Installing a home energy monitoring and reporting system on Dave's home solar power system.
The 3G based wireless Connect 23 from Solar Analytics:
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Hi, it's time for another solar video. I've done many videos on my at home solar power system here so I'll link in a playlist thing here. so check out all my solar power videos. One thing I have not had on this system for like the two or three years of Heather's installed is consumption data for my house and you can buy a little Dickie consumption units from JK and you can hook them out of the Pv Output dot Org website which is what I typically use to log my data here, but a company called Solar Analytics they're an Australian company we're kind enough to.

You won't contact me and say hey would you like one of these our Whiz-bang So monitoring system so thank you very much Solar Analytics It they're going to write their few minutes just install this thing so we'll have a quick check out first. and what it does is that it not only logs your house consumption data, but it also logs your solar production as well. And and it ties in your website. This is a 3G model so it actually has a SIM card.

Talks back to the system. They've got an online plan and things like that so that you can actually track and log all your data and it can make predictions about what's going to happen in the future and all sorts of stuff. So really excited to check this thing out and actually get even more data because I Love getting data from my solar system. it's awesome! So this is the SC 23 Solar Smart Monitor and they do have a Wi-Fi version as well, but I was recommended the 3G version.

so they've supplied this and will install it parently. It's a real simple install so we won't go into details on that. But yeah, let's go. And here's the SC 23 unit, which we're going to install today.

It's actually a three phase one, hence: I l1 l2 l3 We've got our 3G antenna here and hopefully it works inside my metal box because I've got I'm not in the best reception area here. it's a helicopter gallon overhead and then we've got three. But my house is only a single-phase system of course. so we can actually use multiple channels to measure other things.

So if you've got like a hole like a hot water system for example, you could hook that up to one of the phases. So there's going to be our current transformers with this and voltage as well as powered. It hasn't got batteries inside so it's powered from the line. and yeah, we're just going to install this now and hook it up.

I'm not sure what ones we're actually what lines were going to hook it up to, but we've got. We'll be able to collect up three channels of data anyway, and it does log it internally at five second intervals I believe and then sends it out bursts via the 3G and you can set that up into software and things like that. and you get the current transformers in the box. actually.

here they are so we get three of those. We just strap those over so you don't have to wire it in series. It's just a current transformer so you can pick it up. It's so really simple and quite safe to install.
Although we do have an electrician here today. they kindly sent one over to install it. and today here is the diagram for the single phase system. So I've got a net me that so we're going to put one here onto the load so that'll be the whole house load here and then the ones for the solar supply so we can get our work consumption data and then we can hook a third channel up to something else.

I Don't know. I've got gas hot water here, so I don't really need that? Channel but I don't knows. Maybe you look it up to the lights or something and log your lights separately to your powerpoints? perhaps? Hmm. actually just remembered.

Um, I've got two air conditioners at home, so in theory we could hook that third auxilary channel up to the air cons. but I Don't think that the current transformer is big enough. You could in theory put both wires for both air cons through there to get the total aircon consumption. I'm not sure if they fit.

maybe there will. What do you think? Alex Oh yes they will. Yeah, Small, no. All right now it's noisy.

Game circuits 2.5 mils all the fit 2 in there. Yep, something new for me. Excellent. Oh He hasn't done it before.

Alright thanks guys. So here with Alex he's going to install it for us. say hi Alex hi Alex and we have to get enclosure first and then we're gonna whack it in. He has not done one with a dual air con through the same current transformer.

have you? No, not yet. Well first time for everything. First time for everything. It should work because the current will be will will generate.

You know, extra magnetic field in the current transformer. it's going through so it should work relatively. You have one wire going through or multiple ones. So there you go.

That's the back of my fuse box. for those playing along the time. it's a compliant fuse block. Sees, this is it.

Alex Yes, it would be relatively new today. Yes, yeah. In in what way wouldn't it comply? What way, wouldn't let them? Yeah, if it was a bad one, why don't all? The first thing you look at is the incoming mines that has to be double insulated all the way inside that hole There got it? If it's not, then the earth wire that goes to the frame will have to be 16 mil and it isn't this pocket about 6. 3.

Ah, ok squad. Ok and you've got 2 metres yes, electronic later to electronic meters yes Allah and one general consumption. Yeah, that's correct. Yep, and you're good.

Yeah, you got a Zellweger relay to turn on the hot water, but ah, we don't. Yes, we don't. We have guest hot water. Yes, there you go.

