Solar PV Monitoring/Automation Thread

I need a bit of a rethink for my automations for grid charging with zappi, battery, and eddi...

At the moment when my zappi charger is running during the cheap period (2-5am) (or eddi boosting during the night) the automation is setting timed charge/discharge to on and so pulls from the grid. However, this automation is based on the state of each device from the myenergi API. Not a good idea relying on a cloud status for local action!

Internet, API outages, or delay in the checks with the car has meant the battery being used up for charging or water heating when the grid should have been used. It worked mostly, but not ideal and the main thing is no two actions generally happened on the same night. Further complicated when you add in the battery charging which is currently semi-automated to avoid clashes.

As I have local access to the Solis I want to use that instead for the decision making. Initially I thought to flip on timed charge/discharge if the battery current was above 20A (1kW~) but sure once it's changed to timed charge/discharge that will shift to grid power so an automation based on that state would switch off. Then I thought of the Solis Meter Active Power, but that won't read anything until the battery is gone.

Any suggestions how to approach this?

I suppose I'm trying to separate the switch on/off for grid charging from the individual device level (zappi, eddi, battery) so all could work at the same time or with overlaps. My current Eddi boost is using the API and that works but same issues.

e.g. if I want to charge the battery, and the car during the same night each automation currently sets the timed charge/discharge on and off. That could get messy.

Anyone know what register and values I would change on a Solis to limit export please?

I am a HA user, RasPi4 with HA image, not s/w trained, manage to muddle through the difficult bits, given enough time and patience. I use automations, have installed integrations via HACS and get my head wrecked trying to sort out mqtt issues every week lately! I have a Shelly EM added to the Energy Dashboard.

For the last month or so I have been investigating Solar PV and getting some quotes. I notice that the most common hybrid inverter offered by installers is Solis. Having read through this thread, it looks like integrating Solis in HA, and getting desired automation to work, is a lot of heavy duty work. Or maybe not, maybe most of the heavy lifting has been done and the Solis integration is tried and tested, not too difficult to setup, and makes easy work of automating the interaction of the various elements of a solar pv system. Maybe all the work here on Solis is because it is the most common inverter in Ireland, or is it because it is the most hackable and therefore the easiest to manipulate and get the best customisation out of?

How would inverters from Solis, Solax and Solaredge (or, indeed, any others available in Ireland) compare to each other for ease of integration into HA and for overall features to use to get maximum benefit from a PV system, including a battery and EDDI? I would probably prefer to choose an inverter that makes my HA life easier, but at the same time not scrimp on features it makes available in HA.

Any one have any thoughts on that?

Are there any threads here dedicated to Solax/Solaredge automation? I'd be interested in reading peoples experiences getting them to work.

So, are you using the Solarman stick or the "old" Solis stick? or both, piggybacked? Do you lose connectivity to Soliscloud with the Solarman stick? any warranty/support issues with that? It's probably most likely that I will end up with a Solis Hybrid Inverter. I like to get clear in my mind what's best for manageing it, thus not waste money buying "wrong" dataloggers

Have done some digging and found that on my 6kW hybrid on a current firmware this is 43073 to enable EPM, and 43074 to set the limit. At least in my case (check your own if trying this!) setting 43073 to 48 enabled LimbyEPM with Failsafe mode, and 0 disabled. The limit scale is 1 to 100W so setting it as 20 would be 2000W, and so forth.

There was definitely less battery discharge but unclear whether what did drain was sufficient. I have a feeling the house mostly ran on import. We'll see tomorrow only. I'll have the smart meter data then.

I can't even check roughly with the myenergi data as that has gone a bit mad. I've a ticket open with them to sort it.

Have read most of the thread but not all, admittedly. Is there any smart switch or sensor that can be bought which would act like a poor man's eddi, to switch immersion on and or reduce its draw when generation is not over 3KW?

@graememk so that switch is just a digital timer, if I understand correctly? And then the immersion just goes off once it reaches its temperature, or you have a digital thermometer linked to it too? And just stick on for noon when sun is most likely out, and bad luck (and day rate) if it’s cloudy?

What's the difference between that and an Eddi ?