PhotoVoltaic
Status Monitoring
Closeup of Inverters, and full view of Generation System.
These two displays will update automatically every 10 minutes with actual power generation status in real time. Or if you are impatient, you can refresh the screen yourself...
The top screen shows the left inverter status, and includes the total System power generated today, and the odometer shows lifetime power.
The right array display has some additional status about the grid, and heat sink temperature.
Geek Alert: The live data is pulled from the serial ports of the Inverters, using an Ethernet Terminal server in reverse-telnet mode, and a COM port mapper on the PC, to generate virtual ports which are polled by SG-view. The polling software was written for Xantrex hardware, but the SunPower SPR-x series inverters are rebranded Xantrex, so I felt I would give it a try to see how it worked. I called SunPower to ask about the serial port, and how to monitor it, but they said "the serial port is not for customer use", and told me to call my installer for additional info. The Solar-Guppy forum has been very useful, and this work is a result of that forum.
The important numbers here are in the leftmost box at the top. Current system AC Watts is the combined total from both inverters being produced right now, and this box has three entries. The big number on top is live data from the last poll time, the smaller number underneath is the total AC Watthours generated today, and the odometer is the system lifetime kiloWatthours produced since November 2007 by this system. (Add 5702KwH for lifetime total, cause Sunpower swapped out both the inverters then for a recall.) If you see a red "X" through the display, then check back in a few hours. Sometimes the upload hangs...
As a point of reference, our average daily power usage is between 10kWh in the summer and 35kWh in the winter. So, whenever the sysWh is above 20,000 we have generated more power than we typically use. History Log files
Some photos of the construction project to get the Poles mounted in the back field in summer of 2007.
Completed arrays, at about 42 degree tilt. (two parallel strings of 9 220watt panels on each pole).
We change the angle according to the sun angle and the time of the year using this chart.
18 panels per pole for a total of almost 4000 Watts, feed a separate inverter for each pole. Total = 8kWatts
This page last edited: 11/02/2008 13:55 by john