PVoutput Trouble

PVOutput System ID is 73440

Don’t pay much attention to Inputs other than Solar_1 as I have not configured them how I want yet.

Here’s with the PVoutput tab expanded…

I took a look at the code, and not sure what’s going on here.

Could you plot Solar_1 for the past week to see where it starts with values?

Is this what you are looking for?

I have a solar inverter with EV charger which is why you see both usage and production on the same input.

Do you mean that the inverter is also an EV charger, or that the EVcharger is connected to the inverter output upstream of where you have the CT?

What are the two Solar_1 and Solar_2? Are they different inverters?

Im guessing that the positive usage is the EVcharger using grip power and the negative is inverter output minus any EVcharger load?

Yes the Inverter is also an EV charger so it will show production or positive numbers during the day and negative numbers at night when the car is charging. Disregard Solar_2 as it is just one of the legs of the Solar Inverter and is reversed so it shows negative numbers when solar power is being produced.

We will need to sanitize that data before sending to PVoutput because PVoutput balks at production at night or negative production. It wants only positive numbers and only during the day. That’s no problem, we can filter that.

First I want to clarify a couple of things:

You say that Solar_2 is just a CT on the other inverter line, but the status screen above shows a different number than Solar_1. Is that because yo have “double” set for 1 and not 2?

It looks to me as if it’s the other way around right now, with the inverter generation being negative and the charging positive.

So back to the PVoutput problem, if you leave the Solar_1 as is, you can send only the generation with:

generation = (Solar_1 max 0) abs. That will first isolate the negative generation component and then make it positive for PVoutput. Set “upload history from” to 02/02/20. Then after it successfully uploads the data, edit to clear the upload from date so it won’t try to do that after every restart.

Correct I have “double” set for 1 and not for 2 becausei will be removing the Solar_2 CT and use if for another circuit at some point. I will only be using Solar_1 for the Inverter and it will be set to double.

Thanks for the correct string. I will give it a try.

I had to remove the “Reverse” setting for the Solar_1 input and then the data started looking correct.

Thanks so much for your help!

Don’t forget to remove the upload date.

The reverse checkbox on the input only effects measurements going forward. The historical data will be unchanged, so removing it should not have made any difference to today’s data. If you are using the generation script that I posted, checking reverse should make it start to try to upload your EV load as generation tonight, which PV output will reject as “moon power”.

UPDATE: Just looking at your PVoutput site which now appears. It looks like you checked that “reverse” box on Feb 10 around 2pm. Before that is showing the EV charging as positive, and there is no data where generation would have been negative. The graph that you posted was for last week, which was before the change.

UPDATE: Sure enough, your EV charge just showed up as production.

I’m assuming that your generation is simply “Solar_1” right now. If you leave the Reverse unchecked, you should change the generation to (Solar_1 min 0) to remove the charging, which now will be negative and rejected by PVoutput.

I see that you decommissioned the PVoutput site. I was watching the progress yesterday and say that the energy output lagged the power curve significantly. Taking a look at what was happening there, I suspect the energy data associated with your PV/EV system started out the day in negative territory due to EV charging overnight, and didn’t get into positive territory until about 1pm. Unfortunately, the inverter/charger is a closed system and there is no way to separate the generation from the consumption.

I was intrigued by the concept, and also curious if there was any way to get the discrete data, so I looked up the Solar-Edge product. I couldn’t see any direct way to measure the PV and EV separately.

This is probably going to be a trend in the industry, as PV inverter companies look to expand their markets and leverage the infrastructure they have with the conservation minded demographic. But I fail to see the long term benefits of this system. In my experience, these types of combination products reduce options as technology changes and equipment requires replacement.

Their promo that you only need one cable to the garage is less than convincing to me. Standone EV charger and inverter can be connected locally with an inexpensive small branch panel, with the same single run back to the main load center. They do offer a unified phone app, and I realize that sizzle works for many folks.

When these units need replacement or upgrade, I’ll be interested to see how many take a fresh look at the state of the individual technologies, or just replace the whole unit with a new combo.

Sort of off topic, but SolarEdge should support Modbus over TCP.
Before i had a CT on my solar circuit I was using a third party integration for home assistant to grab the local data, as their cloud product is patchy at best.

Ive since found that the data from modbus, cloud, and using a CT on the solar circuit, for the most part, give the same data. The cloud seems to have a habit of rounding up at each reporting period, so it can be inflated a little.

New user here! Just set up my first install yesterday monitoring solar only (for now). I finally got uploading working to PVOutput but then it failed at 6:50am today with the same error as the original message here:

PVoutput: Unrecognized HTTP completion, upload Bad request 400: Invalid data format [20

was there ever a code fix for this? I could easily be getting the negative numbers if only briefly while there is no solar production. [I’ve set all the inputs to register positive values when producing energy].

The uploader is currently stuck getting this error. I tried restarting the device then restarting the uploads but the error is the same.

Any ideas?

Can you post the IoTaWatt PVoutput setup please?

Here is the config. I looked at the CSV data for when the failure occurred and the formula does indeed go negative. But looking at prior messages it seems as though this case was handled. If not, perhaps I can fix this by changing my generation formula (I could use the abs function which is close enough since it will only go negative at low values and I’ve changed all the inputs to no longer allow negatives).

Here’s the data right when the uploads fail. It does go negative.

a

OK, let’s suppress that.

generation Watts = ( Inverter1 + Inverter2 + Inverter3 + Inverter4 + Inverter5 ) max 0

  • Stop the PVoutput uploader using the stop button in the status display.

  • Edit the generation Script

  • Start the PVoutput uploder again from the status display.

Boom! That did the trick! Thanks.

BTW, I had to restart the unit to get the download to try again. The Stop/Start button in the Uploads section of Status didn’t seem to work. So I restarted the unit, went to the Uploads section, hit Start and now all is well.

Using the max function makes it safe to upload to PVOutput again. Would you recommend I reinstate the “Allow negative power value” again just to collect accurate data? Although since these are just inverter circuits they really shouldn’t go negative (except I guess if an inverter or another device on the circuit is drawing a slight amount of power).

It seems to be common for inverters to draw standby power when not producing. Usually a few Watts but I’ve seen reports of double digits.

Removing the allow negative values attribute will cause the standby power to be reported as positive so it will look like a small amount of generation. What PVoutput calls “moon power”.

If you leave the “allow negative values” in place, the standby as a negative value should be correctly measured in any usage calculation. Using the max 0 function to PVoutput simply suppresses confusing PVoutput with it.