So big so we don't need to hook that up today. No, an interesting point. I don't think uh I wouldn't be allowed to take that off I can write active material in it and that has to be disposed over the done by AB who you intend ever so I Think Endeavour I'll have to do that. Really, it's not like they only drive it out a few weeks ago.
Wow I Don't know why. like you smoke detector in your hassle. have a bit of it. Yeah, it does this small bill that? yes, yep.

but wisely, you can throw them away in the vineyard. Small life I Suppose I don't know that's not uranium. So right if you turn the light so get off which I just did. that means you control it will turn off right? So we're powering the controller from the light circuit.

Yeah, that's that. That's possibly written on your little yep I think I might be the document. Yeah, there it is. Some other situations.

Yep, we can utilize a our own control breaker if we can't fit the stuff in there. Got it? Look, if we needed to put this a bit remote, you're not allowed to have it be live by itself. He's not supposed to be able to switch it off here so we could work on it. Here's our current transformer.

It's 60 amps, although I'm told it's a linear up to about 75 so for the full, presumably for 60. Erm. so we're gonna get 80 milliamps out of it one percent. Um, I Think the whole system is expected that roughly one percent or thereabout.

So what you know, it's fairly accurate. We're just talking about the panel. Some of them are made out of asbestos. and yeah, we've got to wear a special.

You use a special vacuum? Yes, right? Yeah, Nasty. Sure, there's lots of regulations. You'd probably think it's stinky I think it's alright. No.

I think it smells good, huh? Yes, you've done too many of them. Alex I've got to ask what is your multimeter of choice? Well, it would be a flute, but here I'm just using a Jake Oh, you're not using a Jake Yeah, there's a DC Tong Emma Do I get 40 or 400 amps actually? Yep, but ordinarily you'd Harry have a fluke with you I have a fluke yes and I've used another. What's a Brahmin yeah? Brian Tronic I Think yes I resell a Brahmin half-decent me than the Romans Yes, that's how I use it home for electronics. Excellent.

I Don't take that to work. So your hobbyist, you do electronics at home? Yes. Awesome. All totally old time.

What's our the stuff? Telugu hull and valve amplifiers and guitar effects and things like that? Nice. Haven't really mucked around with a SMD component. Yeah well. this newfangled surface-mount rubbish.

Well, I don't know. I do it on needs I made the sucker and the reflow station and I'm not I'm a tired ass I'm not willing to I really stock with all the gear. awesome at some of the gear. I fix I Haven't been all the fix lately.

some Roland amplifiers and things because miniaturized components getting down to like computer chip stuff and I'm sorry. Oh I don't know if they designed that for someone to fix it I they didn't I'm not good enough to fault find that in Rick enough time. Yep, don't blame you buddy Jill the screen buddy blah blah blah but yeah, you should get a try. Gold s you know, 10:54 zero or something like that.
but nothing off the old tricky dicky analog scope. ill we won't be getting any more of them. Will be repackaged. No.

I don't think so. No. And it looks like we are able to put the current transform of those two wires up. There are the ones that go to the aircon circuit breakers there.

so we should be able to put both of those wires through that one current transformer and log both air conditioners separate. Awesome! So I'll show you that. There we go. There's the yeah, the aircon circuit breakers there and we've got one for the main part of a house, another one for the bedrooms and total of that's my main breaker of course.

I'm coming in for the whole house. 60 / 80 amps I guess 60 amps, continuous ad peak or something. huh? Here we go. It's starting to look good.

There we go. It's just done a good job, squeezed it in and there's some times you can't like there's no room left on the panel or somebody's been a dick. and they've installed things too sparsely. and yes, and then it'll have to start modifying.

You'll have to be moving these. You'll have to be turning the main supply off. Yeah, and moving stuff. but it gets harder when there's labels as well.

But right? Yes, you, you're gonna try. We've never had a time we can't do it, but we've said oh, it's an hour yeah and I know it's not right. So my mine's pretty chock-a-block now. I Don't think I can fit much else in here.

Yeah, and of course the old meters still installed up there, but it's not operational since they installed the solar meters that you've seen the Solar net metering system. and as you've seen in a previous video, this meter here actually shows what I'm exporting to the grid. 70 is seven, double, six, nine kilowatt hours. There we go.

And this shows what I've actually generated from my panels. And so this will be because any energy during the day that I use in the house, it gets used from here. it won't be exported so that's only the excess which I don't use. So Alex was just saying that you install are the Sonny Boy SMI inverters.

are they the best? pretty much the bishop we install them pretty much exclusively rise of their reliability. We've done them in schools and government organizations and things and we've had I've replaced a few little chips in them and we've had about to go out. and I've been here seven years. 0.10 mon house got it.

So you actually do a component level repair on those you can. the hazard little baby chip. yeah like one of those what the name for these? We go just for the little tool. Okay, just drop it straight into the zero insertion.

that would be the EEPROM Oh yeah, yeah, II promise. Okay, you just upgrade the firmware in yes and stuff. Okay, so that's one fault and then another couple internal faults which we're under warranty so they were quite good about it. Alright, I so the actual EEPROM itself would fail causing a K1 relay hunt, so it's hunting for the grid all the time.
Interesting. Okay, Wow plugged on our current transformers and the good thing about the current transformers is that you can put them on any channel because they're not set. you can just change it in software setup. So beauty.

