Enphase Envoy on 2024.4

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12

Let me start off by saying this is a nice post, it will help for people who lack some of the sensors. But there are some tips, or things to consider, depending on what you have in terms of sensors:

This is only true if you have one cable coming in your home. A lot of homes in the Netherlands for instance have three phases coming in. Solar can either be on one or all three. So this rule applies per cable. If you have more you can export on one and import on another. That actually happens in my home. So if you can measure the actual values (for instance use the values from the meter) use those. It is the preferred way. If you have only one power cable coming into your home, then the calculation is valid.

This isn’t a valid reason. Rieman sum converts (k)W in (k)Wh. If you have (k)Wh that is always more accurate than the result a Riemann Sum Integral, which estimates it. having a Riemann sum integral is not a goal in itself, if you have (k)Wh then you don’t need Riemann sum.

Especially from Enphase you only get (k)W samples very infrequently, and it can vary a lot between samples. And if the samples of production and use aren’t taken at the same time, the difference between them can lead to nonsensical values. So if you have (k)Wh, and measure all of them, it is better to use those.

What the (k)W calculations do help with, is that you can import one minute, and export the other. (k)Wh sensors are not going to help you calculate that. They will cross them out against each other. That is where your calculations comes in handy. But do remember, Enphase only reports data infrequently, so Watts will be an approximation. The infrequent samples will miss things.

So For many reasons: Measure if you can, and use (k)Wh if you can.

13

Really nice work @del13r, thanks.

Quick question on:

house consumption instead of grid consumption

solar production instead of return to grid

Is your consumption CT installed as Load only CT (total-consumption)?

If you have it installed as Load with Solar (net-consumption) you should have net lifetime energy production and net lifetime energy consumption to use as grid export/import as of HA 2024.3. These come from the actEnergyRcvd and actEnergyDlvd of the consumption CT, if a net-consumption type.

It is pointless trying to get these Enphase provided energy sensors to be used by the Energy Dashboard in their default state as the energy data is different to what is expected by Energy Dashboard.

I think with a Load with Solar / net-consumption CT these net values can be used with the Energy dashboard.

For ‘load only’ / total-consumption CT you are right, not usable. Your explanation can be used with Load with Solar / net-consumption CT as well of course, but just making sure these net entities are available for use in the dashboard.

I then added my Solar production energy using the sensor:
Envoy SERIALNUMBER Energy production today

My experience is that there are some firmware versions out there that have shown some unexpected behavior in the day (and last 7 day) values and the Envoy SERIALNUMBER Energy lifetime production value turned out to be more reliable overall and might be prefered for use in the Energy dashboard.

Again, excellent piece of documentation!

14

Hello @catsmanac,

My system is “net-consumption = Load with solar production”.

The native enphase integration does provide those energy sensors for me.

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I really have to disagree with your statement about using any of the energy sensors, provided by the native enphase integration, for grid import/export.

Here are 2 diagrams to help explain why i disagree.
The text in red is what the envoy provides.
The text in green is what home assistant needs to calculate using template sensors.

Energy:
image

Now lets try the difference logic against the energy sensors:
40.6 kWh house consumption - 21.5 kWh solar production = 19.1 kWh grid import.
This logic DOES NOT work.

Power:
image

Lets try the difference logic against the power sensors:
446 W house consumption - 102 W solar production = 344 W grid import
This logic DOES work.

To further explain, at this moment in time, my house is consuming power from 2 sources at the same time:
102 W from solar production
344 W from the grid
Add these 2 together and 446 W is my house consumption

I hope this explains why I disagree with your above statement regarding trying to use Enphase provided energy sensors for anything to do with grid import / grid export.

For more information about where the native enphase integration gets its data from, see this post:

15

Hi @del13r,

thanks for your detailed reply and the validation that the sensors are actually there.

My system is “net-consumption = Load with solar production”.

The native enphase integration does provide those energy sensors for me.

As I added these to pyenphase and the core integration I wanted to make sure these were there, be it useful or not.

As for your power logic, that is sound and can be used to calculate as you do. I’ve learned that the Riemann is remarkably close to what Envoy reports.

I really have to disagree with your statement about using any of the energy sensors, provided by the native enphase integration, for grid import/export.

Understand and I fully respect that. As the grid import/export is a fairly recent add I did, I’m in search of understanding issues and perspectives for these. All values are as send by the Envoy and may need interpretation as you advocate.

