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Hi, the dashboard should update when there is a change in the value

Thanks for watching and the comment. If you have a look at my other videos I've made them on how to optimise for Eco7 and Agile based on solar forecast (i.e on Eco7 only charge to 50% if the forecast for the next day is decent, 70% if it's 'reasonable' or don't charge if the forecast is good). As for wear on the flash, the thing has a 10 year warranty on it, so I'm not that bothered to be honest.

Good work 🙂

@@gordonmarkusvideo no. 142 on my channel, quite far in I explain my app.

Thanks for taking the time to watch and for the comment. The functionality you're after actually exists in a HA integration written by someone far more clever than me. Take a look at this: github.com/fboundy/pv_opt

Hi, thanks for watching and the comment. I'm afraid I've got no personal experience with the S3 logger, so can't really offer any advice. It might be worth asking the question in the Solis Owners FB group though, there's lots of good information in there.

The addons needed are Mosquitto MQTT broker and file editor. I also put on the samba share addon so that I can directly access the directory structure from a PC. Also helpful is the terminal addon so you can run commands via ssh. Docker version isn't the full version, so I think you might struggle to get this working but feel free to prove me wrong!

Brilliant - thanks for watching and the comment. Hope this sorts your issue :-)

Some people might want to know why this is necessary, hence the first 2:56 of the video!

Hi Wolfgang, thanks for watching and the comment. I must admit when I did this video I was less than impressed because I think I'd been mis-sold the system. Everything that I've done in the videos I was told would work 'out of the box' via the Solis app but we all know that's a long way from the truth! Having now had the system 2 years, I think I should have bought a 6KW inverter as well. Anyway....in terms of what you're trying to achieve, if it's literally just trying to read the registers on the inverter to import into HA, have you thought about getting rid of the logger altogether and just using a waveshare RS485/ethernet adaptor on the inverter? You'll lose access to Solis Cloud but it will give you real time local access to the inverter. If you are on FB, this group facebook.com/groups/288045168816481 has a wealth of information in it. Some people have done some clever stuff with a couple of waveshare devices in master/slave setup so that they can still keep the Solis logger connected as well if Solis Cloud is important to you. I hope that helps :-)

@@gordonmarkus Hello Gordon, thanks for the quick response. As pointed out, I want to get rid of overhead. I am using node-red so HA for me is overhead. I still hope that there is an easy way for direct accessing the wifi dongle and exporting actual power and total yield via MQTT. I have thought about inversting in hardware to get these data. The cheapest way for me seems to be a Shelly 3em (about 90€) and I am sure to get what I want. What I don’t want is to invest money into hardware for RS485 and so on not knowing software efforts behind. You may ask, why I don’t go with the Shelly 3em directly. Its because I have the ambition to do it with software only. Therefore I hope, that I can get sufficient inverterdata via MQTT from the raspi part of your initial video only. Do you think this will be possible?

@@wolfgangehlert6335 I'm afraid I don't have any experience with node-red or the shelly 3em, although I've got a shelly clamp meter to measure my own import/export as well as to control the additional fans on the inverter. I wonder if it would be worth joining the FB group I mentioned in my previous reply and asking in there as there are some really clever people with lots of experience (I'm not including myself in that!)

Yes it will discharge when capacity is at 100% (or whatever you set). I've seen this happen which is why I have the automations set like this. If you can make another automation work for you, then that's great - but for me this is what worked best. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment.

Hi, this video might give you some idea of how I use the HA automations to charge based on solar forecast th-cam.com/video/aN5vFQm4vpU/w-d-xo.html As for installing Solcast itself, I think I just did it via HACs. You need to create a Solcast account and get your API key first though. Also note that you'll need to run an automation to refresh Solcast now, I think for new accounts you get 10 polls a day, so set it to poll every 3hrs.

@@gordonmarkus Thanks for speedy reply, great videos, I'll have a look

Hi, I've not used the Solis Modbus integration so can't comment on that I'm afraid. In this video I used solismod/pysolarmanv5 on a linux VM and then publish via MQTT in HA to send values to the inverter via solismod/pysolarmanv5. Note if you have the S3 logger none of that will work, and you can't talk direct to that logger via modbus with any integration. Take a look at my other video that advises what integrations will work with which logger. If you need to start from scratch because you have an S3 logger, then I would bin that off and get a waveshare RS232/modbus converter and then use the Solax integration which simplifies things a lot.

