoring app, but unfortunately there was very little data there. I could see my site and my two inverters, but it showed no production at all and no panels connected to the inverters. I called SolarEdge back and they told me that the inverters have never successfully communicated with the SolarEdge servers to report any information. They said to check with Tesla to see why there was no communication. Based on the script that the agent read when I requested the account and the experience of others in this thread I figured I probably wouldn’t really get very far talking to Tesla, so I didn’t even bother to call them back.

I started looking for other options. Others have suggested that running an ethernet cable to the inverter will allow it to bypass the little black gateway box (not to be confused with the large powerwall gateway) and allow the inverters to communicate directly with SolarEdge, so this is what I considered next, however, running an ethernet cable to my inverters will be possible to do, but won’t be particularly fun (I’ll need to run it through my attic which is hot and cramped and just not fun to work in). So I wanted to make sure that this really will be a viable solution before I went through the effort. There were a couple of considerations here:

First, it sounds like the inverter communication might be either the gateway box or ethernet, but not both. Using ethernet will cause the inverters to no longer talk to the gateway box. (Although I did see at least one report of someone who claimed that they were both working at the same time for them.) It also looks like the gateway box is only used to report to the Tesla app if you don’t have powerwalls. I do have powerwalls, so I went ahead and unplugged my gateway box and confirmed that my Tesla app was still working and seeing my solar production being reported in realtime. So it looks like not having the gateway box isn’t going to be an issue for me. If you don’t have powerwalls, then this might be a problem for you.

Next, it sounded like one needed to configure the inverters to use the ethernet cable instead of the zigbee connection to the gateway box. Apparently this is a quick and easy change to make if you have an LCD screen, but it’s not so quick and easy for us with no LCD screen.

Luckily, I happened to be talking to my installers as they were commissioning my inverters and they mentioned that they use a SolarEdge app called “Set App” for the commissioning and configuration of the inverters. I installed Set App on my phone (it’s just in the App Store) to see if I could play around with it and get anywhere. It asks for a username and password and I discovered that my new SolarEdge username and password doesn’t work (It just gives me an error saying that I don’t have permission for this). However, under the username and password box there’s a checkbox that says “View only? Start Here”. If you click on that it will ask you to use the phone camera to scan the QR code on the inverter (in my case there are several QR code’s on the side, but it’s the bigger one at the top that I needed to scan). It then asks me to move the switch on the inverter to the “P” position for a couple of seconds, then my phone asks me to join the inverter’s WiFi network. Once I do that Set App can see the inverter and all of it’s settings. Unfortunately it’s in read only mode so I can’t change anything, but at least I can see the settings and see how it’s configured. It was kind of interesting to look through there to see the configuration options.

However, here is the really cool thing. I also discovered that if you go through all of the above and get Set App connected in read only mode, then (while you’re still connected to the inverter’s WiFi network) you can go to the web browser on your phone and connect directly to the inverter’s IP address. In my case that was 172.16.0.1. When you connect directly to the inverter’s web page like that it would appear that it is not in read only mode and you can actually make changes. (Of course I didn’t go around changing things, but did look through the settings and nothing was greyed out to prevent me from making changes).

Unfortunately it doesn’t look like you can configure the inverter to connect through WiFi (which in my case I would have preferred over running a cable) because when I looked at the WiFi settings when I had connected directly to the inverter it just said “requires Set App to configure WiFi”. However, I was able to access the options to configure ethernet.

It also looked like the communication selection was set to “automatic” so I believe that once I do connect an ethernet cable it may just automatically see it and start using that connection without even having to make any changes on the inverter. But even if changes do need to be made it looks like I can make them by accessing the inverter this way.

I’ll probably wait until this evening to actually run the cable and connect it so I can do it while the attic is cooler and so I’m not interrupting my solar production to open the inverter and connect the cable. Once I do so I’ll post here again and let you know how it goes.

 

[ArizonaJon]

I also have the "new" Solaredge without the LCD screen and two Powerwalls. Since I used a 3rd party installer, I had no problems getting my Solaredge set up using an Ethernet cable. If you don't want to crawl through the attic you could use an Ethernet over power line system (provided both outlets are in the same breaker box).
I believe you will find the Solaredge reads the DC power generated and the Tesla app show the AC power after conversion. My system has been running for about 1 month and the Tesla "Solar Energy" value is on average 95.4% of the Solaredge System Production value. This seems to be an appropriate value for the conversion.

 

[BrettS]

If you don't want to crawl through the attic you could use an Ethernet over power line system (provided both outlets are in the same breaker box).

In my case the inverters are outside and not really close to any outlets. Trying to get something weatherproof and still having to run a cable from the nearest outlet would probably be more work than just running the cable through the attic.

I believe you will find the Solaredge reads the DC power generated and the Tesla app show the AC power after conversion. My system has been running for about 1 month and the Tesla "Solar Energy" value is on average 95.4% of the Solaredge System Production value. This seems to be an appropriate value for the conversion.

