Trying to monitor sunnyboy 6.0

[mrh1282]

I had solar installed on my house in november and I have the SMA Sunny Boy 6.0 inverter. I have been asking my solar company that I want to monitor the system and they told me I need to buy my equipment. Is that true? Because when I look in my wifi settings i see my SMA inverter listed . I tryed to connect from what the manual says but its not working. Why would i need more equipment if it shows up on wifi? Thanks for you help

[sensij]

What happens when you enter the inverter's IP address into your web browser?

[mrh1282]

What happens when you enter the inverter's IP address into your web browser?

nothing its note going to let me enter the ip address if i can't login. I just dont understand why I cant login, could the installer change the password?

[sensij]

You said you can see that the inverter is connected to your network... that means it has been assigned an IP address. If you type in that IP address directly into your web browser (usually 192.168.?.???), you should connect to the inverter. What happens when you do that? Maybe it asks for a login, maybe it doesn't, but verifying you can connect to the assigned IP is the first step.

[solarix]

SMA's new TL inverters are kind of a PITA for security measures. They need to be configured within the first ten hours of operation or the initial passwords are lost. After that, there is a procedure (that we always have trouble with) for setting up new login passwords, but usually have to call tech support to get it going - and they have now restricted tech support to just installers. You can type in the IP address okay, but you have to have a valid login to get access.

[fish71]

I just had a system installed with 2 Sunny Boy 6.0s. There are actually 3 different connections: The initial setup through the inverter's Wifi access point, the wifi connection to your network, and a wired ethernet (they call it speedwire) connection to your network. The first requires a network WSK2 key to access and as mentioned it changes after 10 hrs and I could not get the one printed on the label to work. But since I already had the user/installer passwords setup I can access it through an ethernet connection. It shows up in my routers dhcp table and I can login by pointing my browser to the IP listed on the router page. You should get your installer to at least setup to passwords as it may require SMA support.

I'm still having trouble getting one of them to "identify" through the sunny portal setup. This has been a big hassle.
But since I can see them on my network I was able to setup SBFspot and upload my data to pvoutput.org. I may just use that.

[DaveDE2]

I have two Sunny Boy 6.0's also. As mentioned in another thread, you need to get your installer to give you the user name and password. I cannot for the life of me understand why they are telling you that you need to spend more $ for access. Either they don't understand these new inverters connectivity options (quite possible) or they are trying to bilk you for more cash.

I have three ways to see what's going on:

1. Login directly over my local network to each inverter. This allows access to the most info.
2. Login through Sunny Portal. This gives almost as much info.
3. PvOutput. This my favorite because there is a great app for this and it displays well on a phone or iPad, etc. It doesn't give you the drill-down info such as string currents and voltages etc but has great graphics and is easy to use to see daily, monthly yearly output and compare to what you should be getting per PVwatts, SAM, etc. For this, you will need SBFspot and a raspberry pi computer which is sort of a pita to set up but once working it's solid.