I’ve been a fan of the Aussie-developed Catch Solar Relay since it was first released in late 2020.
In my original review in 2020, I explained how the Catch relay greatly enhanced solar self-consumption from large appliances. Since then, the team at Catch Power have been relentlessly adding features to it. Today, I’ll outline the new tricks up its sleeve, including cloud transmission, flexible exports and a sneak peek into what’s ahead this year.
#1 Cloud Transmission Of Real-Time Power Data
If you are lucky enough to have a property with space to roam and distances between buildings, you’ll already know that it can be challenging to put new solar on, especially if your network connection rules mandate flexible exports.
It becomes complex if the ideal roof for solar panels is some distance from the house. To export-limit the solar inverter, you must relay power consumption data between the remote building and the main residence. This can mean spending thousands of dollars on a trench or buying a fickle ‘wireless bridge’. Now, you may need to build a trench for the power cables anyway, but often, the power cables are already there, and the only missing link is a data cable.
The Catch Solar Relay can measure real-time power at the switchboard on one property and relay that data via the cloud to the remote property where the inverter is. No data cable required.
All new Australian grid-connected solar generation will soon need to be internet-connected and overseen by the network, so the need for data transmission of power data will only increase, and the Catch could save a lot of trenches.
Catch cloud tethering at work.
#2 It Can Replace Your Inverter’s Smart Meter
The Catch Solar Relay can integrate into your solar power system instead of the proprietary “smart meter” that you already need to measure consumption and enable export limiting.
@solar_quotes Don’t buy #solar without one of these!
Catch can replace the smart meter for these inverters:
- Fimer
- Fronius
- GE
- Goodwe
- Growatt
- Jinko
- SAJ
- Sofar
- Solax
- Solis
- Solplanet
- Sungrow
- Sunways
So, should you choose Catch over the inverter manufacturer’s little meter?
At $447 a pop – the Catch Relay is 2 to 3 times the price of the inverter manufacturer’s meter – so it’s not for everyone.
Here’s what the $447 pays for in addition to the cloud transmission and smart appliance control:
Flexible Exports Are Built In
Many solar inverters are not yet compatible with Flexible Export Limits, but the Catch Solar Relay is. So, without a Catch Relay, you can’t use some inverters in South Australia.
Flexible exports are opt-in over in Queensland, and Victoria will introduce them in March 2024.
Without flexible connections, you’re limited to a 1.5kW export. Even if your local DNSP does not offer a flexible connection agreement, having the hardware to do it when it’s introduced makes sense as it can increase your export limit to 10 kW when not throttled.
Export Limiting With Multiple Fronius Inverters
If you have Fronius inverters in a clustered environment (multiple inverters on the same site) or single-phase inverters across two or three phases, the Catch Power Relay will handle export limiting functions for you.
With a Fronius Gen24 paired with BYD batteries, the State Of Charge data is now visible on The Monocle monitoring app for BYD/Fronius sites. Plus, installers have remote control and administration capabilities via the My Fleet dashboard.
And there will be more features soon:
Catch Relay Features Promised For 2024
A Three-Phase Relay
Catch Power is gearing up for a significant launch: their Three-Phase Relay is expected to hit the market by the end of March 2024. It has been a much-anticipated development in the solar energy sector, a long time coming, but not quite as delayed as Tesla’s Cybertruck or the Enphase IQ8.
EV Charge Control
Catch Power is integrating EV charger control into their Relay system using OCPP. This allows the optimisation of EV charging based on solar generation and various inputs, such as time-of-use tariffs. Fronius Wattpilot control will be the first via Catch Power’s app. Plans to include other EV chargers are underway.
Collaboration With Amber Electric
Catch is working with Amber Electric to control inverter, battery storage, EV charging, and hot water systems. Shortly, this will also extend to air conditioning, all based on wholesale pricing signals.
DRM Control for Air Conditioners
Expect a new Catch product designed for air conditioners, promising more efficient use. This device, which communicates with a Catch Relay at the mains, will enable better solar self-consumption with the air conditioner based on solar energy production. They’re aiming for the launch at the end of June.
More Inverter Brands
Catch Power is expanding its range of compatible inverter and hybrid brands in 2024.
The Monocle App: A Major Update
Catch Power’s app, The Monocle, is slated for a major overhaul in early 2024. That’s good news because the reviews for the current one on the App Store are woeful. Hopefully, the new app does justice to the excellent hardware.
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I’m about to replace my SolarEdge three phase inverter with a next gen Sungrow one, as soon as they come into the country, as well as their next gen batteries and three phase car charger. In your opinion is there a benefit in looking at the Catch Solar Relay instead of using Sungrow’s meter or are all the features you describe already covered by Sungrow?
First, you’ll need to wait until the Catch 3-phase solar relay is released (the one I talk about is single phase)
Then you need to look at how much the 3-phase version is compared to the Sungrow (price unknown at the moment), and whether you want any of the features.
Sungrow smart meters currently don’t allow flexible exports, but they do interface directly with Solar Analytics.
