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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 a

> 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...
- starspangled 2y ago
  Your system sounds great, but it's not that I can't picture a situation where telemetry would be useful. It's that you can't picture people who just don't care that much to. Basic status indicators and warnings in the form of lights on the side of the box, sure. Online telemetry and emails? Few people care. They'll use an app that draws graphs about a grand total of 4 times after they buy the system, and that's about the extent of it.
lazide 2y ago
It’s impossible to tell you have a problem unless it’s really bad by doing that. Down 20% due to a problem with a panel? Good luck noticing unless it’s on fire.
- starspangled 2y ago
  Neverthless...

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...

starspangled 2y ago
Your system sounds great, but it's not that I can't picture a situation where telemetry would be useful. It's that you can't picture people who just don't care that much to. Basic status indicators and warnings in the form of lights on the side of the box, sure. Online telemetry and emails? Few people care. They'll use an app that draws graphs about a grand total of 4 times after they buy the system, and that's about the extent of it.

lazide 2y ago

It’s impossible to tell you have a problem unless it’s really bad by doing that. Down 20% due to a problem with a panel? Good luck noticing unless it’s on fire.

starspangled 2y ago
Neverthless...