Remote monitor / display for Sunny Boy 5000TL-US

[captaindomon]

I'm having a system installed today with a Sunny Boy 5000TL-US. The inverter will be in the garage, but I want to monitor it from inside the house. Is there anything on the market that is a remote monitor for it? I've thought of maybe just mounting a cheap tablet computer on the wall displaying the online portal. And I guess there are some whole house power monitors out there I could get. But if there is an SMA produced remote monitor that would be the best option. Any recommendations? Thanks!

[sensij]

It depends a little bit on what you already have. Did you get a Webconnect card in the inverter, or an external Webbox? Without either of those, you have no connection to the outside world, including the online portal.

[captaindomon]

They are doing a webconnect card in the inverter. Because I am going with SunPower panels (due to space constraints on the roof), I guess the data will be going to SunPower's portal instead of SMA's Sunny Portal? Reading about the SunPower portal, there is an option to do consumption monitoring too, but I guess that is an add-on. I'm going to ask my installer about that.

[sensij]

They are doing a webconnect card in the inverter. Because I am going with SunPower panels (due to space constraints on the roof), I guess the data will be going to SunPower's portal instead of SMA's Sunny Portal? Reading about the SunPower portal, there is an option to do consumption monitoring too, but I guess that is an add-on. I'm going to ask my installer about that.

Typically, if they are going to Sunpower's portal, they won't be using the Webconnect. They would use an RS-485 connection from the inverter to Sunpower's "PV Supervisor", which broadcasts to their portal. The Webconnect will broadcast to SMA's portal, and I am unaware if it is possible to re-direct that broadcast somewhere else.

Anyway, the SMA inverters support only one communication mode at a time. SMA has standalone monitors like what you are looking for (Sunny Beam), but they aren't compatible with the Webconnect. Your best bet is probably to put together an all-in-one monitor / fanless PC and leave it set to the portal page (either Sunpower, or Sunny Portal, whichever is being used). If you want to take it a step further, you could use a Raspberry Pi or other local server to query the Webconnect and publish the data yourself... google SBFSpot.

[captaindomon]

Awesome! Thank you. This is the info I needed. I'll probably end up going with some kind of mounted all-in-one PC or tablet or something displaying the web portal. I'll send pictures once the system is up and running.

[captaindomon]

Update: after talking to my installer, they usually use the webconnect to Sunny Portal. I've asked them to swap that for the RS-485 connection to the PV Supervisor, and also to install a compatible load monitor on the main panel. Both of the values will then be displayed overlapped on the SunPower portal, which is what I was looking for. I'll give another update with pictures later.