Thanks for watching and the comment. What I do is have 4 automations. The first turns the fans on at 37 degrees (I just just this as a start and never changed it) and starts a 20 minute timer and a 40 minute timer. I then have another automation that turns the fan off when the inverter drops below 30 degrees. The third automation stops the fans when the 20 min timer changes to idle and if the temp is below 35 degrees. The last automation stops the fans when the 40 min timer changes to idle. I've no idea if this is the best setup, but it seems to work and keep the inverter temp pretty stable when it's working hard.

@@gordonmarkus thank you !

working now 🙂

@@mark82421 brilliant news, well done :-)

Gordon, me again, what direction do you have your fans blowing? (So to speak) 😇

Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment. Glad the video has been of use. I also had various 'challenges' getting my smart meter/in home display working and had several engineer visits before it eventually got sorted.

@@gordonmarkus Morning, sorry to trouble you and fully understand if you cannot help me. My data from yesterdays Hildebrand download has not came through, I can see all the gas info on my bright app but when I look at the energy configuration screen on HA there are error messages - statistics not defined for sensor.dcc_sourced_smart_gas_meter_usage_today and Entity unavailable - the state of these configured entities are currently not available - Ensor.dcc_sourced_smart_gas_meter_usage_today (unknown). The rate and standing charge info have a status of disabled. All the best

No problem. I had something similar after the BST change a couple of weeks ago. My fix was this github.com/HandyHat/ha-hildebrandglow-dcc/issues/337#issuecomment-1535479784 which basically involves replacing the sensor.py file. Might be worth giving that a go. Once I'd done that it took a good few hours, or even a day for my energy dashboard to sort itself out@@jamesgordon4218

@@gordonmarkus Hi Gordon, thanks again for taking the time to reply, I am sorry but I am a real novice when it comes to HA, only recently getting the HA green. I have downloaded the file editor and I reviewed the bug fix instructions but I got stuck at no 6!! It says "navigate to /custom_components/...., I don't know how to do this on file editor!! I come from a background of no IT coding skills so I am struggling, I am the type of user who loves simple instructions but HA is brand new to me!

Hold the bus!!! After some persistent tinkering!! I think I have solved my issue, I was able to delete and re-instate the new code so will watch the energy monitor over the day to see if has worked, thanks again!!

Hi, Thanks for watching and the comment. Have you got your inverter in self use mode? That's tripped me up before. Take a look at this other video of mine here that might help th-cam.com/video/MXlIsVWeq3c/w-d-xo.html

@@gordonmarkus thanks for the reply. Yes I watched this one, along with many other of your videos 👍🏻 The inverter is self use mode and time of use switch is on. I can read the register and when I switch off the time of use switch, 35 becomes 33 when switched off I am able to change the charge start time via mqtt

It sounds like you've got everything as it should be. A couple of things to check, since you added 43110 into registers.py in solismod, did you restart solismod/main.py? That needs to be restarted after any changes in registers.py otherwise they won't get picked up. The other thing to check, is when you do the publish from HA can you look at main.py and see the message being received and sent to the inverter?@@cagcos

@@gordonmarkus thanks for that that’s exactly what was wrong with it. Simple restart did it 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Great news! Glad you got it fixed :-) @@cagcos

Thanks for the comment. Yes you would need to get rid of the S3 loggers as they won't work and either get DLS-W, DLS-L, S2 or even just replace the solis logger with a waveshare device. Personally if I was going on this journey again I'd just use a waveshare as once you have HA running you'll never look at SolisCloud again. I'd also use the Solax integration which interfaces direct to the waveshare removing the complexity for the solismod/pysolarman scripts on a separate VM. In terms of running 2 inverters, no problem - the second one will just have a '2' at the end of all the device/entity IDs.

