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I recently started looking at the status/performance of my SolarEdge inverter using the SolarEdge Monitoring app (both on my iPhone and my PC). I understand the meaning of most of the parameters/measurements being reported by am stumped by two of them - ACEnergyOffGrid and ACEnergyOnGrid. For my grid-tied system with no battery the ACEnergyOffGrid has been 0 whenever I've looked. The ACEnergyOnGrid has positive values when ever the sun is shining but the Monitoring Platform doesn't have any units labled for the values. I tried looking at the documentation for the Monitoring platform/app but couldn't find any info about these two parameters. Can anybody help me understand what they are reporting?
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Hi Richard. Any update on this post? Did you ever find out what this metric is? -
Energy is typically Wh based so I think that would be a good educated guess. Open a support case and ask?Comment
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I logged into one of my sites that has Admin access and could not even find it under the Reports tab. I do not have consumption CTs installed so maybe I don't have that option. I would presume it would be enabled if one has consumption CTs installed and enabled. That would be the only way the inverter would know how much Energy Off Grid would have been consumed. Do you have consumption CTs installed and enabled? Is it an option under Reports tab? If it is and you run the report, perhaps the units of measure are in the report?9 kW solar, 42kWh LFP storage. EV owner since 2012Comment
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I don't have any consumption CTs installed. Unfortunately I only have the very basic access in the SolarEdge app. No reports, no graph options, just Dashboard and Layout. In the Layout view I click on the Inverter and then choose Info. The parameters I don't understand are found under General inverter info. This gives me instantaneous data from the Inverter. It looks like this
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Without Grid monitoring CTs, I don't see how the system could accurately know how much is exported or imported from the grid.
@ampster, I am surprised you do not have these given you have a battery. Without these, It seems you would not be able to modulate battery charge and discharge to prevent charging from the grid, or discharging into the grid.Comment
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My battery is only hooked up to my Skybox. One of my Solaredge inverters is is at that home but is strictly grid tied. I do have several CTs measuring different parts of my system including the ones built into my Skybox. I actually don't have Admin access to that system since it was installed by an installer. The other system was self installed on a former residence that is now a rental. I have full Admin access to that system.
9 kW solar, 42kWh LFP storage. EV owner since 2012Comment
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I have consumption CTs installed. I do not have battery storage. Not having consumption data drove me nuts so I self installed a SolarEdge energy meter.
Anyway, I am not seeing any correlations that jump out at me.
Screen grabs were taken at around 1:30PM Mountain.
AcEnergyOnGrid.jpg
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I found it on mine. It was the same number that was on my dashboard upper left. It may be the instantaneous output of your inverter but it is missing a decimal point to the right of the first digit. In my case the dashboard number was 3.09kW but the number in the information tab was 309 with no unit of measure. Then when I refreshed the screen those numbers no longer were the same. Perhaps they use a different sampling interval for the sampling that does not always correspond, I am looking at a remote location so I can't tell if it is cloudy there.
NOTE:
Later I checked the numbers on an inverter locally on a clear day and the numbers do not correlate. I suspect the subsequent explanations to be more accurate explanation of the relationship.Last edited by Ampster; 07-21-2020, 01:50 PM.9 kW solar, 42kWh LFP storage. EV owner since 2012Comment
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About the closest correlation I could get was taking a measurement right after each other.
Hence, measurement 1 was at 16:06 and measurement 2 was at 16:11. Hence a difference of 5 minutes or 5/60 of an hour.
If I look at what my inverter was producing at 16:11 (or shortly thereafter) it was 7560 W. (Actually the value I grabbed was at 16:13, about 2 minutes later.)
7560 W * (5 / 30)h = 630 Wh
Okay, so my ACEnergyOnGrid was actually 661 at 4:11 PM; however, if the inverter is taking some sort of rolling average and adding them along the way, that could account for the difference. This time of day, the solar production values are decreasing; so, it would make sense that my 4:11 PM Pac value is going to be lower than my 4:06 PM Pac value. If I had also taken the display reading right at 14:11 versus 2 minutes later that could have made up the difference also.
This is about the best that I can come up with.
AcEnergyOnGrid2.jpgLast edited by theoak; 07-20-2020, 06:28 PM.Comment
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You should take measures in a clear sky day, around the peak period like1PM, when the production does not change muchComment
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The readings are 5 minutes apart. Hence in theory you could take:
ACEnergyOnGrid Wh
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(5/60) h
... to get the watts your array produced during that same time frame.
Unfortunately the dashboard samples at a different rate; however, if you were to use the monitoring API and utilize the following format in a browser, the numbers line up as the sample of 5 minutes match:
https://monitoringapi.solaredge.com/equipment/{Your System Id}/{Your Inverter Serial Number}/data?startTime=2020-07-21%2000:00:00&endTime=2020-07-21%2023:59:59&api_key={Your API Key}
Using the monitoring API, ACEnergyOnGrid, is really the "totalEnergy" (essentially the odometer of your inverter) from the current time minus the "totalEnergy" value from the last sample.
Just drop the above into a browser, substituting your inverter values of course. The date values are just for today, I think you can put a range as wide as one week. Consult the monitoring API documentation for specifics.
You need to have the monitoring API activated for your inverter of course. You are only allowed so many calls using the API per day ... so don't go too wild with this.
Last edited by theoak; 07-21-2020, 11:33 AM.Comment
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Thanks for the detail and detective work @theoak.
I did figure out that the ACEnergyOnGrid parameter is the energy delivered by the inverter when it is in "OnGrid" mode and the ACEnergyOffGrid parameter is the energy the inverter is delivering when it's operating in "OffGrid" mode. Of course, my SE3800H won't ever be delivering energy in "OffGrid" mode since it doesn't have the capability that a StorEdge inverter has. I just couldn't figure the time period which turned out to be 5 mins.
Mystery solved.Comment
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