Which of these is easier to link to HA? We want to buy one of these brands of solar inverter and battery.
GoodWe is listed as a standard integration but how good is it? I don’t have the inverter yet so can’t try out the integration.
At minimum we need to read the export level and battery charging power.
Does this need a MODBUS link or can it be done over wifi as the inverter has a wifi connection? Looks like with GoodWe it can be wifi as when i tried the integration it just asked for the IP address.
Goodwe documentation from the vendor is very spotty, and the secretive protocol has been reverse engineered, partially, and most of the many integrations have some form of timeouts or rely on screen scraping the SEMS portal from the vendor. The hardware is good, but sadly badly let down by the software. At this point in time I would suggest look at alternatives till Goodwe release more information. GoodWe - are you listening?
Go for the ModBus option if you have a choice. Avoid the WiFi component.
Just my opinion, based on some very bad experiences. Avoid GoodWe.
Very useful resonse thanks. So if the offical HA integration for GoodWe does not work well, are the unofficial Sigenergy ones mentioned in other posts here better? They look comprehensive but, to a non-expert like me, look daunting.
So far my HA experience covers bolting together standard (mostly Shelly who are well supported) integrations without having to modify YAML or delve into NodeRed say.
I could achieve what I am looking for (controlling dump loads when export is high) by measuing the power flows with Shelly energy meters, so bypassing the need to talk to the inverter at all. Thus it’s agnostic about the inverter brand. It just seemed more elegant and cheaper to use the data from the inverter instead, if easy to do.
The inverters (by design) have to measure voltages, current and power to be able to regulate their output. Getting your data from the source would seem to be the most elegant and accurate way without having to go the added expense of external power monitors.
If the vendor cannot expose these in a format that can be reliably used by third party, then maybe they have their customer priorities wrong, and an alternate vendor should be considered that can offer this functionality.
GoodWe, are you listening? Other vendors offer this, routinely, and as part of normal product documentation and regular customer support. Robust, stable, well documented APIs. Is this too much to wish for? Nope - check carefully and vote with your wallet.
Agree but am frightened by my limited ability to do coding/understand protocols. Realised that there is flaw in my option to use energy meters as the battery flow is DC so a standard meter with a CT won’t work. I suspect that an equivalent meter based on hall sensors may be expensive even though the sensor itself is only a little more expensive than a CT.
If going with third party power monitors, Monitor at the AC side of the inverter, not the DC side. This allows for inverter efficiency factors to be automatically incorporated into your data - you are measuring how much power is contributed to your system, not how much is generated by your solar cells and batteries - two different things.
Look for existing HomeAssistant integrations rather than attempting to roll your own. Whether you use third party monitoring or an existing integration, you will still need to delve deep into configuration as it isn’t plug and play yet, more like plug and pray…
Hence my original question. GoodWe is listed as having an integration but apparently it does not work well. Sigenergy is not listed but maybe the documentaion is better than GoodWe so the data can be accessed if tou have more skill than I.
The main 2 things I need to know is export, which is easy with an energy meter as long as it can sense the direction of the current, and battery charging power. The latter is always going to be DC sadly.
One of the bidders for our job says he has lots of customers he supplied Goodwe kit to who have successful connected it to HA. But I guess there is a difference between connecting it and reliably connecting it and accessing all the data.