Hi. This is my first day reporting live data from my PowerWall. I have some questions. First, this is what I did:
I took my existing graphing database that I use to create my own graphs at http://ulmo.solar/ and set them up to output to the extended (annual donation only) PVOutput attributes.
I did the update back 90 days, then set it to live update every 5 minutes or so. Plus, daily it goes back and re-uploads any stragler data my sweep up cleaners grab. For now, I’ll have to manually trigger adding missing data that has been found that is longer than around a day back.
You can look at my graphs at https://pvoutput.org/list.jsp?userid=60344
Here’s some questions:
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When I am not logged in, I cannot see my battery graphing from the extended data regardless of everything I have clicked on; Live does not show battery data. I set extended data to Public, but it doesn’t seem public.
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When I am logged in, I ONLY see my battery graphing data for live, and cannot see the regular solar data for live.
My question for #1 and #2 is how to make both solar and battery extended data both available to the public and to myself regardless of whether or not I am logged in.
- When I add some of the figures calculated by PVOutput.Org for my system, there are some descrepancies. I believe this is due to the PVOutput.Org not exactly defining what all the fields mean and what data they need, so when a device such as a battery is introduced, we don’t know what data to submit. I already noticed that what I sent it was a little off, so I re-sent the 90 days of data with a better definition, but it still seems wrong.
At first, I thought Consumption is what I use. Unfortunately, that gave really wacky results on PVOUTPUT, so I don’t think Consumption actually means consumption, but means consumption of solar. That needs to be clarified. Anyway, so I added my actual consumption to the storage that my batteries store, and output THAT addition as “Consumption” of what is taken by the solar panels, even though it doesn’t include what I export to the grid (from anywhere) and it also includes what the batteries take from the grid. In my case, the settings on my system are such that charging from grid or discharging to grid is not yet commonplace, but will be in a few years. Obviously, PVOUTPUT needs to have their calculation system totally revamped to understand each item in the electrical arrays.
Here are the discrepancies I noticed. I’ll use September 8, 2018 for an example.
Date: 2018-09-08
Generated: PVOUTPUT: 30.556kWh; MY RECORDS: 30,557.1658333503Wh: AGREEMENT.
Efficiency: PVOUTPUT: 5.197kWh/kW: cool. I don’t know what that means, but I’m guessing it’s energy per insolation. I’ll have to play with that some time.
Exported: PVOUTPUT: 1.761kWh; MY RECORDS: Exported to Grid: 1,941.64833457023Wh; Imported from Grid: 255.303056792356Wh; Net Exported to Grid: 1,686Wh. I can’t tell if these are kind of close to what PVOUTPUT got or not. I am suspicious that this is wrong. I don’t know what PVOUTPUT means by Exported, or how it gets it.
Consumption: PVOUTPUT: 44.664kWh; MY RECORDS: House use + Battery use: Home 28,037.1697222255Wh + Battery Charging 16,740Wh = 44,777Wh. Since I didn’t have much grid<->battery action, these numbers essentially look correct, but when I start charging from grid and discharging to grid, this will rapidly need updating.
imported: PVOUTPUT: 15.868kWh; MY RECORDS: So, what does Imported mean? I’ll assume it means Imported from Grid to satisfy Home use. That also ignores grid <-> battery; that could add some errors. Here’s my Grid importation: 255.303056792356Wh. That’s right, PVTOUTPUT shows importation of 15.868kWh, and my records show importation of only 0.255kWh, over 62 times as much at PVOUTPUT in meaningful amounts; their data is obviously not what I think this is.
What does their “Importation” mean? Where is it coming from?
I want to understand what the PVOUTPUT “Generated”, “Exported”, “Consumption”, and “Imported” columns mean, how I upload to them, what I upload to them, and how they related to battery use.
Once I know that, I can hack around any bugs, ignore the wrong things that can’t be fixed, and use all the extended attributes as best I can to map that.
On to more bugs:
I hate dates that are a mishmash of numbers like 39/29/10/29/39/43 that mean nothing to me, so I do all dates Big Endian like this: 2018-09-08. But, when I select that date format in the Settings, the graphs all show “2018-” for every date. How do I select a sensible date format that doesn’t just get cut off in the graphs? For now, I have one of the confusing a/b/c/d/e/f types of date fields where everything is jumbled, backwards, and spagetti twisted like some sort of mystical secret coding. It is annoying as hell.
Weather Underground doesn’t allow registering of new data streams. I would like to input data from my closest weather station at KCAAPTOS60; should I scrape that data myself using my own web scraper software and upload those temperatures myself? I suppose that’s the easiest solution.
There is alternate forecast data including cloudiness, insolation, temperature, expected PV output, etc. that I get from https://solcast.com.au/ and I would like to integrate that for PVOUTPUT display; is there an effort underway to do such a thing? Since I already have a profile at SolCast, I think the best way would be a site-wide PVOUTPUT link to SolCast, probably with a special deal between the two for a proper fee for SolCast, to use their API to input the data into PVOUTPUT. Since SolCast has more accurate panel array pointing and stuff like that, I’d like PVOUTPUT not to skimp on integration of the panel parameters, and if anything, to add more parameters to the PVOUTPUT data, or simply use the settings the user has set at SolCast. Then PVOUTPUT could efficiently download and display the data from SolCast. I have difficulty displaying all the data on my website (see for instance http://ulmo.solar/powerflow/center.1.png ), but I managed to figure out that gray can be clouds (yay!), purple is my temperature forecast, and for now I have trouble setting up the right color for me to use for the PV output forecast but went with a march of the number “0” for now. It’s ugly, but it’s there. It’s usually wrong until the last half hour, too, but I show their historical forecasts so we can see how it improves over time. The Australian SolCast doesn’t seem to do much in the way of predicting our microclimate hilly beachside fog very well, almost always getting it way wrong in both directions. But I like to see the PVOUTPUT forecasts as an indication of what is possible from the position of the sun.
A feature missing from SolCast is an ability to give a 3D rendering of the foliage, buildings, and other obstructions around my solar panels, so that they can figure out the shading, as well as how the strings respond to the shading given my particular setup. It would not be too hard given some data to figure that out, but for now, they don’t seem enamored of that quality of output, either. This ends up leaving a few kWh extra in their forecasts every day that I will never get (and don’t want considering I love those trees more).
Any assistance provided would be appreciated!
Solving every problem above seems like a full time job, so I’m not asking anybody to do anything, but any improvement or ideas for improvement you get from my novice questions would of course be great.
