Solarguard box

[bmah]

About 10 years ago I bought a 5.8kW system from Solar City (long before they were acquired by Tesla). It came with a little "Solarguard" box, which gets solar production statistics wirelessly from the inverter (a Fronius IG Plus) and pushed them to some server at Tesla Energy so I could view them on a Web portal. I think this is similar to what a Tesla Solar Gateway does today.

Fast forward to today, where Solar City is now a part of Tesla, and it appears the Solar City Web portal doesn't even work anymore. I now have a set of 3 Powerwalls, and can monitor solar production through the Tesla gateway and Tesla app.

Anybody know if there's any reason to keep that Solarguard box on my network? It's still doing periodic connections to some Solar City server running Microsoft IIS (over unencrypted HTTP, ugh).

Thanks,

Bruce.

PS. I did try asking Tesla Energy support...no response to my email beyond the autoresponder.

 

[jjrandorin]

That box is used by tesla to connect to the inverters directly, both for statistics and firmware updates (if any). If you remove it, and a neighbor has a solar city / tesla install, your inverters will connect to that one instead. They just connect to the closest little gateway box, no matter if its "yours" or not.

I have first hand experience with exactly this scenario as my inverters are connecting to my neighbors "little box" even though I have one. You can move your box closer etc, but it will just connect to whichever one has the strongest signal, and its just for data / firmware updates.

If you remove it and dont have a powerrwall on that network, then you wont get data. If that system does have a powerwall, then you have all the data you need. Tesla might contact you if you remove it, if you dont have a neighbor with one of those gateways it can just jump onto.

 

[SMAlset]

Try calling the support number later in the afternoon (3-4pm) and explain your box went out. We've had better luck with less time on hold reaching an advisor then. I was under the impression as part of maintenance of the system that they would come out and replace or update equipment as needed and would think they would just upgrade your box to the black gateway box for the solar monitoring.

 

[boaterva]

That box is used by tesla to connect to the inverters directly, both for statistics and firmware updates (if any). If you remove it, and a neighbor has a solar city / tesla install, your inverters will connect to that one instead. They just connect to the closest little gateway box, no matter if its "yours" or not.

I have first hand experience with exactly this scenario as my inverters are connecting to my neighbors "little box" even though I have one. You can move your box closer etc, but it will just connect to whichever one has the strongest signal, and its just for data / firmware updates.

If you remove it and dont have a powerrwall on that network, then you wont get data. If that system does have a powerwall, then you have all the data you need. Tesla might contact you if you remove it, if you dont have a neighbor with one of those gateways it can just jump onto.

This is my understanding also. Even with PWs you still need the ‘little gateway’ for inverter connectivity (back to the Solar Edge mothership) for diagnostics etc.

 

[jboy210]

Hi Bruce,

We have data from both the TEG for powerwalls and a separate box square transceiver for our Delta M series inverters. I see traffic from both running through my router.

Jerry

 

[bmah]

Thanks all for your thoughts. I guess I'll leave this thing on the network for now (like almost all of my IOT devices it's on a separate VLAN / subnet). Going to continue trying to get some official word from Tesla (I'll try calling them as suggested by @SMAlset).

Just to make it clear, there's no specific problem, but I was just thinking if there's no purpose to this device (i.e. if the data being collected is just being dropped on the floor on the Tesla Energy side because it's a legacy Solar City install, or for whatever reason) then there's no reason for it to be sending data on my network either.

Bruce.

 

[bmah]

Follow-up: I got a reply back from Tesla Energy support on Thursday. They basically said the same thing as you-all did, they want me to leave it in place to get production figures. I was hoping I could get rid of another IOT box on my network, but oh well.

Bruce.

 

[jjrandorin]

Follow-up: I got a reply back from Tesla Energy support on Thursday. They basically said the same thing as you-all did, they want me to leave it in place to get production figures. I was hoping I could get rid of another IOT box on my network, but oh well.

Bruce.

Thanks for the follow up, @bmah