After years of struggling with the Growatt integration (due to the bad service from the manufacturer’s website) I have found an alternative way to feed my Energy dashboard.
I have created an integrator helper that calculates the energy by integrating the power returned on a phase that does not have any consumers on it. This solved my problem for a few days. But today, after a reboot, the Growatt server has come back. And it spoils my measurement of course, because now I get a big spike for all the enrgy produced by the panels in the last couple of days.
I would like to get rid of the input from Growatt forever, but I don’t want to lose the history of produced energy in the past year. How can I do that?
The first thing I tried was to remove Growatt’s “Total Lifetime energy output” as an energy source from the Energy Dashboard. As expected, that killed ALL the history I had from the past year. So I added it back.
As an alternative solution I have now sabotaged /etc/hosts , so that HA can no longer contact the Growatt server. I added a line:
0.0.0.0 growatt.com
And now I get no more NEW data from Growatt.
This looks very promising!
What I don’t understand is this: if you don’t want any more Growatt Cloud data in HA anyway, why not just integrate the inverter locally? There are various ways to do that.
The cloud-based Growatt HA integration has always been a bit of a headache, as Growatt frequently introduces changes that lead to connection issues. I integrated my Growatt inverter locally into HA using the ShineStick WiFi years ago, and I haven’t had any problems since.
the Shinestick won’t fit on my inverter, instead they have installed a thing that looks like the Shinestick, but is in reality a proprietary wireless thing that connects to a “SineLanBox” in the utility closet downstairs. And that is plugged into my Ethernet to connect to the Growatt server.
I hesitate to buy extra hardware, especially when I am not sure it will fit my installation.
The guys who installed the panels had almost left without even installing this gadget for me, but I refused to sign their papers before they had given me a way to measure the performance of my panels (as they had pormised in the quote before installing).
The question is, which inverter model do you actually have? Normally, it should have other ways to access the data. Without knowing your exact inverter model, if the Wi-Fi stick that came with the ShineLanBox works, then a ShineStick Wi-Fi or a ShineWiLan-X2 “should” probably work as well.
My inverter is the MOD 6000TL3-X. I can try to do more research on it.
But even if I find a better way to monitor my energy production, the “Ghost of Growatt Past” is stil haunting my Home Assistant setup. I thought I had killed it by editing /etc/hosts , but yesterday and the day before yesterday it came back at noon. (Not at midnight as most decent ghosts do.) That looks like this:
While I obviously don’t know every single Growatt inverter model, I’m pretty sure your MOD 6000TL3-X can be integrated into Home Assistant using the sticks I mentioned. You could use alternative firmware - like ESPHome or MQTT - on the ShineWifi-X, or connect directly via Modbus using the ShineWiLan-X2. A cloud-based Growatt integration would be the very last option I’d choose, simply because you’d be at the mercy of whatever “games” Growatt decides to play with its cloud services and access.
Unfortunately, I can’t comment on your question regarding the Energy Dashboard, precisely because I haven’t used the cloud-based Growatt integration for years - and, of course, I have no idea how you’ve configured any helper for it.
I can tell you this, though: if you delete the connection to the Growatt server in any (host) files or block it in some other way, you obviously won’t receive any data from the inverter at all. That approach would only work if the inverter were sending data locally to Home Assistant - which is exactly what it doesn’t\ do when you use the cloud-based Growatt integration.
But perhaps you could make use of Grott - which Archie mentioned here - since it “eavesdrops” on the communication with the Growatt Cloud via a proxy solution.
For my stick, the Shine Wifi, flashing any custom esphome fw would require manually soldering two pins together to put it in flash mode. Was scared of doing that bc I’m no solderer so I used the grott solution instead. ESPhome would certainly be cleaner tho
As a quick addition: this temporary jumper puts the ShineWifi-X into flash mode, which is necessary to flash the firmware in the first place. Once that’s done, flash mode is no longer needed.
If you use ESPHome, you’ll frequently see notifications for ESPHome updates for the ShineWifi-X, simply because ESPHome is constantly being updated. I’ve been ignoring and skipping these for years, so my ShineWifi-X is still running a firmware version from 2023 (2023.3.0). I’ve been ignoring the ESPHome updates - which have now reached version 2026.9.1 - since back in 2024 (2024.5.5).
If you don’t necessarily need or want to use ESPHome, you can flash MQTT firmware onto the stick instead; this allows the inverter data to be sent to an MQTT broker via MQTT. There are various MQTT firmware versions available for this—just search Google for “ShineWifi-X MQTT firmware.”
That said, in my opinion, ESPHome allows you to configure more things (and do so more easily) compared to MQTT firmware. The available MQTT firmware versions aren’t really being actively maintained anymore, though that isn’t necessarily a problem; once the inverter is sending its data to an MQTT broker, there’s really nothing left that needs changing.
I don’t know what a ShineWifi-X costs right now, but two or three years ago, you could get one here in Germany for around €15. Back then (in 2022), I simply bought another ShineWifi-X so I could keep the original stick - with its original firmware - for emergencies, while using the second stick for “playing around” and “testing.” But the last time I actually did that was in 2024.
However, if you’re thinking about buying another Shine stick, you should take a look at the ShineWiLan-X2. It costs around €20 here in Germany and reportedly supports Modbus TCP. See this post for details:
I don’t have any personal experience with it yet either, but I’ll probably pick one up to test at some point.
Edit: As previously mentioned, there are various ways to get rid of the Growatt cloud - provided you don’t absolutely need to keep using the Growatt app. If you do want to keep using it, you have to use Grott and hope it remains actively maintained so that it keeps working after Home Assistant updates or whenever Growatt changes something in the cloud or access protocols. Personally, I prefer a purely local solution; I can easily do without the Growatt app since I use Home Assistant anyway.
You’re amazing, I had the exact same thought, keep the original for backup and flash a spare, but if the WiLAN works with even less fuzz I might just do that.
Thank you good sir
I am actually quite happy with the way I get my energy data at the moment. I am aware it depends upon the unusual configuration of the electrical installation in my house (where one of the three phases is not used to power anything), but I can live with that for now.
My real problem was to switch to a new method of measuring and still keep the old data I had collected from Growatt. But now it looks as if the Growatt integration has finally commited suicide:
I can still see all my data from the past year, and Growatt is not coming back each day at noon. Maybe this situation only lasts until HA is restarted again, we will see. For the moment I am counting my blessings.
You can find various guides for it online.