@@gordonmarkus Thx for speedy reply. It would not bother me at all to ditch SolisCloud. It does not properly support a twin inverter set up. Any guidance as to what sort of waveshare device we could use would be very helpful.

This is the one that many people are using www.amazon.co.uk/Waveshare-RS485-Ethernet-Converter-auto-negotiation/dp/B09QMNWYLQ@@neilfuller9348 check the supported adaptors here as well homeassistant-solax-modbus.readthedocs.io/en/latest/compatible-adaptors/

Thanks for watching and the comment. For my own interest though, could you boot up raid using the microSD instead of the USB? Also if you’re running Unraid couldn’t you just do away with the raid controller and use the 4 sata ports on the motherboard?

I'm not using Solax on my own system. I'm using solismod/pysolarman running on a separate VM. At the time I built my setup I wasn't aware of the Solax integration. My understanding with Solax is that the devices/entities are all setup for you already so you don't need to know the register numbers directly. You can ask Solis for the registers if you really want them, via this website:usservice.solisinverters.com/support/solutions/articles/73000558650-modbus-communication-for-solis-inverters

Solis support sent me their pdf RS485 protocol document which just says "The address is available as long as the LCD is powered" ! I've had a look around the menu tree on the inverter as well as looking on Solis cloud and the Inverter info page from a browser but there is no mention of a modbus number. I've tried Modbus 0, 1 and 2 and the config completes but with no device and no entities. I've put in an enquiry with the Solax integration writer on Github and a question to the Solis Inverter Owners group on Facebook. No joy yet.

what have you got connected on the inverter side? An S2 or DLS-L solis logger, or a waveshare ethernet or usb device? Solax will only work with those as far as I know. When I've done testing with Solax (with waveshare USB/RS485) as soon as HA 'sees' the inverter then it will pick up all the devices/entities and you don't need to actually know the registers. @@ricobass0253

I believe the hardware is working because the Soliscloud is still showing my "plant" and I can connect to the Elfin Wifi device and see that it is receiving and sending RS485 frames via a browser, every time I run the Solax Modbus integration configuration. The problem is when the configuration ends with "success" it reports no device or entities. I may be wrong but that's what leads me to believe I don't have the correct settings.

The Solax documentation doesn't mention the Elfin RS485 adaptor in the list of supported devices homeassistant-solax-modbus.readthedocs.io/en/latest/compatible-adaptors/ also just because solis cloud is working doesn't mean that you have local modbus access. If you are trying to use an RS485 adaptor and a solis logger then you will need to get creative and use 2 rs485 modules. The reason is that the inverter is modbus slave, and the solis logger is master. You can only have one master per network. If you have S3 logger then you are best just getting rid of it, as all it gives you is solis cloud which is poor. Get a waveshare ethernet or USB device as per the documentation and it will work, and give you far more functionality than solis cloud will ever give. if you have a DLS-L or S2 logger then you don't need the waveshare and Solax will talk directly to it. @@ricobass0253

Thanks for the comment and watching. If you have a look at my other videos I’ve done one specific for Eco7 as that’s what I’m on now. I charge at 45amps, and once my required charge is reached (depending on solar forecast) I might then limit max discharge current to 1amp (0amps is not possible) so that any power used in the eco7 window is pulled from the grid rather than draining the battery. Take a look at the other video, hopefully it will help you

Then you have different expectations to what I was sold. Yes you can probably run in 'island' or backup mode but check with your installer before committing as you can only do this if you have TN-S or TT earthing system. If you have TN-CS earthing, then you can have a power outage due to a loss of neutral conductor which will actually lose your ground conductor at the same time (TN-CS is combined earth & neutral). Most modern houses build in the last 40 years or so are TN-CS, so get this checked.

