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Why would you not want to see how your solar system runs? You can’t easily verify that it’s actually generating energy as you expect it to if you don’t look at

Why would you not want to see how your solar system runs? You can’t easily verify that it’s actually generating energy as you expect it to if you don’t look at the data

CoastalCoder 2y ago
I think the distinction here is how the data are made available to the owner. E.g., it could have an embedded web server accessible only on the owner's local network, a local display panel, some USB thingy, etc.
- justsid 2y ago
  Yeah it could, but users don’t want to manage that sort of thing. People want flashy apps. I’m perfectly happy to manage my own house and run everything through Home Assistant strictly locally. But I know for a fact that this is something that eg. my in-laws would never ever want to have to do.
- Bender 2y ago
  I think the distinction here is how the data are made available to the owner. Agreed. I do not believe a web server is even required for telemetry / stats. I have inverters and power conditioners going back 15+ years that have menus that display ASCII text. Yeah, I have to up / down / left / right a bit and the screens are annoyingly small, but I get columns of numbers that are trivial to read. Some of the really old equipment require decoding numbers from a PDF off the website and some of the commercial proprietary gear may require a document paywalled behind a service tech but even that old stuff does not require a web server. Modern inverters well most of them have massive screens that can make reading this info trivial without a web browser EG4, growatt, etc... I think it just requires more potential buyers and inverter owners to call up the company and request feature enhancements bigger screens, easier menus. Tell them you don't want dependency on Wifi, Internet, Cloud, Phone garbage. Even better get YT influencers to call them up. [1] Just a simple to read menu that the owner and local service tech can read. Just me personally, I would also like to have options for an API to query from a trusted device and/or SNMP and the ability to define a syslog target or two for alerts. Even my Brother Laserjet has SNMP. I use that to detect power outages uptime via SNMP. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/WillProwse/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/WillProwse/videos [youtuber videos][DIY solar setups][HN member]
starspangled 2y ago
> Why would you not want to see how your solar system runs? You can’t easily verify that it’s actually generating energy as you expect it to if you don’t look at the data You do see how it runs, you look in the sky and see the sun shining, maybe see a few LEDs on the side of a box, and see your electricity usage is lower / cheaper. As to why people don't want to spend hours digging into "telemetry" and things of their appliances, that could be a difficult thing to explain to nerds who do like to. I know people who wire up all sorts of monitors and ride their bike and calculate and graph how many watts they are producing and amount of oxygen their lungs are taking in blah blah. Other people just ride their bike to get to work.
- Syonyk 2y ago
  I can give you a concrete example of why I have my inverters connected to a network. And I'm pretty damned hostile to network connected things in the first place... I built my solar array myself - a big ground mount array, string inverters[0]. This went fine, and then a few years later, I started getting arc fault warnings. These were intermittent, but the inverter would respond by shutting down entirely, then gradually ramping power back up. In the heat of summer, it would often then arc fault again and shut down. However, it ran fine for the morning, and most of the afternoon. The power cuts were sometimes dramatic, sometimes less than noticeable. But it was faulting out. Because I'd set up monitoring, I started getting emails about these events, and was able to run them down. Had I just been monitoring aggregate power use, I may very well have not noticed these. The inverters were somewhat less than helpful ("Arc Fault String A" means "Arc fault somewhere on the DC side"), and it took more than a bit of troubleshooting to run this down[1]. Eventually, thermal imaging made the problems clear - and, yes, there were real problems I was able to resolve[2]. Turns out, the panels I got cheap were a weird little niche of panels for a reason. Without monitoring, I have no idea how long it would have taken for me to find this problem. I found another problem in my system (a bad connection in another panel leading to 1/3rd of the panel not producing any output) through thermal imaging, so that was useful. But "Ensuring your solar inverters are doing what you want, without errors," is worth a good bit in a complicated system that may have 50 or 100 distinct connections, if not more, each one prone to potential problems. [0]: https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar2020/ https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar2020/ [1]: https://www.sevarg.net/2022/07/16/sma-sunny-boy-arc-fault-troubleshooting/ https://www.sevarg.net/2022/07/16/sma-sunny-boy-arc-fault-tr... [2]: https://www.sevarg.net/2022/07/31/journey-to-the-center-of-the-junction-box/ https://www.sevarg.net/2022/07/31/journey-to-the-center-of-t...
lm28469 2y ago
Not everyone is on the spectrum and think life should be lived as a big factorio game
- justsid 2y ago
  It's just really hard to see whether your solar install actually generates any power since it's free of moving parts. Solar installs are one of the few areas where data isn't just a gimmick but actually crucial to efficiently run them. But hey, I'm sure just people on the spectrum want to save on their energy bill with their investment into solar, everyone else just installs it for the cool looks.

