In a recent webinar Solar Symbiosis: Inverters and Monitoring, Ilen Zazueta-Hall, director of residential product management at Enphase Energy, presented on why inverter manufacturers offer monitoring. Here’s a recap of her presentation. You can watch the full webinar here.
Like the smart phone, solar inverters are getting smarter
Phones used to do one thing really well—call people. But now smart phones have apps for GPS, finding a good restaurant and just about everything in between. Ilen Zazueta-Hall made the same comparison with inverters, as she explained how they used to only convert DC to AC. “But that’s not the world of today, and more importantly, it’s not the world of tomorrow,” she explained.
Overall solar penetration has grown worldwide, and requirements on how solar projects interact with the grid are ever increasing. “That means that smart, grid-connected inverters now have to provide a platform for that control and other key business functions,” Zazueta-Hall said. “These can include making commissioning easier, generating leads by giving customers a really fabulous experience and connection to their PV system, or making sure that operations and maintenance is easy and diagnostics, updates and fixes are possible.” It’s important for inverter manufacturers to offer monitoring as the “app” to achieve this control. “Driving to a site and looking at equipment is a very expensive way to diagnose a problem,” Zazueta-Hall added. “A robust monitoring system can notify a team of a problem and allow them to diagnose it remotely. Then, when they do need to roll out a truck, they can more efficiently decide when and how to do it.”
Monitoring basics
Zazueta-Hall explained there are three basic aspects to monitoring a system.
1. Measure
2. Communicate
3. Manage
First, there has to be measurement. That measurement can be as granular as looking at data like AC and DC voltage, current and temperature per PV module. Second, you need to communicate the data, typically using some sort of communication hardware. Third, you must manage the data. This is usually where cloud-based monitoring comes into play because you’re looking at tens, hundreds or even thousands of systems that need to be monitored, maintained and understood. These basics enable overall fleet monitoring.
Connecting clouds
Another powerful benefit of having data in the cloud, Zazueta-Hall explained, is that if you do it right you can connect different clouds of data. “This means that data collected up into one management system can be used in other applications,” she said, and gave an example of how Locus Energy can integrate with Enphase Energy’s monitoring system, known as Enlighten. “They’re able to take the same measurements that were communicated to us and reuse them,” she explained. This is done by an API, which is just a way to connect two systems. Zazueta-Hall said APIs are key to moving data from one place to another so more can be done with it, such as connecting to customer relationship management (CRM) systems for billing, customer portals and more.
Also read: Why is solar monitoring important?
Riprazor says
What Enphase fails to share is that they now charge new customers for per panel data that is not available in the free monitoring myenlighten application. Without per-panel viewing, customers have no way of knowing if an individual panel in their system is having a problem since all they can see is aggregated data. What is particularly disturbing about this is the Enphase is actually collecting the per panel data from its customers systems but does not allow customers access to the data without charging them. Mono crystal panels have three diodes and if one fails the panel will only produce at 2/3 output which can go on indefinitely since the customer will never receive an alert for this condition.
Tom Kacandes says
You make a reasonable point and I’m not a fan of “myenlighten” at all. The many Enphase installs our company does now come with the full monitoring for the big $250 upcharge – we don’t sell without it. The installer should ALWAYS have access to the panel level data and if they aren’t checking the quality and performance of their installs, you picked the wrong company to install your solar IMO. When customers have the full access, only some really use it, but most like knowing they can see everything forever which gets them over the shorter labor warranty because they understand that if they have access to the data, they can solve any problem that comes up just by pointing at the software even 24 years from now and get a new inverter (or solar panel!) put in with a simple operation.