For background on the grid import/export sensors, these are not sourced from /production.json but from /ivp/meters/readings[1]. These report (amongst others)

 "actEnergyDlvd": 3183793.885,
 "actEnergyRcvd": 8851.704,
 "activePower": 488.925,

For the net consumption CT actEnergyDlvd is lifetime grid import energy delivered to the switchboard and named Lifetime net energy consumption. actEnergyRcvd is the lifetime export available as Lifetime net energy production and activePower the actual Power in or out as Current net power consumption.

This logic DOES NOT work

Am I correct when I think I hear you saying: When I configure the HA Energy dashboard using Lifetime net energy consumption and Lifetime net energy production for grid import/export and Lifetime Energy Production for solar production, then the House consumption is not correct!? Or even ‘values are not correct’!?

If this is like the 10th time you are asked to explain and have had it by now, please say so, no problem, I would understand.

Tnx.

16

Hey @catsmanac,
I disagree with your source of the grid import/export sensors as the native integration does not provide grid import/export sensors.
I have previously shown that the native Enphase integration leverages pyenphase to get all of the power and energy data from:

URL_PRODUCTION_JSON = “/production.json”

from that endpoint, these 4 x consumption and 4 x production (8 total) sensors are created by the native integration

watt_hours_lifetime=int(round(consumption[“whLifetime”])),
watt_hours_last_7_days=int(round(consumption[“whLastSevenDays”])),
watt_hours_today=int(round(consumption[“whToday”])),
watts_now=int(round(consumption[“wNow”])),

See the native integration code here

I noticed that you have mentioned “/ivp/meters/readings[1]”.
I looked into this data source about a year ago.
Please see my article below where I break it down.

17

Hi @del13r, thanks for your explanation. Again, no issues with the Power calculations.

My point is towards energy sensors, not to the power sensors. Grid Energy import/export for use with HA Energy dashboard actually are available since HA 2024.3 in pull request 110884, data provided by pyenphase in PR 133 and PR 135.

Pyenphase is getting the energy data from json[1].actEnergyDlvd and json[1].actEnergyRcvd as you describe in Enphase Envoy - D7 firmware with JWT - A Different Approach. Since this addition one can opt in HA Energy dashboard to:

  • use the Envoy Lifetime net energy consumption entity for Grid consumption
  • use the Envoy Lifetime net energy production entity for Return to grid

So again, not disagreeing with how you calculate Energy from all power sensors. Just trying to share that the native integration has Grid Energy import/export these days from the data sources you describe in your article.

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18

Hi @catsmanac,
Aah, OK, I finally see the point you are making.
I did not realise who I was responding to.
Apoligies for missing the point.
I am obviously not up to date on current affairs regarding the native integration :slight_smile:.

I have setup a new HAOS install for testing and have indeed now noticed the new ‘net energy’ sensors:

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To confirm, I go to https://envoy.local/ivp/meters/readings and see what is reported there
production “actEnergyDlvd”: 35998263.861,
import “actEnergyDlvd”: 16042946.210,
export “actEnergyRcvd”: 14299294.002,
These all match up with what the lifetime sensors are showing.

My initial observation is that the lifetime figures dont fully match what is shown in
https://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/web/

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While the lifetime energy consumption and lifetime energy production sensors are close, the lifetime net energy production (14.299-13.8=0.499 MWh difference) and lifetime net energy consumption (16.043-15.7=0.343 MWh difference) are not a close to what is reported by Enlighten.
To be clear, this is not a complaint, merely an initial observation on the difference between what the Envoy claims and what Enlighten claims for lifetime. My assumption is that perhaps the Envoy is the source of truth and Enlighten may not be as accurate due to the lower data granularity being sent to enlighten in 15 minute reporting intervals which could cause some import/export data to be unaccounted for. This is the most logical explanation for the lifetime figures variance.

Another observation is that calling them net consumption and net production could be confusing and misleading, as the word consumption is usually related to house consumption (grid import + solar consumption) and the word production is usually related to solar panel production only.

Please allow me some time to test and update my guide accordingly.

19

Hi @del13r, thanks for your testing, appreciate it.

The difference between these numbers and Enlighten is not unexpected, never seen it match 100%. Until we know what it is they calculate and send it’s second guessing.

Fwiw, json[1].activePower is also available as Current net power consumption.

Your remark on the names is to the point. It’s another story, on hindsight grid import and expert would have been clearer. All I can say is that anything with net in the name comes from the net-consumption/Load with solar production ct.

20

Any idea when that would be? I do like a good clicky clicky :grin:

21

For anyone else coming here that’s still using the HACS Enphase DEV integration, you don’t need to multiply your sensor values by 1000 in step 1a and 1b as this integration already supplies outputs in W. Everything will be increased by 1000x if you leave these multipliers in.

