Enphase Envoy poll update

Energy
1

I recently installed solar panels with an Enphase Envoy solar energy gateway. I have integrated this into Home Assistant. This works perfectly. Now I read that the poll update is set to 60 seconds by default. I want to build an automation to perform a manual poll update when the value of sensor.electricity_meter_power_consumption or sensor.electricity_meter_power_production changes. I wonder if this is possible. Perhaps the forum can help me with the solution. I am (still) not very familiar with Home Assistant.

I read on GitHub that you can manually trigger the poll update. I haven’t succeeded in doing this. Could someone possibly help me with the steps I need to take to achieve this?

2

Welcome!

I also have an Enphase Envoy added into haos, but I use other integrations to get the data I need.

I’m curious what type automation is intended to do and why change the polling frequency, in a manner of speaking?

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You could do this with a call to a service (put an entity of your integration in place of my example):

service: homeassistant.update_entity
target:
  entity_id: sensor.envoy_today_s_energy_production
data: {}

However, I don’t think Envoy has the data more often, so it might not be of any use. Also, if you do not use clamps to measure everything, the load of the api on the envoy might be big due to calculations being done.

There is a post that has a way to do it efficiently, but it is not as straightforward as you might hope:

4

I also have an emphase system installed since almst 2 months and sometimes I wonder why I am still pulling power from the grid instead of using the battery.
I suspect the internal slow refresh / polling rate of the enphase system to be the culprit.

I think @Edwin_D is right and I wonder if there is an option to increase the polling rate (to the battery / micro inverters) on the enphase system.

5

I think the Enphase is getting data from inverters fast enough. Home Assistant can also update on demand, in any interval you like using automations.

But I read somewhere the endpoint that is being used does some heavy calculations, required mostly for non metered versions. As the Enphase expects to upload that to cloud, and is not supposed to flood the server, it was probably never a priority for the developers to make it more efficient so it could be done more frequently.

There is an alternative integration for HA I linked to in the post above that uses different endpoints that can be polled faster, but won’t provide enough info if you have a non metered version (like I do, so I didn’t look into it further). If you search the forum you should be able to find it.

There is the question though why you would need it, other than it would be nice (it is, I agree). I would hesitate to stress the device more than it was designed for, increasing the chance it fails to control the inverters fast enough and cause damage. There’s a lot of (fluctuating) power there on the roof that can cause fires.

6

Thank you @Edwin_D

I agree, that it’s mainly nice to have to get the information more frequently (through the intergration to HA).
One of the reasons is, that my Sankey Chart would look nicer :wink:

My main point though is to find out if I can re-configure the Envoy itself to poll the consumption / production more frequently (I have a metered version).
The reason is, that the grid seems to “jump in” too often if the envoy thinks, there is not enough power (from the panels or the battery or both).
So, envoy polling frequently the CTs would then hopefully result in less power consumption from the grid.

If a higher polling rate is even possible, it does not necessarily mean that this data is also transferred to the cloud.

Anyway, I guess I need to find out in the enphase community if the envoy can poll more often.

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That is not what I meant. What I meant was, because it wasn’t intended to be used much, it wasn’t made efficient. So uploading is irrelevant, but the heavy calculations are. The regular API is very Envoy CPU intensive. So use the addon I linked to, it is not CPU intensive, and provices data per second. But do not try to supercharge the official one. It will overwhelm your Envoy.

8

Got it - sorry.
I will check out the link above.
Thanks

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I do not think querying the Envoy will make it work better. Microinverters are not the best choice when used with batteries. Solar and Batteries are DC, but the microinverters only allow AC interaction, with inverters causing loss of energy. Also, on multiphase systems, I do not think batteries can vary how much power is returned per phase. So production and consumption might not be on the same phase. If anything, asking the Envoy to do more things means giving it less resources to do what it needs to do. If Enohase could have made it more efficient this simple (and cheap) they would have done it.

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Interesting - thank you for the explanation.

I thought, that measuring the consumption (and production) makes the envoy controlling battery dis-charge if consumption exceeds production.

So you mean, my impression that there is too much power coming from the grid might be related to importing on a specific phase while a different phase is potentially exported?

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Yes, that definitely happens. In the Netherlands (and probably the whole of Europe) though, Energy companies are required by law to cross those out if they happen at the same time - even if the upcoming law is effective that stops leveling over the year. Only one meter may run at any time: import or export. Clamps per phase won’t see that, but the meter total should.

This makes sense, because many people have a single phase solar system and a three phase home. Those people would be in trouble otherwise. In fact, solar installation companies use a formula to determine which phase to connect to, based on the address, to make sure every one uses a different phase as much as possible if they only produce on one phase.

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That’s interesting and totally makes sense.

Thanks again for your delailed explanation and help.

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