Chint solar inverter integration

[Watcher1 (John)]

Anyone ever tried to integrate roof top solar inverter made by Chint to HA ?

[jee67]

Hi Watcher,

Yes I do, but I have the fp4all logger installed in my Chint. I’m grabbing the local interface for the values. If you’re interested I can share my configuration.

[Watcher1 (John)]

@jee67

fp4all

I am not familiar with fp4all but I understand that you have integrated the fp4all logger and not the inverter itself. It that correct?

[jee67]

Yes, correct. The Chint I have has no logger onboard, but you can buy a logger from fp4all. Since I’m an “old” FP4All buyer I have an unlimited subscription, Nowadays, you have to pay for that.

However, I’m grabbing the local interface of the logger through my internal IP-adres. which works fine and I think you don’t need a subscirption to do this.

this is my code (to be changed for new coding conventions regarding command_line platform):

- sensor
  - platform: command_line
    name: solar-hm
    command: "curl -s 10.0.0.113 | grep 'Lifetime generated' | awk -F'[^0-9.]*' '{print $2}'"
    unique_id: solar-hm
    unit_of_measurement: "kWh"
  - platform: command_line
    name: solar-hm-pwr
    command: "curl -s 10.0.0.113/status.htm | grep PAC | awk '{print substr($0,20,50)}'| awk -F'[^0-9.]*' '{print $2}'"
    unique_id: solar-hm-pwr
    unit_of_measurement: "W"

My ip is 10.0.0.113, this will have to be changed.
This will provide two entities:

• solar-hm-pwr: showing current power production
• solar-hm: showing lifetime production, which can be used in the energy dashboard.

It’s possible to grab anything you want from the status page:

Nice sunny days here:

[Watcher1 (John)]

Thanks very much for the detailed instructions.
The Chint Inverter supports modbus and has an onboard RS485 port for this purpose. So I decided to make an arduino based modbus -to- MQTT gateway and managed to integrate to HA via MQTT.
I even made a 3d printed case for rack mounting. You can have a look at it here : Printables

This was a little bit more of a challenge than buying extra hardware, but I think it was worth the effort.
I can now get all the different parameters from the inverter I need.

In case you need anymore info, let me know

[fspr]

Hi jee67, can you explain how this is runs in HA, is it via creating a helper or otherwise?

fspr

[jee67]

It’s in configuration.yaml

But now it should be like

command_line:

  - sensor:
      name: solar-hm
      command: "curl -s 10.0.0.113 | grep 'Lifetime generated' | awk -F'[^0-9.]*' '{print $2}'"
      unique_id: solar-hm
      unit_of_measurement: "kWh"
      value_template: >
             {{ value }}
  - sensor:
      name: solar-hm-pwr
      command: "curl -s 10.0.0.113/status.htm | grep PAC | awk '{print substr($0,20,50)}'| awk -F'[^0-9.]*' '{print $2}'"
      unique_id: solar-hm-pwr
      unit_of_measurement: "W"
      value_template: >
           {% if is_number(value) %}
             {{ value }}
           {% else %}
             {{ 0 }}
           {% endif %}    

This creates two sensor entities that you can use.

[italoc]

very intresting solution, I have found FP4ALL logger “PVlogger-CHINT-CS-CSE-type” but I can’t understand how I can mount this device in the CHINT Inverter