Here we go. We're installed. We got one current current transformer, another one for the aircon right there, and one for the main up there, which of course will the output from that which will go positive and negative depending on whether or not I'm are using I'm importing power or I'm exporting power to the grid. so I can handle that.

And there we go. We're installed the SC 23. Good job Alex and we've got Vishnu good. He's actually a viewer.

Yes, yes, awesome. And he watches and he's gonna set it up for me. So let's take a look at at how at that. Some of the data will actually explain some of the data that you have to put in to actually set this thing up.

Okay for the in way that we have to select the type of inverter. so the make and model. Yep. so you've got a huge database of every inverter? Yep.

and we've got all the parameters so we can work out the efficiencies and so on. Mm-hmm So be witness of a murder and that's rated at AA 3 kilowatt inverter? Yep. Yep, Yep. Sonny Boy Yep - yo - or something.

Jeez, you got them all. Yeah. I Had to put in a few. All right.

And you've put in my exact solar panel model number as well. So you've got a huge database of all. Yeah, because they're there. They're all a different solar panel you've got in your database.

Awesome! So you've enter. So behind that is the technical parameters for each solar panel. Yes, well, voltages, currents, and so on. And you were telling me that you can get this solar insolation data as well.

So that comes from. Where are they come from the Bureau of Meteorology right? So then they don't have a couple of sites in Sydney I Guess with the insulation data? Yep. and we also do I'm near site analysis so we can look at new sites. the insulation data from that right and we can work out what it should be approximately here.

Now one thing I'm wondering is how this 3G wireless thing works inside and earth? Yes. Faraday Cage. Look, it's like it's surrounded but been assured that they still work. So go figure.

They do have an external int in our option available if it doesn't but hmm, we has it connected. it's connected. Woohoo! Zips opera account and they're gonna give me an installer account which is awesome so we can get extra technical info which is great. Here we go.

We got data coming through I've closed the box. Is it still coming through? What's the burst period every 30 seconds? every 30 seconds? I Go wait 30 seconds. I'll get back here. Alright, so it's a couple of days later and so I got some data I couldn't do anything with it straight away.
and here's the dashboard that I can go do I Can access this through my phone as well as any web browser, a tablet, or any thing like that. And here's my production. Today it was an extremely overcast day. In fact, the last couple of days we've had bad smoke pollution here in Sydney due to back burning and things like that, so it's pretty terrible.

But this is the main dashboard page. Here's a live maunder. It's currently at 5:51 p.m. Yes, it is, and you can see that there.

So obviously the Sun has set my panels aren't quit about. Actually, we'll be able to see it. So what we can look at here as we can look at our production which is our energy production. And bingo, this is actually today we can look at yesterday and the day before was pretty terrible.

Here we go. Here's a more typical our profile. This was the first day it was installed. no hang on, it was installed on the Thursday So 3:15 p.m.

that's when it started to die and you can sexually see a little bit of ramping down there that's rather interesting, like a staircase type waveform. Not exactly sure why it's doing that, but that's that's interesting nonetheless. You can look into it, but you can see when we installed it, it had just dropped off the cliff here and we're just looking at that the day before this. so this was my first full day's worth of data.

And of course, this curve exactly matches the one I get from my Sonny-boy inverter. So I can show you that as well. So here's my PV Output dot Org website. You've actually seen that before.

This is all my publicly available data. You can actually have a look at my solar system on here and we can go into a day it hasn't been working for the last a couple of weeks, which is weird. I've got a problem with the PV bean-counter software that I use and the Bluetooth connection. It's really Dicky Anyway, we can go into, say, a typical day.

Oh, by the way, you can actually see it. This is like a daily thing. You see it slowly dropping as we come towards winter. Here, it's not quite winter yet, but you can see the output slowly dropping and then we can have a look at it weekly data and there we go.

You can probably see it's slowly starting to go off and then that's the monthly. If you're interested in that, you can see the cycles winter June here so that they're the minimums and then the peak obviously around November December something like that in summertime and yearly as well since I've had it installed. if you're interested in that. Anyway, let's go have a look at the daily one and we can.

Let's pick a really good day. this one. twelve kilowatts. there we go and it's basically the same graph that we saw before.

It's exactly the same bit. Of course this maybe had certain. this obviously has some like clouds coming over and things like that and so it's a bit more ripoli like. This production dropped off at a later time.
This was like three or four weeks ago, so it dropped off at three. What is it? 3:50 p.m. where as you can see, it's now dropping off like a rock. this is Judy While shading on my panel is caused by Maya the house next door.