I infer that CSR can connect to more than 1 device simultaneously. Is this the case?
In terms of load control, there is one relay output, so you can control one appliance per Catch device.
Would you consider the monitoring functions a suitable replacement for the Solar Analytics product?
I was reluctant to grow my solar energy package past the 6.6 KW.
Ultimately, I just bit the bullet and added 6.6 more KWs and a 10 KW battery!
I know batteries and cost-wise they are not good, but I didn’t want my energy provider to make money.
During hot Summer days, running our 7.5 KW air conditioner works well with the current smart meter, but the battery is only good for 75 minutes at night!
I thought about a change-over switch, but I don’t think it’s legal. Even thought about a change-over switch for a backup generator.
Thanks that’s all interesting and worth consideration if I replace my back to grid system with another back to grid system and not decide to go off grid entirely.
Have some time before I am able to do either but like to stay informed.
What are the advantages of a Catch Solar relay over Home Assistant setup like this https://www.smartmotion.life/product/amber-electric-curtailment-with-home-assistant/
It can do what Catch does plus curtail Solar with Amber plus so much more.
Thanks for the reference Brett.
Home Assistant certainly seems to be the go to solution for those who have the enthusiasm & nous to do the integration. There seems to be an endless number of things you can manage locally without needing to bother google, microsoft or uncle jeffs book shop.
The catch relay is an off the shelf solution for electricians who may not be as computer as savvy, offering an answer for customers who are even less interested. It allows any cable monkey to hook up a contactor and switch a load. It also come with tech support on the phone and the ability to work with OCPP for EV charging and most importantly a tested and approved software client for Flexible/Dynamic Connections.
Your DNSP won’t recognise a home grown home assistant device for network security.
I’m looking for a solution which seems to have stumped two different installers. I have two PV systems (house and granny flat), two meters, and one NMI. My EV charger is connected to the smaller granny flat system. We use Fronius Primo inverters. When the installation happened last year, the guy only installed a single-phase Fronius smart meter, which means I can only see consumption from our main house, not the granny flat. This means I have no idea of when is the best time to charge the EV to mop up excess solar energy without drawing from the grid. ChargeHQ and other apps are useless, because I can’t supply it with accurate consumption data.
After many months of investigation, I have come up with three potential solutions, and I am not sure if any of them would actually solve the problem.
1. Buy a three=phase Fronius smart meter so I can get consumption data from both the house and the granny flat consolidated into a single view in Fronius Solar.web app. Benefit of this approach is that I can integrate easily with Home assistant.
2. Wait until March April-ish for Catch to launch their three-phase Catch Control Unit. Benefit is that I get all the relay functionality, but I am not sure if this will integrate with Home Assistant.
3. Instal a second single phase meter for the granny flat and sue Home Assistant to get an integrated view – but I am not sure if having two smart meters would be problematic for my energy retailer?
Any ideas? I’d appreciate some input as I’m not an expert in this stuff and have spent months learning about all this to get to this point. Thank you.
Hi Lisa,
I’m assuming the HA will integrate using Fronius open source data. I take it your granny flat is on a separate phase from the house, so a 3ph Fronius consumption meter is a great idea. When the Catch relay arrives it should offer just the same functionality because it does just the same function… it’s an RS485 meter that the Fronius can read. You’ll want both the inverters connected to the same SolarWeb account. I think Fronius is now offering a wireless version of their consumption meter now too, which may save some expense?
My choice would be Home Assistant and aggregate together the output of the Fronius sensors therefore it acts as one inverter.
If you have a heat pump hot water system it may only draw as little as 0.7kW for about 2 hours per day. So just set the timer for it to operate in the middle of the day and you’ll more than likely have enough solar to cover it without bothering with load control circuitry. You want the water heated anyway
If you will soon buy a battery it will come with advanced power analytics and a nice app to let you see what happening, so the catch power may not be worth it if all you want is data visibility? If you’re not planning a battery then perhaps worthwhile
Where Catchpower could be useful is to control your car charger. It would allow you to control a cheap “dumb charger” instead of buying a far more expensive smart charger
We upgraded our solar system last year, and after reading your original breakdown of the catch relay we put one in to control our hot water, has worked really well.
Helps us juggle the hot water, air con, Tesla and cooking fairly easily. Looking forward to the big monocle update, as it is showing its age.
Nigel would qualify for a SolarEdge trade up promotion if he adds the SolarEdge battery and back up interface and will get 2 x SolarEdge inverters as a trade up for his old 3 phase. A SolarEdge energy hub and a genesis inverter with built in 3 phase consumption monitoring included for free in the home hub inverter. Then he would have the most efficient battery and inverter combination in Australia and consumption monitoring that complies with 4777. He can also use all the current panels he has with SolarEdge optimisation which he would need to replace if he goes Sungrow. I don’t have enough character left to list all the ways SolarEdge is superior to Sungrow but thought that was worth Nigel’s consideration. Happy Solar Quoting
There’s no way I’m getting a SolarEdge battery. Wrong battery chemistry, insufficiently modular and it wouldn’t do seamless failover. They’re a fair way off the pace I’m afraid.
