I am thinking about installing a pair of solar panels on the balcony. The German legislation allows up to 600 W generation without any contracts (hopefully soon uped to 800W).
So I would rather start backwards, with HA, and find an inverter model that can easily be integrated, than fight high and low to integrate whatever solution I already bought.
So, can anyone recommend an inverter that can be found in Germany and can easily talk to HA? I read a bit about Shelly EM, but beside the price (found it for 50-60 €) it seems to be a bit more complicated to install (probably only inside the fuse box).
Hi. If you can buy an inverter with eu-plug, you can use any smart plug with energy monitoring (5-10€).
If it’s hardwired into the wall, you can install a shelly 1pm inbetween (15-20€). However, if you are unsure of what you’re doing, asking an electrician to do it for you is a wise move.
I have a Deye 600 Inverter which works with the “Solaraman” Integration availiable throught HACS. This model however is affected by the ‘Relay-Gate’. Hope this helps.
I also just buyed a “balcony power plant”. Waiting for all parts to be delivered.
I am going with a inverter from “Hoymiles” (HM-1500). Normally they offer a DTU (data transfer unit) which starts round about 80€. It uses a external cloud and I dont knwo how well it will interact with Homeassistant.
If you dont want that, take a look for the keywords “AhoyDTU” oder “openDTU”. These are projects which are als able to retrieve data from the inverter and send it via mqtt to homeassistant, completely local. The hardware you need is only 15€. I just bought mine completely assembled for 35€.
Another cool thing, they are able to control the maximum output, so you can realise a zero feed (Nulleinspeisung) system. Or completely disable it and earn the maximum.(Not recommended if you are not aware what you are doing, high risk of eletrical damage, your house will burn, your wife will leave you and at the end you have to live under a bridge).
Powerplug or shelly are also good ways. But as @assembly alread mentioned, the shelly needs some eletrical knowledge.
The DTU way is the most expensive way (15-35€), but only needs some “developer” skills. And the risk of harming yourself is much lower than with a shelly. (The only risk is your time and that you may become addicted to that).
I think I will need a few weeks to set-up my system. After that I can report you from first hand.
I second Deye. It updates every 5 minutes, works with WiFi and doesn’t need Cloud access. The only problems I have are that the given daily produced sensor does not reset (easy solution with utility meter) and that for the relay crisis you can only get the free one over a Google Form. They are probably automating the process with it.
I just bought such a setup in Germany with APSystems EZ1-M inverter. Iam really happy since this inverter has WiFi out of the box and there is an integration available for home assistant which works with local communication. Data is updated instantly instead of only 5 minutes compared to deye. The Output can be freely adjusted in the app from 0-800w:
).