In the last couple of weeks, Solcast has stopped working. I set it up just before Christmas to poll 4 times a day , every 6 hours. On the whole it’s worked very well. There have been occasional stops before but always coming back after a HA restart. Now a restart does not restore its operation. The Solcast website says my account is in order so there would seem to be something in my setup which is not sound.
I’m not at all sure how to go about troubleshooting the automation. Can anyone help me, please?
There is something wrong with their free API. It may be overloaded. Even though their service status says all is ok. This has been going on for months.
As an early adopter I have 50 API calls. I use a rest sensor call every 30 minutes and about 3 or 4 times a day it fails with no json returned for long periods of time. I retry every 5 minutes when it fails (this does not seem to add to my use count) until it starts working again. This can be 5 minutes later or hours later.
What just seemed to be working on my site is generating a new API-key and reconfiguring SOLCAST in HA.
Then cleraed my site data in HA and everything is working fine so far.
I just spoke to them. Their free rooftop plan has seen explosive growth. To prioritise their paying customers they not only have API limits but rate limits as well.
Not sure that would apply to us as with so few API calls available we are not repeatedly hammering their servers. Unless it is a global rate limit (which actually seems like it could be a possibility).
Though my rest sensor has been without issue for the last 24 hours I’ve added a user agent in the header to make it look like a web browser to see if that helps with reliability.
Can you explain “I’ve added a user agent in the header to make it look like a web browser to see if that helps with reliability.” As an HA novice it means nothing to me.
I can’t find how many API calls I’ve made. I can’t see that anywhere on their website. Is that hidden somewhere
All I see is “All systems operational”
I’ve emailed them to ask what is going wrong.
"I suspect it has to do with our GetUserUsageAllowance has been deprecated fully.
This means that you’ll no longer get a response and if your system is dependent on that value, then you might not make any API calls.
I would recommend you adjust the system such that you just make the API calls every 6 hours, and complete an exponential delay retry with a max value should you not get a successful 200 response."
I’m afraid I don’t understand it at all. Can anyone here more familair with API calls explain this to me or point me to some articles that would help?
It means the integration can no longer tell how many API calls you have left and needs to be re-written to not use that API call (GetUserUsageAllowance).
Instead it should just try and if it fails wait longer and longer (capped to a maximum delay) between each subsequent retry until it succeeds.
Billy Susilo at Solis tells me “I had a look at your account and everything looks fine, and looks like you were able to make API calls again. As this is Home Assistant related, I suggest that you reach out to the community there and see if anyone else has the same problem, or if it’s already a known problem.”
So here I am. Is this still working for you?
my integration reports in my location and weather entity fields “This entity is no longer being provided by the solcast_solar integration. If the entity is no longer in use, delete it in settings.”