That or scrap the HACS integration now that proper Enphase support is back in HA.

22

Is it? I have 2024.8, native enphase integration and net sensors are not there. I have CT clamps on solar production and house consumption. Envoy-s-metered-eu 7.6.358

23

Native enphase integration is available as of 2023.9

If you have the CT clamps on the house consumption and not between grid and switchboard (solar included) then net sensors not yet. These are being added to the Core Enphase support.

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24

Thank you for this write-up. I am new to Home Assistant (installed it last night). I will dig through this post a bit more tonight. I am needing some input on an automation I would like to create between my Enphase system and a new Hybrid Inverter and DYI 16s Battery pack.
Background I have an IQ8 system that works great. It was setup as whole home back-up about 1.5 years ago. This year I installed 2-3T batteries. I have found I needed a lot more batteries. I found Enphase too expensive and the new batteries are not compatible.
My goal is to store and use the solar I produce and reduce to export to the grid (which is a loose-loose deal 50% of retail). So I purchased a 10Kw Hybrid inverter and built the 1st of 2 DYI batteries.
I have the whole Enphase System, Combiner, System Controller 2 (the full 200a home power runs through this).
My new inverter has Solar Assistant running it. I just set-up MQTT on it and connected it to Home Assistant.
I can see both systems now in HA. I would like some automation that sees when I have excess power. Then charges the new batteries. Then when I need power and I don’t have solar discharge the battery to meet the loads.
Both systems have CT’s but I am open to adding 3rd party CT’s too.
If anyone has already done this please let me know. I could use some help. I am a newbie to HA so any programing lines I will likely just follow instructions and copy and paste. Here is a basic diagram of my system (don’t be too impress lol 1st stab at this).

Home
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25

I am running 2024.10.3. The native integration is not providing any net anything for me. I have CT on house consumption and CTs on Solar production. I see the entities for balanced net stuff that was to be addressed are not enabled. Do I just need to enable them? Why would the integration disable them?

26

As described in the enpase envoy integration manual, multiple sensors are disabled by default to avoid always creating a whole bunch of sensors that may not be of interest. The net balanced sensor is one of these. Simply enable it if you would like to use it.

27

I think I’ve done something wrong. As far as I know, I’ve followed your instructions to the letter. I’m not sure how much this screenshot will help figure out what’s gone wrong, but this doesn’t seem right!

Screenshot 2024-12-15 at 10.14.24 PM
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28

give it another hour or so.
I assume the first collection of data is from the lifetime sensor which went from 0 to a big number, hence the large jump.
The next hour after that will show correctly as it compares the lifetime reading at the start of the hour and again at the start of the next hour and just charts the difference between the readings.

29

Hi Everyone,

I’m new to Enphase having just had my system installed Monday and now I’m deep in reading about all the past topics for getting the data locally from the envoy. Much thanks to @del13r, @vk2him , and @catsmanac.

I’m currently using the native integration and it works great! I’d like more real time updates though (for power mostly), so I’m wondering if I should just setup the faster polling method described in the native integration docs, or if I need to go with the local API streaming approach like via @vk2him script pushing to MQTT. What is suggested by the experts here?

I’m concerned about pushing the envoy too hard with requests and causing it to lock up. Does the native integration have a risk here if I poll it too fast? If so I guess that suggests the streaming method might be better.

What is the difference in how the script from @vk2him gets the data vs how the native integration gets it?

30

Thanks for the mention, my script has been running for a few years without causing any impact, load or issues with the Envoy.

I’m not sure how the native integration does it, however my addon is a simple python script that attaches to the Envoys 1 second streaming output. The script runs on HA or standalone, and converts the json stream to mqtt, then publishes it to your mqtt broker.
Cheers

1 Like
31

The core integration connects to the same local api on the Envoy as where the streaming output is available but uses different endpoints in 1 minute data collection intervals.

Shortening the collection interval is possible, but is certainly limited by Envoy capacity. I’ve heard of successful 15 sec intervals and even 5 in one case. But also of failing 20 second intervals. In many cases as shortened interval starts of well, but then after some period things start to bind and fail up to the Envoy cycling. So, it’ll be trial and error to see what will work.

I am assuming you have an Envoy metered with Current Transformers installed. If not, shortening the 1 minute cycle does not make much sense as the micro-inverters update in the Envoy only every 5 minutes. Although they report with some spread over the 5 minutes, there’s little to gain with the live stream. Nor does the stream yield any data (my envoy is like that).

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