Modern Inverters

Questions
#1

I have had a Samil Solar River SR5KTLA1 5Kw inverter for about ten years.
I use an old Asus EeePC connected to it via a serial port adaptor into it’s USB port to upload data to PVOutput.
The inverter will possibly need replacing soon, and the EeePC is running Windows 7 and occasionally fails.
When I need to replace the inverter it’s an opportunity to upgrade to something which will enable a more modern way to upload data to PVOutput and retire the EeePC too.
What are the latest options for uploading data from modern inverters, if anyone would be so kind as to provide some advice? Will any of them upload to the web directly via wireless?

#2

See PVO’s help pages:
https://pvoutput.org/help.html

Go to the sections on Auto Uploader and Push Services to get some idea of how current inverters can provide data to sites like PVO.

Specific capabilities of each inverter would need to be checked with each manufacturer’s documentation.

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#3

The following inverters work best with PVOutput without additional hardware etc

  • Fronius
  • Enphase
  • SolarEdge

Enphase and SolarEdge data is pulled from their servers, while Fronius provides a direct data ‘push’ to PVOutput - this is preferable since there is no reliance on the manufacture web service to be available.

#4

Don’t dismiss any inverters because they lack direct support on PV Output. The site has a very robust API and there are open source solutions, like SBFSpot https://github.com/SBFspot/SBFspot for SMA inverters which work very well also.

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#5

Adding to @anderdd’s statement, compatibility with PVOutput, while certainly a plus, probably shouldn’t be a driving factor in you decision. I would think that cost, efficiency and compatibility with your existing panels would be of higher priority. In the unlikely case that what you choose can’t be supported here, then there are external solutions that also work very well.

#6

What he says. The first priority of the inverter is to reliably and efficiently convert the energy produced by your panels to AC.

As a secondary consideration it would be simpler if you can directly upload data to PVO from the inverter either using the inverter itself of some other device located at your home / business rather than relying on a third-party website. A lot of modern inverters ( in the Australian market ) at least have some sort of API support that allows data to be ‘pulled’ from the data and ‘pushed’ to somewhere else.

#7

Installed Fronius (Inverter + Smart Meter) about 3 months ago. Found it easy to configure to provide data to PVO. Initially was deciding between Fronius & SMA, went with Fronius 8.2 kW inverter because SMA inverters only go to a maximum of 5kW on a single phase and I would’ve needed 2 SMA inverters for the size of the system. Only figured out later that SMA ones are not as easy to hookup to PVO as opposed to Fronius. Nothing against Enphase, but found a lot of very bad general feedback around SolarEdge ones.

#8

Hi I have an old Samil 3Kw inverter which I am trying to monitor using PVBean Counter and PVOutput via a USB Serial converter and a Windows compuer. I have a Windows 7 or a Windows 10 machine I could use. I have had several goes at setting this up without success and I wondered if you might be able to send me some screen shots of from your set up? All help much appreciated Thanks George