Mini Review : Enphase Monitoring

The Solar PV system we’ve had installed, uses Enphase micro-inverters rather than one large inverter unit, which should make the system far more efficient than a single inverter unit.

Included with the system is an Enphase envoy, which is basically a gateway that links the panels to the servers hosting the diagnostic information, so the panels can be monitored and pro-actively fixed should a problem arise.

This is all very useful for the installer / maintainers and gives them a reasonably up to date view of what each panel has generated over the course of the day.

EnPhase run a portal that customers can log in to, to view generation in semi realtime (well actually within about the last 5-15 minutes). You can view historic information for the period you want in either a graph form showing 15 minute intervals:

or the alternative is a coloured chart where the lighter the colour the more power is being generated, i.e. black is virtually none at all, through to light blue which is the highest generation of the day.

One of the nice touches in the interface is the handy tips they give you, such as what the power you’ve generated equates to in real life, today’s are listed below, 4699 AA batteries is the one that made me think the most.

On the whole it makes the generation stats a little more fun, and certainly makes you think about how we consume power.

Enphase have a full API you can tap into if you are that way inclined, personally i’d love to be, but my brain just doesn’t work that way.

You can also link your stats to quite a few solar social sites like Generaytor, its a fairly US centric, but there are an increasing number of UK based people using it. Unfortunately it also tends to generate a lot of “Panel Envy”, especially when you see guys in arizona generating 70-80 Kwh a day, when your average is about 12-15!