They're like them up on a slope and they've got a big double storey house and it in the middle of winter, it's really quite horrid. So now you can see it dropping off at about 3:00 p.m. so that's a good confirmation that it's working. We're getting the production data.

Everything's hunky-dory so that's the power produced daily on my solar panel. but which I already had that data coming from my Sun my inverter. But what we've got now is we've got the consumption data now and this is great. We can actually have a look.

Here's here's the data for today. It's currently almost 6 p.m. and you can see that during the night 12 a.m. where we're sleeping, you can see some data down here.

This is like that'd be like the fridge turning off and on. For example, overnight, we've got two fridges so a couple of fridges turning off and on there and you can see my the wife obviously got up. but what was it? I Can see at 7:00 a.m. or something like that turned something on the true one point six kilowatts I'm not sure what and then a couple of three kilowatt pigs might have put the dishwasher on perhaps or something like that so it's got to heat up the water so it's got to produce the three kilowatts.

We typically put that in the morning so we can use our solar power and then she obviously went out for part of the day and then pop back in around about just after lunchtime and then when again picked up Sagan from school for example and then didn't get back on till 5:00 p.m. There you go, so we can that you can. Actually here's the power of the data and possibly one of the reasons why a company like Google bought NIST for that ridiculous four billion dollars. a nest is like going down the toilet.

but yet they paid a ridiculous four billion dollars and so potentially for that silly thermostat thing you know, internet-of-things thermostat and the smoke alarm that they had. Ridiculous. Anyway, so that you can actually get data like this and this data is useful to utility companies and things like that has worth, you can actually, you know all that. Big Data Stuff is quite valuable, so if you actually put your tinfoil hat on there, then you know the government can track you and things like that.

When all this live data is available though, they know when you're home, they know when you're out and all that sort of jazz. But yeah, hmm. maybe we can actually go back to another day here and you can actually see. here's that good day.

You can see the yellow one, unfortunately it's scaled and you can't Unfortunately, rescale this thing. It would have been nice to like drag the scale and things like that and just go. You know, drag the mouse and go I Want to see between there and there, but unfortunately you can only see a single day here which is a bit disappointing. but it does auto scale this y-axes here so if we looked at the data just here, it would have scaled it right up and you see the yellow.
One of course is the is the production and then the purple is the consumption and then the brown is the mix of those two in there. So we can actually see and at their breakdown we can see for the last seven days consumed eleven point eight kilowatts our of my solar energy produced and thirteen point one kilowatt hours I didn't use so I didn't take advantage of that and exported it to the grid and I imported from the grid. Forty six point three kilowatt hours my systems not very efficient in winter and things like that, This would be much better in summer where I might actually you know, import very little from the grid, but this visual reference representation is really quite nice and actually tells me how much I saved down here. And Solar Analytics actually have a money back guarantee.

Apparently, if you don't save X amount of money in your food or your what you paid for it over time, then they'll give you your money back apparently and how much I've spent on energy and things like that. And I can get and set up my export tariff here which is six cents per kilowatt-hour I get paid bugger all. So that's why I want to use it during the day and the import tariff there at what I buy the electricity for from the grid I think it's about twenty six kilowatt hours including the green levy because I pay for a hundred percent green energy that mostly comes from wind I believe so it doesn't actually come from. but I pay to have somebody put that energy onto the grid so my one doesn't actually magically you know route its way through the grid and come from a wind farm somewhere.

But anyway, that's that's pretty cool. So I can now monitor all that sort of stuff and then we've got performance data here for week, month, year, total, all that sort of stuff and savings. Here we go and I had like I say we haven't got much data already I only got like four or five days worth of data so there's not much at all. And then you can get monthly reports and things like that and then it can give you recommendations of you know, like all this alert you that there's something wrong with your panel and things like that.

So one thing I've got which I'll show you is that I've got an installer account which allows us to look at the live data including the voltage, current, reactive power, and everything. Let me show you alright. so here we are looking at the live data here and this updates in 30-second increments here and we can see that we've got the the yellow one is produced. There's not much there yet so we're not producing anything so it's right down at zero and then consume.
We're currently consuming about 550 watts at home at the moment, but I'm here in the lab and the air conditioner is not switched on. You can see the air conditioner down here. it's actually drawing 17.8 watts on standby or all three of our air conditioners. We've got three hooked up to the same one and there you go and it's got their reactive power as well.

