Solar power system research

Energy
1

Hi Homeys.

I’m in the process of researching for a private solar system.

Roof mounted panels, ground mounted inverter and battery + ?
No electric car or heating at the moment.

Any idears, tips, cons/pros or references will be much appreciated.

Why should the system in Homey? and which components (panels, inverter, battery + ?) and what parameters should be monitored?

Tia

-Kurt

2

Hi,

I think you won’t get many answers because your question is so vague :man_shrugging:
You can ask 10 persons and you will get 20 answers :sweat_smile:

My setup (Germany): Fronius inverter, Fronius smart meter, BYD battery, SunPower 400 W MAXEON 3 panels. But any other setup would be also good.

I haven’t done a big research. Quality is best and price was good. The electrician wanted to install devices where he won’t have issues and happy customers. So perhaps don’t decide to buy the cheapest devices.

What I can say:

  • Take a setup that combines inverter and battery data in one app. I think most inverters will show battery data if/because it’s connected via Modbus. But perhaps there are differences.
  • If you want to install a EV charger in future (and you will have one at some time), make sure you take an EV charger that is supported by your inverter. I have a Fronius charger and the inverter controls the charger by solar production (surplus charging). That’s all automatic.
    You could also do it by Homey, but it’s a mess tinkering with flows and deal with API rate limits. So best is to let the inverter do the job :slight_smile:
  • And even if you don’t need a charger now, you should consider to install the wires and FI/circuit breaker now when the fuse box is extended now. Makes all easier in future.

I’m using the Fronius HomeAssistant integration (because it combines cloud and local access) to read data for HomeyEnergy.
Then I use the ModbusTCP app to control some special cases (charge battery in winter, control discharge while charging the car). Modbus is not really Plug&Play but works. You just need some data sheets. So if the device isn’t supported by a Homey app but has ModbusTCP (LAN/Wifi), that could be an option.

3

Hi Kurt

Totally agree with Ronny.

Another setup to compare → my installer went with Huawei.

  • Jinko Solar JKM435N-54HL4R-B Panels
  • SUN2000-8KTL-M1 Inverter

half year later i upgraded the system with:

  • SmartGuard-63A-T0 with integrated EMMA
  • LUNA2000-10KW-C1 Battery

I integrated the whole with SolarEdge + Growatt TCP Modbus (and did the rest with virtual devices) but changed 1 month ago to the new app Huawei FusionSolar Manager (Modbus access) → works great now without virtual devices anymore. it creates seperate devices and you have “then” cards to access the modbus registers.

image

Planning to upgrade with a go-e gemini charger in late summer. huawei smartcharge would also be an option but i want to use homey as the “brain”. more work with flows but more flexible.

4

Thanx for very serious answers.

Have a nice day.