1st November 2011: I met Carl Benfield of Prescient Power, one of our new installer-sponsors. His roof has a PV array on both the east and the west roofs, and he has a Solar Edge databox in each panel that reports back to the inverter on the current performance, flags up failing panels, and allows some panels to drop their power temporarily while a tree shadow passes without reducing the power of the remainder.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYAgW-LjbI0 Movie about the monitoring
- http://www.solaredge.com/files/pdfs/solaredge-monitoring-portal-user-guide.pdf PDF guide
- http://www.solaredge.com/groups/monitoring/module-monitoring Web page
In this image of Carl's roof, he can slide the timeline along and look at any part of the day. He has a failed panel on the west roof (black with orange stripe) and an under-performing panels on the west face because it's morning on the timeline (dark blue with yellow stripe) . He has a good number of panels doing well in the morning (blue with black stripe) One east panel has a yellow stripe for some reason - he will get emails sent him by the system warning him of this.
This is just one of the many interesting analytical windows available from the Solar Edge reporting window.
Having this done costs at bit at start up but will earn its keep over the years. Without this, you could go for a while summer without realising that you had some failed panels.
This is absolutely incredible. Does Carl's roof function well? I never thought there is such an application can monitor the state of your solar roofing. How much is this software?
ReplyDeleteWell, Carl showed me, we 'logged in' to his roof and were able to examine the performance of the panels, singly. And he isn't using micro-inverters. His email is "Carl Benfield" , and I am sure he would be pleased to tell you more!
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