This is all live data and I've got missus AEV blog on the phone, say hi and she's going to on the air-conditioner for us and it's on and there will be like a 30 second lag or something like that. maybe a minute or something like that, so there might be that. But thank you very much. Bye and we should see the air conditioner one actually pop up.

so you remember how we installed it on the third channel there. So we should actually give it a minute or two and it should actually catch up and produce a spike. It will probably jump up to, you know, five, six hundred watts or something. I Don't know how much the air conditioner takes, but we can actually monitor the the voltage here.

the line voltage. We've got the line frequency as well often again, very occasionally I see the least significant digit on the frequency fluctuate here, but this allows us to get a live data ant. but unfortunately, only installers have access to this. so I that's very disappointing.

Here we go, it's ramping up there. we go. thirty seconds later, it'll get to the true value. There probably be some overshoot or something there as it starts up and things like that, but when we can get the reactive energy, their active power, the voltage, the frequency, and we can actually monitor the line voltage.

That's pretty cool and it's all there. But why hide this from the customer? I Think they should just give it to the customer I Don't see any harm in that I think it's great. You know there's going to be a lot of technical customers who in stall these things, but I've they've given me a specific installer account and as you can see on the side here, it allows me I've got a data download option which once again the regular customer does not have the ability to download the data. I don't believe and that's a I don't know why that restriction is there.

That seems quite silly, but yeah I can set up I can look at stuff that your average punter can't So there we go all we've jumped up so you can see that the we were join the purple one there. the house was draw in total was drawing 600 watts but now it's jumped up in line with the air conditioner. But the good thing about having the air conditioner is separate. You can no just how much money and energy you're spending on just your air conditioner.

It could be a electric hot water system or anything like that. And remember, you've got three channels to hook up on this thing. so of course you want one for the production of your energy. You want one for your entire house and there's a third one.
I Hooked it up to the aircon and a minute later we'll actually probably see that peak out. So I might come back. but look, it's drawing 1500 watts at the moment so that's our main air conditioner in the house. Oh, come back and there we go.

You can see that we had some overshoot there because the aircon is got to start up and do whatever and operate. However, Air Cons: do what they start up and then it's going to level out like that and that should be fairly level now. So there you go. That's pretty cool.

Look at just being able to do your live data and you can get a longer period as well. So here's a much longer time period, but this short energy one is over the like the 30-second time intervals which allows you to walk around your house and go and switch appliances off and on. and you don't need this live graph like this. You can actually go back to the page we saw before with the live monitor.

It actually has the live model There tells you exactly how much power using. you can go around and just switch things off and on and figure out how much power they take. So that's really easy. And also say at night time when you've got everything powered off and you're consumed in all that residual energy, you know that standby power.

You know you've got all your twenty million things plugged in and they're drawing. you know, a couple of watts each. You can go around and unplug those and see how they make a difference because it does have the resolution to do that. You could unplug a little plug pack or something like that mobile phone charger plug pack or something like that and see you know where all your Energy's being wasted.

So very useful having this out power monitoring system and I Haven't had it before. This is great. Now they've actually given me a demo of their our site here. This is actually real data coming from their facility at Alexandria here and we can see that their daily data that would have been very similar to mine that we saw for and it can also thinking about a battery for home.

It can calculate how much battery capacity you need. Here it is based on all the historical data. Once again they do lots of big data analytics and things like that to calculate this sort of stuff and it's recommending based on all the data that we've got down here. you can actually see all that data there that's been logging for I don't know a year or something or more then it can calculate.

You need a seven kilowatt hour battery system and grid usage will reduce by 36% There'll be some error in that and things like that, but it's going to be. You know it's gonna be a really reasonable ballpark estimate and cost of the battery $9,600 That's a new beta function. they've got I really like that and that hasn't popped up on mine yet. Probably don't have enough data for it to actually calculate that yet.
And in the performance art section here it tells you you your performance your system at the moment eighty eight point one percent. So you know if you got doodle something built up when your panels or maybe one year panels was broken like one of my ones for example. Or you know you got some excess shading or you know something else is happening to your panels, then your system performance will drop and it can actually detect and alert you about that. So the 7-day average here you can see it was one hundred and six point.

Eight percent up here. one hundred and seven average. since in toward ninety two percent. So you can see that their particular panel isn't performing that well at all and you can actually see.

Look at Dip Down recently to 88 percent. So you go. Oh, something happened there I Don't know. did you know, did he get all dirt and grime and he's suddenly cleaned it and it'll jump back up for example.

And it's got system logs. So there's like a communications fault down here that could have been like the 3G system was something like that. You know it looks like happened a couple of times in a day or maybe they are working on it or something like that. but it just logs errors and things like that.

