Monitoring a solar power system

The Monitoring Experts

Greg Sheridan and Glen Anderson have implemented a solar power system a their home lab in Sydney, Australia. Their system includes 400W solar panels with microinverters (which essentially lets them monitor each panel separately) and a Tesla Powerwall.

But what metrics are they monitoring? Greig and Glen differentiate between health status metrics, which indicate the status of the different components of the solar power system, and operational metrics, which help them optimize their power consumption on a day-to-day basis. And they also describe how their monitoring helped them make their service provider aware of a general problem.
You can find more information about how Greig and Glen monitor their solar power system at Greig's blog: Greig in Sydney

Specifically of interest are these articles:

• Get-PowerWallData.py
• Get-EnphaseData.py
• Get-EnphaseProduction.py

Other notes from our discussion:

• We also monitor the solar panels here at Paessler HQ - You wouldn't believe what we've learned in one year after installing a PV system on our roof
• Simon's article about monitoring his Davis weather station - How to keep track of the weather with PRTG

Do you have a monitoring question for us, or just general feedback about the podcast? Let us know:

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Get in touch on Twitter: @monitoringxpert
Website: themonitoringexperts.com
Visit the Paessler blog for more from the monitoring experts.

Let us know your monitoring use cases, ask us a monitoring question, or just give us general feedback about the podcast:

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Get in touch on Twitter: @monitoringxpert
Website: themonitoringexperts.com
Visit the Paessler blog for more from the monitoring experts.

Chapter

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. Greig and Glen's home setup and their solar power system (00:03:05)

3. Health status and operational monitoring metrics (00:09:36)

4. How monitoring helps uncover problems with the solar power system (00:13:40)

5. Access to monitoring data over APIs (00:15:33)

6. Making use of monitoring notifications (00:19:19)