Weather station for SOL-ARK & "Powerview" app

[miahallen]

I run a SOL-ARK 12K for my off-grid home. When I log into the SOL-ARK "Powerview" online portal (or app on my phone), there is space for "weather station" data...but I cannot locate any info about what weather stations would integrate with the software. Does anyone have any ideas? I would like to purchase a weather station to track weather data next to my solar data...

[robbyg]

Following..

[robbyg]

I have watched their video on the powerview setup and it does show weather info in the video. I suspect it just logs onto one of the many weather sites and displays the data for your city.
I have seen nothing that suggests it can interface with your own weather station.

[J.P.M.]

FWIW, and not a plug, if you do get a weather station, IMO, you'll be wasting you money if you get less than a Davis Pro II Plus, particularly if you're looking to monitor irradiance. if you're just interested in temperature and wind, many other simple weather stations will do.

The big problem with dedicated weather stations, besides the idea that getting one that's useful and reliable will set you back about a grand is that most folks don't know what's needed in terms of weather variables and then don't know how to set an instrument up to make the measurements useful and meaningful, or how to massage the data to make it useful for array performance monitoring.

Don't kid yourself. Unless you know what your doing and know a fair amount about weather variables and how they interact with a PV array, you'll be wasting your money and more importantly misleading yourself about array performance with cheap instruments and ignorance.

You can get good and useful data but if it's not done right it's frustrating and gives misleading information that easily and quickly leads to incorrect conclusions.

As an alternative, check out PVoutput.org. There's probably a few or more stations near you. You will be able to compare your array's performance with those other nearby stations, correct for different orientations and get some probably useful comparisons of your array's performance relative to others nearby. You can still and always get a weather station once you get familiar with array monitoring.

Take what you want of the above. Scrap the rest.