So I'm back to my system here now and you can see that yellow hemisphere. There is that that shows the theoretical for based on my current location because it knows exactly where I am. It knows the tilt of my panels, That knows the solar insolation. It knows everything.

that's the sunrise and the Sit there. and if we go into the performance side of things once again, my systems operating at 70% it probably doesn't have enough data to actually you know show. you know like to actually calculate a good value at the moment. but that can just that.

performance data will change with the solar insolation. For example, they said they get that data from the Bureau Bureau of Meteorology and so we'd know how much the solar insolation is how much solar energy is actually hitting. It's not just about clouds, it's about how much the Sun is actually producing amount of power per square meter. And so it knows all this data.

It's shame it doesn't like. show it and things like that. I Love to see like a temperature plot with it or something like that because they've got all that data in the background. solar insolation, all those figures.

it's all hidden away in the magic algorithm to calculate this performance figure. and I think you know customers are. You know, at least a good lot of them are technical enough. There should be like a technical section where I every customer can see the voltage in the currently apparent power and everything else and all that live data I think they? you know they really should make that available, not just for the installers.
So yeah, one of my main gripes is that like like why can't I expand the data in there I want to see it They've got all this resolution. They've got a great resolution ADC in this thing so that it's getting all these data it knows down to like the point 1 watts or something like that in a couple of kilowatts. And why can't I like expand this graph just this daily consumption graph up to full screen here. so I can see all the data and then you know, be able to change, you know, scale the graph and expand it and do all that sort of jazz like people want to manipulate their data I Can't be the only one surely.

Now the user does actually have the ability to go in and edit their system. So if you change your inverter, you can just go in there and change that yourself. So edit inverter number one or these are all different brands. Look at them.

They've got all these inverter brands Wow ABB Look I Had no idea there was so many inverters on the market, but they've got the datasheet for everyone. They've put all the data in, all the support everything else. And here's all the sunny boys Wow and my ones in there. Look at how just how many sunny boys they've got.

That's ridiculous. Wow Anyway, I'm the Raiding and things like that and if you're once not listed, you can get it added you cannot tell them and they'll happily add it. and then if you add some extra panels yourself, for example, you can go Edit: if you add an extra string in there. I've only got a single string of 12 panels, so I've got one string there.

It is one string of 12 panels there and my orientation is minus 49 degrees. so subtract that you know from 360 from north basically and a 15 degree tilt on my roof. And once again, here's all the manufacturers of the solar panels. Well, so they've got all the performance data for these things.

so they know and can magically calculate that performance figure based on the current solar insolation. So they know how big your panel is in square meters, they know how much what the solar amount of solar is hitting at that particular time, and then they can calculate the efficiency of your solar system. So they've got all that huge big metadata in there. but you know I like and they're coming up with the performance figure which is great and good for your average consumer who doesn't know anything at all.

But yeah, I Want to see all the technical details anyway? it's cool you can actually set up all that sort of stuff. Sophia What one of these are very cool systems. I Go check out Solar and Linux.com dot Au, an Australian-based system and how much? Tell us the price. Sun Okay, it's a one-off payment of eight hundred and sixty bucks and that sounds like a lot, but that supplies the the 3G connect thing that includes all the bandwidth and everything else with it.
It includes somebody to install it for you and it includes a five year subscription to the analytics of the thing and all that sort of stuff. Local customer support, friends there Lutz Fault diagnosis, the expected performance predictions, live energy use and all that sort of jazz that we're seeing. Or you can get it for 11 bucks a month for five years. Choose your poison.

so thank you very much Solar Analytics for providing this one so that I can now get the consumption data of my house. Brilliant! Check them out! So yeah, I was gonna clutch something together with. you know, one of the ones that support the PV one of the monitors that you can get from J car. whatever.

for a hundred and fifty or two hundred bucks or something like that you can hook it on and then you can you get a little monitor unit. you can sit on your kitchen table or something like that monitor and it's got a USB can actually have to hook it up to a PC which is always running it. It's just it's ugly. I've got enough problems with the Bluetooth connection.

I've got to connect daily to my Sonny Boy inverter. It's a real pain in the butt so this 3g thing it's just always working that's always on. You don't have to worry about it, it's it's. absolutely brilliant.

So yeah, highly recommend. A really professional solution like this instead of cobble in something together. There's nothing worse than having to massage and maintain your solar monitor system. It's just a pain in the butt.

I've had no into problems with a PV being counter and and the Sonny Boy inverter and the Bluetooth connection and the hole and the hole works. It's just nuts. Yeah, just don't go there anyway. So this is the one.

I Got the Solar Connect 23 and we can have a look at the datasheet and all that sort of jazz. and here it is there you go: Five seconds, five minute measurement, one percent revenue grade accuracy, five-year warranty on the thing. Absolutely brilliant. And as I said, it can support a three-phase system as well.

And it's got the installation guide and all sorts of stuff. There's a specs for those playing along at home. Fantastic. Now Solar Analytics are the sort of top level company who you interact with who install this and collect the data and have all the fancy algorithms and and plot all the graphs and allow you to you know and log the data and capture it from the 3G and all that sort of stuff.