I would point out that seamless changeover is sometimes a trap. If you don’t notice there’s an outage you’re relying on seeing some sort of phone alert(?) to prevent the battery being drained flat, whereas a few seconds power out is an unmissable analogue warning signal.
Be aware that some of the series hybrids which claim to have a fast changeover are -not- true uninterruptible power supply. If the battery is well charged and the system is exporting when there is an outage they will disconnect and run through a restart process.
Not that I would buy a SolarEdge device myself.
This is seamless, offers a choice of chemistry and has an array of warning output options.
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/selectronic-sp-pro/
I just experienced 1st grid outage with new Sungrow inverter + battery system. Did not know it occurred, and if our power is interupted all smart lights come on; they didn’t.
I realised that when the power went off, house was powered by solar modules, so, probably, there was no grid power coming in to be interrupted by the outage and for few milliseconds for the PV /Battery power to kick in because it was already on PV power.
Would this assessment be correct? If not, then the Sungrow setup is about as close to having a UPS as you can get without actually having one.
Sungrow’s seamless failover is ‘in cycle’ so you have to lose power for more than 1Hz worth of time (ie 20ms) for it to kick in.
Talking to other vendors at the recent Energy conference in Melbourne most adamantly stated that this was not possible even when faced with a stand actively advertising the capability only metres away! There seems to be a lot of ignorance about this in the market in general.
Personally I have a lot of network equipment and definitely don’t want a ‘few seconds’ outage just so that I know it’s occured! Sungrow seem to have this pretty much nailed and their new gear winging its way to Australia as we speak is the next generation of this capability so its’ highly likely only to be getting better and that’s certainly a risk I’m prepared to take.
I don’t think the SE trade up promotion is still running and nor is SE worthwhile in a 3 phase installation , you have to try and make it fit with multiple inverters and batteries and the reporting is clunky at best and completely useless at worst, then the battery size and cost as well as the wall space required it’s not a good system for 3 phase
I considered SE but battery chemistry was off-putting and it thinks the battery needs a built in fire extinguisher then I do t want it being activated even if it does work, amd have doubts about that anyway.
And, I hate to mention in it in a forum such as this, but in case it matters to others and don’t realise it, SE is an Israeli company and I vehemently disagree with the politics of the country. And this was before the latest round of ethnic cleansing.
Smart Meters!? With my solar install and Fronius inverter in 2020 I got a smart meter included then also a Tesla battery last year, so signed up to Amber in May. Catch in this case is, Amber require a smart meter to provide the full benefits of their service. After 7 months now I am still waiting for a full Smart meter to installed as the meter installer was flummoxed by 2 different meter numbers. Don’t ask me!!?
Initially I wanted to blame Amber, well, they were slow in acting but honestly the meter installer appears to me to be hopeless, adding that they sent 2 installers out 4 weeks apart only to arrive at the same conclusion. No go!
Am I off topic?
So zero benefit from the battery and as usual paying up.
Have had Catch for 2yrs. Still no data in The Monocle and yet they tell me data is coming through. So don’t know if it is actually doing what I want.
I’ll see if I can get you some support Steve.
Hi Steve,
Can you email the device serial number to [email protected].
I can log into our backed server and take a look at things for you.
Well Ben totally fixed problem. seems account would not activate. fixed that, then wouldn’t show on android properly, fixed that too. After not having live data it is certainly nice to see it.
will be good to see new version of app when it comes out.
thanks for your assistance and perseverance, 5 stars
I am in Victoria, and I have recently upgraded my solar system with a Sungrow 9.6kwh battery, SH5.0RS inverter and its smart meter, the system works very well, but what will happen when flexible exports come into the mix, will my inverter be able to handle it, or will I be limited to 1.5kw exports.
Hi Geoff,
Flexsports wouldn’t be retrospective AFAIK. You’ll continue with the connection agreement you have now. Sungrow should be compatible going forward though if you want to add a second 5kW Sungrow.
Hi Geoff,
If you have a Catch Solar Relay (Now renamed Catch Control) it can replace the Sungrow S100 Energy Meter. It’s already compatible with all Single Phase Sungrow Inverters and a vast number of other brands so you can keep the connection agreement as explained
OR
Later on you can alter it and use any Catch compatible brand of inverter if you go down the flexible exports route. Once AC Coupled Batteries and EV Chargers fall under the Dynamic / Flexible Exports program this will become more important. If you go Dynamic or Flexible natively with Sungrow it will restrict the product choices you can attach to your home to Sungrow and Sungrow only.
A very obvious reason to keep things brand agnostic is around EV Charging and future changes in your potential brand/product preferences for future upgrades to your home.
Thanks Ben, I don’t have a Catch at this stage, will see what happens in the future. Your reply is very informative.
Thanks Anthony, that’s good to know.