@peterbache thanks for watching and the comment. I've not yet had the chance to play around with the Solax integration, but I am working on another project where it's used so I'll know more in a few weeks. I don't see why you couldn't do what you've suggested though. There's lots of people in the Solis Owners FB group that are using Solax integration so it might be worth asking the question in there too. Also take a look at github.com/fboundy/pv_opt which takes a lot of the leg work out of the automations

Hi, it's all in the video but yes there are 2 machines required. One runs full fat HA, the other runs some kind of linux on which you run the python elements (solismod & pysolarmanv5). Command flow is that an HA automation gets triggered by something, maybe time of day, maybe 'cheap' grid power, maybe state of charge of your battery - it's up to you, the action of that automation is to call a service which will be to publish a value to an MQTT topic. Solismod on the 2nd machine is listening to the MQTT broker in HA, and gets notified of the value that gets published, and then sends it to the relevant register on the inverter to make something happen i.e. charge battery.

...and how is the connection to the inverter made? I understand from other sources that you can't send commands via wifi. You have to tap into the RS485 - or not

In my case the connection is wifi via datalogger DLS-W. That is the only one that works with solismod/pysolarman. If you are plugging direct into the inverter via RS485 adaptor (like waveshare) then you don't need the 2nd machine running python scripts, you can do it all in HA with the Solax integration. There is a lot of useful information in the Solis Owners FB group. You'd do well to have a look in there. @@ricobass0253

I guess I won't know what questions to ask re software and code until I get the hardware installed and the SOLAX integration installed in HA

I have looked at the Solis Owners FB group. I even joined it, but, I don' t like or get on with FB. It's an amorphous blob that keeps moving. I see a repository of files which might be useful but it looks a pig to search.

Hi, you could get an ethernet to RS485 adaptor like this www.waveshare.com/rs485-to-eth.htm then you just need to get the specific solis connector (they have them on ebay). Note that doing this you won't have access to soliscloud (which is actually not much good anyway). You can probably do away with the pi/linux vm running the python scripts as I think you'd be able to use the Solax integration on HA to control the inverter then. It's not something I've personally done, but I think several in the Solis Owners FB group have.

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm trying to keep the numbers of devices on my WiFi down. And the inverter will be right next to an ethernet port... However I suppose it's not a deal breaker. Not being able to automate the inverter to such as octopus agile possibly is, I can see is something you've done, will I be okay following this route? I'm just trying to get my head round the kit under less than ideal conditions, I had quite a bit of eye surgery yesterday!

Let your eyes recover before spending hours looking at screens :-) If you follow most of what I've done then you should be good, if you go down the waveshare/solax route that's not something i've personal got experience with currently but if you join the Solis Owners FB group there's others in there that will be able to assist. I'd take a look at agile pricing history, as it's not as good as it was. Personally I'm on Eco7 now as the guaranteed 7hrs at about 15p overnight is better than the occasional cheap 30 min slot on agile. @@KevinBagshaw

@@gordonmarkus Do you think the Solis is a good option then?

Yeah, I'm fairly happy with it. It's just that I was kind of mis-sold it as all the stuff I thought would work 'out of the box' didn't exist at the time. It seems to be a decent enough inverter though. @@KevinBagshaw

Take a look at the examples on Github, everything should be there that you need (that's what I did).

Hi, thanks for watching and the comment. When you publish the MQTT command do you see anything in arrive on your box running solismod? If you have a screen monitoring main.py do you see the activity? Other things to check, this setup only works with the DLS-W datalogger, if you have S3 logger then it won't work. If you have S2 then use the Solax integration. Let me know how you get on.

@@gordonmarkus hey - thanks for replying. It was an issue between keyboard and chair in this case. Looks like when I was creating my scripts to check the values of certain registers I’d managed to mangle the register# for the amps setting. It was looking at something else and the correct register was being set with the value sent from HA. D’oh! Now I have that sorted out, I can hopefully tie this in with solar forecast and the charge when tomorrow’s outlook isn’t great and it’s the octopus flux overnight cheap rate.

you're welcome, really pleased that you got it sorted. You can definitely write automations to achieve what you're looking for. You could even go one step further with flux and dump the battery back to the grid to make a few £s when the rates are favourable 🙂@@GreatOldOne

github.com/thomasloven/hass-config/wiki/Lovelace-Plugins

I would probably use waveshare RS485 ethernet converter and connect to RS485 port on the inverter. Have a look in the Solis Owners FB group and ask if anyone else has done this with your model of inverter.