But the individual unit that we installed the 20 Three Solar Connect 23 or whatever it's called it was manufactured by a Sydney company called What Watches and it's manufactured right here in Sydney as well. So huge thumbs up there. And and they produce all sorts of our commercial and residential system. so we've got the residential one here.

but you know you can get a private key, authentication and encryption for all the you know really fancy pantsy systems. and by the way, they're only they fit in a single din rack so it's a two with din rail system so it's really quite nice. And by the way, the designer join the cable of these things. He has said that he will drop by the lab sometime next month and we can do a teardown and he'll explain how he designed all these things and he really knows his stuff.
I've spoken to him so that could be a really long whiteboard discussion so look forward to that in June Hopefully so my home solar system is nearing completion. The only thing I have left is solar storage is energy storage. during the day that excess usage because we saw down here here we go that I look 13-point one kilowatt hours in the last week and I've just thrown away I've exported but it's not throwing away. somebody on the grid is using it.

but I'm only getting six cents Lousy. Six cents per kilowatt hour here in New South Wales it. It's not much more higher in other states, but as they set up here here, we go for New South Wales Solar Own as a solar bonus scheme is expiring. Get more info: They were given 60 cents feeding tariffs in here in New South Wales which was ridiculous and almost bankrupted the state.

They couldn't afford it, you know, and so that's ending soon. But I get six cents per kilowatt hour I dropped by an order of magnitude hope I'd never got the 60 cents I signed up after that I installed my system after the cutoff date. so bummer. Well anyway, didn't want to feed off the government TT anyway but yet 13.1 what else that I can other way in the last seven days I can otherwise store and that's in the middle of winter.

Well it's not quite winter yet. it's not a few weeks away to wintertime. But yeah, it'll be great if I could install that. So um, the Tesla Apparently nobody I've been trying to get Tesla and contact Tesla to try and get them that Tesla Powerwall in store, but nobody at Tesla all the local installers want to talk to me at all I don't know what what the deal is anyway.

Arm LG have a system who make my LG mano excite panels of course and they supply me the panel after I had one broken. They said that they've got a storage solution coming out this year so they might be interested in working with me, but Tesla aren't so hey yo G might anyway. So that's the last step to complete my solar home solar power system. So anyway, thank you very much Solar Analytics is very cool.

Check it out! It's a really good professional option and I'm sure it will only get better and better. and if they could add those features for the users, Please export and support other systems and things like that, That'd be great. So anyway I hope you enjoyed that. Catch you next time.


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By YTB

25 thoughts on “Eevblog #877 – solar analytics home energy monitoring installation”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars FrankEdavidson says:

    Assuming one has a 3 phase inverter would one need three arrays / strings to produce 3 phase or does the inverter synthesise tthe 3 phases? I could use a couple of 3ph machinws much cheaper than SP but wouldn't want a full blown 3ph grid supply.
    Say one wanted to pull DC voltages for a workshop, can that be taken off the invertor? supply side? For DC is DC to DC conversion more efficient then inversion, transforming, rectification etc.

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jackie Dines says:

    The whole idea of monitoring a system is just so stuffed up by the manufacturers that it is a joke, why on earth would you want to monitor your production if you cannot monitor your consumption? The entire industry has a very poor attitude to the customer who may want to monitor their system. The story you get from the salesmen/installers is that most people do not want to know, they just "trust" what they have been told by the company that they buy their system from. It makes you wonder how many systems out there are not performing at all and how many people do not have a clue and just accept whatever their electricity bill says. We had a micro inverter system which had quite good production only monitoring, with individual panel details, downloadable data etc etc. In the first year one inverter failed, then in the next 2>3 years the other 7 failed. If I did not have individual inverter monitoring I would never have known other than what the electricity bill showed, at the same time the prices of power were increasing. So you really had to sit down and do the maths, who wants to that?? So eventually the inverters were all replaced with another brand, this brand offered consumption analysis but the installers could not be bothered fitting the CT's reckoned it was too hard to do, then he kept the two CT units that came with the monitoring system! Despite me asking him for them back, to me that is a rip off. So later when we want to install a battery system we will have to fork out more to get all the monitoring that will be needed. As far as this gizmo is concerned WHAT A RIP OFF, why would anyone want to use this thing? No ability to download the data…REALLY?? AGAIN the important data ONLY available to the bloody installers who could not give a rats!!! Then they want to charge you a fee to allow you to use their online portal, ANOTHER RIP OFF……There should be no need for that at all, apart from making them money!
    This is just another Solar industry RIP OFF!!