That makes sense and that’s inline with what I could see when I was able to connect with Set App. I didn’t figure out the percentage, but the lifetime production that the inverters were reporting was probably somewhere around 5 or 10% more than what the Tesla app was reporting.

 

[willow_hiller]

Following this thread for later...

For the technically minded, there do appear to be some open-source attempts to communicate with the SolarEdge API locally: solaredge-local

Sounds like you can get system and optimizer-level data straight through the API in some circumstances, which would be great to avoid having to deal with SolarEdge logins.

 

[BrettS]

OK, so I have some good news. I got impatient and just decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and run the cables to the inverters. I ran the cables and got them connected and almost immediately data started showing up in my SolarEdge monitoring app. It seemed to be loading in all the historical data first, starting with last Tuesday, the first day the system was powered up, then slowly catching up to today. It took about 30 minutes for all of the data to be loaded for the week it has been running before it started showing the current data. If your system has been running longer it might take even longer to catch up. Although I don’t know how much historical data can be held on the inverters if it’s not able to upload.

I didn’t have to adjust the inverter configuration at all, I just plugged in the ethernet cables and it connected and did it’s thing. I still have my small black gateway box completely disconnected and turned off. I’m not sure that there’s really even a need to have it connected.

So this is what worked for me: I called Tesla support and requested access to the SolarEdge monitoring portal. They submitted a ticket and said that I would be emailed details about how to connect. I made the request on Friday and got the email on Monday, so it was just one business day. After that I could log in, but I had no data in the SolarEdge monitoring app. I then ran an ethernet cable to each of my inverters and they instantly started reporting their data to the SolarEdge servers and I can now see my data, including panel specific production, in the SolarEdge monitoring app.

 

[TheDon]

So I’m in pretty much the same situation. My system was just installed with two SE7600H inverters that have no display. This is still a bit of a work in progress and I don’t have access to monitor my system yet, but I think I’m close. Here is what I’ve discovered. Hopefully we can figure this out together.

On Friday I contacted SolarEdge and asked about getting access to their monitoring app. They told me that there is nothing they can do from their end and Tesla would need to provide access for me. I called the Tesla tech support number (877-798-3752) and asked if they could get me access to the SolarEdge monitoring portal. They ran through a script saying that Tesla can provide access, but I’m pretty much on my own with it. Tesla will under no circumstances provide any support for using the SolarEdge monitoring portal. I agreed and they submitted a ticket and gave me the ticket number. They said that the request needed to be approved by a Tesla supervisor and then I would get an email with details about setting up my SolarEdge account. Sure enough, yesterday afternoon I got an email from SolarEdge with a link to click on to set up an account.

I set up the account and downloaded the SolarEdge monitoring app, but unfortunately there was very little data there. I could see my site and my two inverters, but it showed no production at all and no panels connected to the inverters. I called SolarEdge back and they told me that the inverters have never successfully communicated with the SolarEdge servers to report any information. They said to check with Tesla to see why there was no communication. Based on the script that the agent read when I requested the account and the experience of others in this thread I figured I probably wouldn’t really get very far talking to Tesla, so I didn’t even bother to call them back.

I started looking for other options. Others have suggested that running an ethernet cable to the inverter will allow it to bypass the little black gateway box (not to be confused with the large powerwall gateway) and allow the inverters to communicate directly with SolarEdge, so this is what I considered next, however, running an ethernet cable to my inverters will be possible to do, but won’t be particularly fun (I’ll need to run it through my attic which is hot and cramped and just not fun to work in). So I wanted to make sure that this really will be a viable solution before I went through the effort. There were a couple of considerations here:

First, it sounds like the inverter communication might be either the gateway box or ethernet, but not both. Using ethernet will cause the inverters to no longer talk to the gateway box. (Although I did see at least one report of someone who claimed that they were both working at the same time for them.) It also looks like the gateway box is only used to report to the Tesla app if you don’t have powerwalls. I do have powerwalls, so I went ahead and unplugged my gateway box and confirmed that my Tesla app was still working and seeing my solar production being reported in realtime. So it looks like not having the gateway box isn’t going to be an issue for me. If you don’t have powerwalls, then this might be a problem for you.

Next, it sounded like one needed to configure the inverters to use the ethernet cable instead of the zigbee connection to the gateway box. Apparently this is a quick and easy change to make if you have an LCD screen, but it’s not so quick and easy for us with no LCD screen.