Because the battery might be fully charged in the first 3 or 4 hours of the ECO7 window, then I wouldn't want to use the batteries to power those heavy appliances during the remainder of the ECO7 window as I want to keep the batteries fully charged ready for when it switches back to peak rate.

If you set the battery charge period to the full eco7 seven hours and it charges in four, it seems to me it doesn't matter if then the appliances switch on and start off by drawing from the battery - as soon as they do, the inverter will take over and charge some more, as soon as the battery goes below 100% (or 95 or whatever you've set it to). This is what I observe with my simple eco7, non-HA set up. My battery is always fully charged at 7 in the morning regardless of whatever appliances we have run overnight.

That's different to what I observed. I found that if my batteries were fully charged by say 5am, and my appliances ran after that - they would pull from the battery, which is why I have these automations in place. It's also a bit of a failsafe, as if the appliances are running during the Eco7 window then you'd only ever want them to pull from the grid otherwise why would you run them at that time?@@ricobass0253

Interesting. I've only had my batteries installed on the 28th Nov but since I set the SOLIS inverter charge period to 00:00 - 00:70 on the 2nd Dec, I've had 100%SOC at 7 UTC every day since then. ATM I can't see any advantage of a more sophisticated HA system with my present setup. On a similar vein, I must admit I can't see the advantage of changing the night charge in light of the following day's solar forecast. If the sun is good today surely you just don't have to charge (from the grid) that night as the battery will have charge left over from the solar (partial). The actual sun is more accurate than any forecast and you are just making the charge adjustment one night later. Again, the advantage of a predictive system is not obvious to me. What have I missed?

You are entirely missing the point I'm afraid. Why would you want to grid charge and pay for electricity (even off peak) when you don't need to? When the weather improves the logic totally flips, so you charge from solar in the day and then run on batteries overnight. Some days it will be somewhere in between so you might only want to charge the batteries to 50 or 70% if the forecast isn't great but 'reasonable'. Not sure where you live but in the UK the weather is very variable, so you want to make the most of your system to only charge when needed. My calculations work out that I've probably saved an additional £250 a year by running this kind of automation so it's worth putting in the effort. @@ricobass0253

Put .html on the end. Note if you have latest G3 dongle this won’t work anyway

Possibly, apologies for any confusion. Nobody has picked me up on that before :-)

I can't remember now if you need to do the pip install for solismod (you definitely do for pysolarmanv5 though). As long as you've cloned the respository to your local machine I think you're good. Then you just need to edit confg/registers.py and config.py with your relevant values, and then kick off main.py

So I have solismod running and paho-mqtt and pysolarman5 installed, I want to test the python side of it, what commands/scripts do I run to test the functionality?

@@huwpower1 It's in the video from around 14 mins

You refer to running scripts but you don't share what's in the scripts.

You can view the contents in the same way that you would any other text file, and in the same way that you would have edited config.py or registers i.e with 'vi' or some other text editing tool. You might want to start using 'please' and 'thank-you' in your comments and maybe other people might be more forthcoming with assistance.@@huwpower1

Hi Chris, thanks for watching and taking the time to comment. I was aware of the smart meter update periods, but generally by the end of any 24hr period it's pretty much correct. For electric I actually use a shelley clamp meter (that's in another video) and that does give real time info. The friend that told me about this did buy the Hildebrand IHD and does use it with wifi and MQTT, but then told me I'd be able to get gas consumption into the energy dashboard for free. Personally I'm ok with Glow having access to my smart meter data, as that seems a reasonable 'price' to pay for the free functionality that I'm now getting.

@@gordonmarkus Good idea to use the Shelly for power monitoring. I actually use the data from my Solax inverter which compared to what Octopus says is pretty accurate. I started using the Glow integration before I had solar installed and it was great to see the charts in HA and it gives a very good idea of gas usage, which there seems little other option for in HA other than the afore mentioned Hidebrand IHD or an Octopus Home Mini👍

Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment. Really appreciate it, and glad the video has helped 🙂

Hi, thanks for watching and the comment. That's done with the custome stack in card plugin. A few others have asked me the same thing, so I'll make a video on it shortly.

Thanks that'll be really useful.