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Kristofer James says:

    Man this board is an embarrassment. New boards are definitely not like this in Australia. You have plug in circuit breakers in fuse holders which are meant to be a temporary fix and not permanent. And the wiring behind there is atrocious. Its how they used to do it, but seriously a board upgrade isn't all that expensive, and with the board upgraded properly with future proofing he could have had that installation done in 10 minutes….

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Arthur Vin says:

    Dave, you were ripped off. Try Sense consumption/production monitor DIY setup, cheap and no subscription and limitation. It can detect and idenyify most loads (even fridge light bulb) by electrical patterns machine learning, no multi-channel rubbish. You can hook it up to IFTTT to do some nerdy stuff e.g. wife digging food in fridge during night you can kick off alarm or send notifications to smartphone. Limitless integration. A/C, pool pumps, lights, ovens, washers, dryers etc.. everything can be monitored separately thanks to magic of machine learning. This is not an ad. I just installed it myself DIY and impressed.

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Arthur Vin says:

    I wanted to buy this system, but after that installers account bullshit I decided to go DIY path. Not an electrician btw, just common sense.

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Sergeant Seven says:

    Is that what electrical breaker/service panels look like in Australia? that's horrible. lol As an electrician I'm very happy with what we use here in the US.

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars mrfurball says:

    Dear Hakko of St. Peterson, that electrical box looks weird and chaotic, the ones here in Canada to me at least seem more designed for purpose than the one on the video.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars A Frog says:

    I like Alex, he even brushes up and takes the scrap away after drilling 🙂
    Wish someone who did work for me cleaned up after themselves, never happened so far, and on all MY jobs, there`s been a strong focus on leaving a tidy workplace, so fuck my luck like a rubberduck I guess :p

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Karl Porath says:

    Not only do you have those terrible oversized plugs. But you also have the worst haphazard mains I have ever seen. Here in the States we save the 220 only for circuits that need it like hot water heaters, stoves, welders, etc. We wire our houses 2 breakers per room, one for lights, one for outlets. The thing that kills me is the homemade box. No buss bars? Outside in the elements?

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dave Hammerton says:

    You should have that man on a show with ya in your lab 😉

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Matthew Cooper says:

    The new LG Chem batteries review quite well 🙂

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars M says:

    power house(box) outside is normal in austrailia ??

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars robbyxp1 says:

    Wow, it's so different to UK installations.

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Vega says:

    Australian Power panels are…. kind of not that great

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Amin Salehnia says:

    Dave, Do you have a solar water heater?

  16. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Josh S says:

    There may possibly never be anything more hilarious than people who spend irrecoverable money on solar power and then spend hundreds of dollars more on gadgets to monitor how much money they aren't saving. Seems to me that the best return on your solar array investment would be to not spend any more money or time worrying about it. Seems like everyone wants to try to justify their bad financial decision by spending more money on the problem. That's the logical conclusion.

  17. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars tarstarkusz says:

    I would like to see a study which takes into account all of the embedded energy in a solar panel. It's extremely difficult to do for many obvious reasons, but if we are going to bet the future on PV, we need to know that there is a very high EROI. Conventional oil is right now about 30:1 (1 BOE for every 30 barrels of oil produced). Bitumen is about 7:1 at the higher end. Do you think solar thermal is a better solution? What about wind? It seems to me that solar thermal is the best approach because it can run 24 hours a day and you don't get into the intermittent nature of PV and wind.

  18. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars evonic says:

    13 KW of power sold for 6c a pop is a waste Dave, do something else with that power, apart from storing it in batteries you could sink a borehole and use it to pump water to go off-grid with water, or heat your pool if you have one, or if you are a little insane use it to make hydrogen HA!, but yeah, I would store the energy, because then you can really save, as you then technically get 26c – 6c a kw instead of 6c by "selling" it to yourself.

  19. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars eu tot eu says:

    summer in december … nice

  20. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars WethereX says:

    Jesus, glad my box isnt a crap fest,,, although i am a sparky, with regards to RCRs and Zellweger in general, only the very very very old ZE22/23s have a tritium gas tube neon in them. And as long as it is not disposed off improperly can totally be removed by a sparky, just like removing a smoke detector. As for the Aircon CB's,,, CHNT is the mark of a cheap arse crap fridgie using bottom dollar bunnings crap,,,, jesus christ.

  21. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jismal Jamal says:

    Even in india we have better DB

  22. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Asbjørn Mikkelsen says:

    wow, just mounting things around on a board?, here in norway we have din-rails in the cabinet..

  23. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Christian Schneider says:

    Dry and sunny Australia. You'd never get away with an outdoor fusebox here in Germany.

  24. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Noway Müller says:

    WTF ASBEST?!

  25. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars m s says:

    such a flattering thumbnail for this video

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