Why would you not want to see how your solar system runs? You can’t easily verify that it’s actually generating energy as you expect it to if you don’t look at the data

CoastalCoder 2y ago

I think the distinction here is how the data are made available to the owner. E.g., it could have an embedded web server accessible only on the owner's local network, a local display panel, some USB thingy, etc.

justsid 2y ago
Yeah it could, but users don’t want to manage that sort of thing. People want flashy apps. I’m perfectly happy to manage my own house and run everything through Home Assistant strictly locally. But I know for a fact that this is something that eg. my in-laws would never ever want to have to do.
Bender 2y ago
I think the distinction here is how the data are made available to the owner. Agreed. I do not believe a web server is even required for telemetry / stats. I have inverters and power conditioners going back 15+ years that have menus that display ASCII text. Yeah, I have to up / down / left / right a bit and the screens are annoyingly small, but I get columns of numbers that are trivial to read. Some of the really old equipment require decoding numbers from a PDF off the website and some of the commercial proprietary gear may require a document paywalled behind a service tech but even that old stuff does not require a web server. Modern inverters well most of them have massive screens that can make reading this info trivial without a web browser EG4, growatt, etc... I think it just requires more potential buyers and inverter owners to call up the company and request feature enhancements bigger screens, easier menus. Tell them you don't want dependency on Wifi, Internet, Cloud, Phone garbage. Even better get YT influencers to call them up. [1] Just a simple to read menu that the owner and local service tech can read. Just me personally, I would also like to have options for an API to query from a trusted device and/or SNMP and the ability to define a syslog target or two for alerts. Even my Brother Laserjet has SNMP. I use that to detect power outages uptime via SNMP. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/WillProwse/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/WillProwse/videos [youtuber videos][DIY solar setups][HN member]

starspangled 2y ago

> Why would you not want to see how your solar system runs? You can’t easily verify that it’s actually generating energy as you expect it to if you don’t look at the data You do see how it runs, you look in the sky and see the sun shining, maybe see a few LEDs on the side of a box, and see your electricity usage is lower / cheaper. As to why people don't want to spend hours digging into "telemetry" and things of their appliances, that could be a difficult thing to explain to nerds who do like to. I know people who wire up all sorts of monitors and ride their bike and calculate and graph how many watts they are producing and amount of oxygen their lungs are taking in blah blah. Other people just ride their bike to get to work.

Syonyk 2y ago
I can give you a concrete example of why I have my inverters connected to a network. And I'm pretty damned hostile to network connected things in the first place... I built my solar array myself - a big ground mount array, string inverters[0]. This went fine, and then a few years later, I started getting arc fault warnings. These were intermittent, but the inverter would respond by shutting down entirely, then gradually ramping power back up. In the heat of summer, it would often then arc fault again and shut down. However, it ran fine for the morning, and most of the afternoon. The power cuts were sometimes dramatic, sometimes less than noticeable. But it was faulting out. Because I'd set up monitoring, I started getting emails about these events, and was able to run them down. Had I just been monitoring aggregate power use, I may very well have not noticed these. The inverters were somewhat less than helpful ("Arc Fault String A" means "Arc fault somewhere on the DC side"), and it took more than a bit of troubleshooting to run this down[1]. Eventually, thermal imaging made the problems clear - and, yes, there were real problems I was able to resolve[2]. Turns out, the panels I got cheap were a weird little niche of panels for a reason. Without monitoring, I have no idea how long it would have taken for me to find this problem. I found another problem in my system (a bad connection in another panel leading to 1/3rd of the panel not producing any output) through thermal imaging, so that was useful. But "Ensuring your solar inverters are doing what you want, without errors," is worth a good bit in a complicated system that may have 50 or 100 distinct connections, if not more, each one prone to potential problems. [0]: https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar2020/ https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar2020/ [1]: https://www.sevarg.net/2022/07/16/sma-sunny-boy-arc-fault-troubleshooting/ https://www.sevarg.net/2022/07/16/sma-sunny-boy-arc-fault-tr... [2]: https://www.sevarg.net/2022/07/31/journey-to-the-center-of-the-junction-box/ https://www.sevarg.net/2022/07/31/journey-to-the-center-of-t...

lm28469 2y ago

Not everyone is on the spectrum and think life should be lived as a big factorio game

justsid 2y ago
It's just really hard to see whether your solar install actually generates any power since it's free of moving parts. Solar installs are one of the few areas where data isn't just a gimmick but actually crucial to efficiently run them. But hey, I'm sure just people on the spectrum want to save on their energy bill with their investment into solar, everyone else just installs it for the cool looks.