Luckily, I happened to be talking to my installers as they were commissioning my inverters and they mentioned that they use a SolarEdge app called “Set App” for the commissioning and configuration of the inverters. I installed Set App on my phone (it’s just in the App Store) to see if I could play around with it and get anywhere. It asks for a username and password and I discovered that my new SolarEdge username and password doesn’t work (It just gives me an error saying that I don’t have permission for this). However, under the username and password box there’s a checkbox that says “View only? Start Here”. If you click on that it will ask you to use the phone camera to scan the QR code on the inverter (in my case there are several QR code’s on the side, but it’s the bigger one at the top that I needed to scan). It then asks me to move the switch on the inverter to the “P” position for a couple of seconds, then my phone asks me to join the inverter’s WiFi network. Once I do that Set App can see the inverter and all of it’s settings. Unfortunately it’s in read only mode so I can’t change anything, but at least I can see the settings and see how it’s configured. It was kind of interesting to look through there to see the configuration options.

However, here is the really cool thing. I also discovered that if you go through all of the above and get Set App connected in read only mode, then (while you’re still connected to the inverter’s WiFi network) you can go to the web browser on your phone and connect directly to the inverter’s IP address. In my case that was 172.16.0.1. When you connect directly to the inverter’s web page like that it would appear that it is not in read only mode and you can actually make changes. (Of course I didn’t go around changing things, but did look through the settings and nothing was greyed out to prevent me from making changes).

Unfortunately it doesn’t look like you can configure the inverter to connect through WiFi (which in my case I would have preferred over running a cable) because when I looked at the WiFi settings when I had connected directly to the inverter it just said “requires Set App to configure WiFi”. However, I was able to access the options to configure ethernet.

It also looked like the communication selection was set to “automatic” so I believe that once I do connect an ethernet cable it may just automatically see it and start using that connection without even having to make any changes on the inverter. But even if changes do need to be made it looks like I can make them by accessing the inverter this way.

I’ll probably wait until this evening to actually run the cable and connect it so I can do it while the attic is cooler and so I’m not interrupting my solar production to open the inverter and connect the cable. Once I do so I’ll post here again and let you know how it goes.

That helped a LOT! Found that only one string was found. Followed the YouTube video about pairing and now both strings are up and running.

 

[BrettS]

That helped a LOT! Found that only one string was found. Followed the YouTube video about pairing and now both strings are up and running.

Great. I’m glad it was helpful

 

[ElectricCyclist]

OK, so I have some good news. I got impatient and just decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and run the cables to the inverters. I ran the cables and got them connected and almost immediately data started showing up in my SolarEdge monitoring app. It seemed to be loading in all the historical data first, starting with last Tuesday, the first day the system was powered up, then slowly catching up to today. It took about 30 minutes for all of the data to be loaded for the week it has been running before it started showing the current data. If your system has been running longer it might take even longer to catch up. Although I don’t know how much historical data can be held on the inverters if it’s not able to upload.

I didn’t have to adjust the inverter configuration at all, I just plugged in the ethernet cables and it connected and did it’s thing. I still have my small black gateway box completely disconnected and turned off. I’m not sure that there’s really even a need to have it connected.

So this is what worked for me: I called Tesla support and requested access to the SolarEdge monitoring portal. They submitted a ticket and said that I would be emailed details about how to connect. I made the request on Friday and got the email on Monday, so it was just one business day. After that I could log in, but I had no data in the SolarEdge monitoring app. I then ran an ethernet cable to each of my inverters and they instantly started reporting their data to the SolarEdge servers and I can now see my data, including panel specific production, in the SolarEdge monitoring app.

That is great news I will call Tesla tomorrow to get myself access to the Solar Edge Monitoring app and then run ethernet to my inverter maybe sometime next week. Like yourself I am not liking the idea of going into the attic to run cables but I do want more data .

 

[miimura]

Powerline Ethernet bridges are a good way to get an Ethernet connection near your inverter(s).

 

[BrettS]

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.

 

[takedownca]

Powerline Ethernet bridges are a good way to get an Ethernet connection near your inverter(s).

Outlets/space are scarce by my router, so I'm going to try using a wifi range extender with ethernet port. In theory this will be easier than a 2-part powerline system. Will let everyone know how it goes once it's installed. Hopefully I don't have any issues with getting the blank cover plate off the inverter and adjusting config.

 

[ArizonaJon]

Outlets/space are scarce by my router, so I'm going to try using a wifi range extender with ethernet port. In theory this will be easier than a 2-part powerline system. Will let everyone know how it goes once it's installed. Hopefully I don't have any issues with getting the blank cover plate off the inverter and adjusting config.

I just used a cheap bridge to increase the number of ports. In my case I had one Ethernet jack in the garage and needed 2, one for the Solaredge and one for the TEG. Switches are cheaper and very reliable. No concern about signal strength.

 

[takedownca]

I just used a cheap bridge to increase the number of ports. In my case I had one Ethernet jack in the garage and needed 2, one for the Solaredge and one for the TEG. Switches are cheaper and very reliable. No concern about signal strength.

I meant power outlets are scarce, not ethernet ports. I have an extra port or two on my GB switch. But I already have half a dozen devices plugged in a tight in-wall compartment. So I can't readily fit another wall-wart or even outlet expansion/powerstrip.