Pyranometer - A Solar Radiation Measuring Device

Hardware
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Hello Home Assistant World !!

Background ( can be ignored )

I am a bit of a HA enthusiast with 2 HA’s in different places and at least 100 devices, and my son who has
studied renewable energy as an engineer told me to work out if solar energy is worthwhile on our roof a good first step is to measure this in a way that is usable for his calculations.

This is unfortunately not doable with a simple luminosity device ( I have quite a collection of them ) rather a “made for Solar installations” relevant device called a Pyranometer.

This does do a similar job to a light sensor but with some more sophistication and provides information
back in a format and type that Experts in the Solar roofing field can use and understand.

I have found no Pyranometers that seem to have any recognizable standard connectivity for HA,
like Tuya or Sonoff or Xiaomi, to name a couple, and they seem to be very expensive ( starting at 400 Euros ! ) as normally only business use them, there doesn’t seem to be any cheap chinese versions.

You can however cheaply buy the sensor itself ( cheap is relative, about 70 Euros ) and I take it over some sort of ESP32 (?) or another way create some usable integration.

I found no topic on the HA forums related to this but considering HA seems to be going “all in” on Solar and Energy Management generally I think its the right time to look at this subject matter.

I’d like to explore it, if possible buy or build a Pyranometer setup and integrate it into my HA so I can
monitor the data and use it to estimate my Solar strategy when I go down this road.

So Questions :

a. Has anyone used a Pyranometer ?
b. Know some they’d recommend ?
c. Know any that integrate into HA ( I found no integration for this sort of device )
d. Know someone who has experience with this integration or thoughts ?

Thanks !

David

David

1 Like
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I am also looking for a sensor that measures the solar radiation. Something like this.

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Here is a nice discussion about the topic.

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Great Article, exactly the discussion ! Thanks very much

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Just another comment. I have so many places in my home assistant config where I’ve added complexity to attain fumctionality that I’m somewhat hesistant to go down any more DIY avenues.

Of course there are some great implementations out there but anything that isn’t turnkey at the moment I’d prefer to avoid. Maintaining and remembering all the special implementation knowledge across > 100 sensor and 4 device manufacturers and/or hubs is a major concern to me.

Trying to keep things below the rocket science level seems to be a constant challenge.

1 Like
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Is there an online service (free or very low cost) where I can get solar radiation data for my location? I’ve seen a couple but they go for like 0,11 per API call.
I need this data to calculate evapotranspiration. I would prefer using an API call rather than build something with ESP32 even if I know it won’t be as accurate.
I was also wondering, having solar panels data, may I try to calculate from them?

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Tado provide this sensor with their AC controller V3. Reads out in percentage.