{"id":31134,"date":"2019-06-17T15:42:02","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T05:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=31134"},"modified":"2019-06-17T15:42:02","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T05:12:02","slug":"solar-smart-homes-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/","title":{"rendered":"The Standards Gap Holding Back Solar Homes Becoming Smart Homes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_31181\" style=\"width: 1210px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-31181\" class=\"size-full wp-image-31181\" src=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/solar-comms.jpg\" alt=\"inverter wirelessly communicating with smart plugs\" width=\"1200\" height=\"628\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/solar-comms.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/solar-comms-300x157.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/solar-comms-768x402.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/solar-comms-1024x536.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-31181\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Want your inverter to wirelessly control some smart plugs? It ain&#8217;t easy&#8230;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>This week\u2019s post was inspired by a question asked by Malcolm via e-mail:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cDo you know of any &#8216;Smart&#8221; home systems\/software that can be used with a Fronius Inverter\/Smart Meter to direct surplus solar power to home appliances and\/or heaters via smart wifi plugs?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It\u2019s a good question, and one that doesn\u2019t yet have very many good answers.<!--more--> The world\u2019s full of \u201csmart home\u201d control systems, but even so, you don\u2019t have to look very far to find some pretty extreme examples of \u201cmakers\u201d putting together DIY systems to get what they want, because what they want doesn&#8217;t come off-the-shelf.<\/p>\n<p>The YouTube video below is probably our favourite of the genre.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-wrapper\"><iframe title=\"Raspberry Pi Controlled Tesla Wall Charger Automatic Current Change\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_2A_J2Hq6-c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>What the YouTuber, CWNE88, wanted was to charge his Tesla from his solar power system, only when there\u2019s solar electricity to spare &#8211; so the car is never charged with electricity imported from the grid. It\u2019s such a simple and obvious question, I\u2019m amazed it\u2019s not a tickbox in the Tesla control software.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, the intrepid CWNE88 has had to write software for a Raspberry Pi, get power for the RPi, and use the fortunately-standard RS485 serial bus as the control interface. As you can see from the video, it\u2019s not excessively difficult &#8211; but it\u2019s not for the faint-hearted (or those fearful of warranty warnings!). If you want to see the whole thing, he\u2019s got the software, designs and documentation <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/cdragon\/TWCManager\">here<\/a> at the open source software distribution site, GitHub.<\/p>\n<p>Malcolm\u2019s request is really straightforward &#8211; if the system is importing from the grid, keep the heater off; if the system is exporting with enough spare capacity, turn the heater on.<\/p>\n<p>And as is so often the case, the really straightforward request isn\u2019t answered because it involves two fragmented industries: on the left, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/inverters\/fronius-review.html\">Fronius<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/inverters\/enphase-review.html\">Enphase<\/a> and other solar inverter suppliers; and on the right a dizzying number of smart home controller companies, and in the middle \u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2026 people like CWNE88 above, hacking up his own solution, because the Tesla kit doesn\u2019t have that capability out of the box.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s another example: an acquaintance of mine who is an IT systems administrator and solar owner told me of the difficulties he had with a similar question &#8211; how to constrain his pool pump to only operating when there was sufficient solar power. In a series of direct messages, he told me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAt the moment, you need a hub\/gateway that&#8217;s specific to whichever vendors\u2019 products you are using. Some can interact, but very broadly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen you have a different app for each vendor needed to configure their particular thing.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s all good fun as a hobby, in the sense it will constantly consume time and money to make it work, and that&#8217;s cool if you like playing with tech, but it&#8217;s a long way from my wife or parents making a whole of home IoT solution tie neatly together.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He succeeded in getting the pool pump powered when there\u2019s lots of power coming off the roof, but only after he\u2019d managed to pull data from his inverter, uploading it to the <a href=\"https:\/\/pvoutput.org\/\">PVOutput<\/a> metering-sharing service, using the open-source Home Assistant software to download the data again, and mapping a Home Assistant action to the PVOutput data.<\/p>\n<p>As he wryly noted:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThere are probably more direct methods, but this works.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What Malcolm, CWNE88 and the sysadmin want are two things: a standard way for the inverter to communicate its status (a smart WiFi-enabled power point for Malcolm, between different Tesla systems in CWNE88\u2019s case), and a product that makes it easy to make decisions based on inverter status.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Inverters Talking to the Outside World<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Researching this post took me into the world of API documentation. The API, or Application Programming Interface, is the language the inverter\u2019s computer uses to talk to the outside world. A smart home vendor needs to get the inverter status, to find out whether power is being imported or exported, and whether there\u2019s enough solar power to drive a particular load.<\/p>\n<p>To get that information over the wire, you send a request to the inverter (an API call, for programmers) and read the response.<\/p>\n<p>I looked at the API documentation for just two inverter makers &#8211; Fronius and Enphase &#8211; and it won\u2019t surprise you to know the API calls are different. If you\u2019re running a Fronius inverter, the request seems to be GetInverterRealTimeData (if you\u2019re interested, you can download the document <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fronius.com\/en\/photovoltaics\/products\/all-products\/system-monitoring\/open-interfaces\/fronius-solar-api-json-\">here<\/a>); if you\u2019re using Enphase, you send a request called Summary (if I\u2019ve read Enphase\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.enphase.com\/docs\">API documentation<\/a> correctly).<\/p>\n<p>Two inverters, two different commands to retrieve inverter status: <i>that\u2019s<\/i> why we need standards if the solar home is to become a full member of the smart home.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SunSpec<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Standardisation is on the way, via a multi-year industry effort called <a href=\"https:\/\/sunspec.org\/\">SunSpec<\/a> (interestingly, Fronius is a member but Enphase isn\u2019t yet). Companies that join the industry group can, once they\u2019ve built products that use the SunSpec API, get the group to certify their compliance.<\/p>\n<p>At this stage, however, SunSpec\u2019s effort seems to me to be mostly \u201cgrid-facing\u201d. As the group <a href=\"https:\/\/sunspec.org\/sunspec-about\/\">explains<\/a>,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cSunSpec standards address operational aspects of solar PV power and energy storage plants <em>on the smart grid<\/em>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(emphasis added).<\/p>\n<p>Vendors in the smart-home sector have their own set of standards to work with, making it unlikely they\u2019d welcome another, but perhaps some there\u2019s a gap in the market for someone to build a bridge between the two worlds &#8211; SunSpec on one side, a smart home standard on the other, to make the connection from the solar inverter to the smart home as plug-and-play as Malcom\u2019s WiFi power point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week\u2019s post was inspired by a question asked by Malcolm via e-mail: \u201cDo you know of any &#8216;Smart&#8221; home systems\/software that can be used with a Fronius Inverter\/Smart Meter to direct surplus solar power to home appliances and\/or heaters via smart wifi plugs?\u201d It\u2019s a good question, and one that doesn\u2019t yet have very [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":31181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solar-inverters","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Standards Gap Holding Back Solar Homes Becoming Smart Homes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Do you want your solar inverter to wirelessly control some smart plugs? As we discovered, making a solar home a smart home isn&#039;t an easy task - yet.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Standards Gap Holding Back Solar Homes Becoming Smart Homes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Do you want your solar inverter to wirelessly control some smart plugs? As we discovered, making a solar home a smart home isn&#039;t an easy task - yet.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SolarQuotes Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/SolarQuotes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-06-17T05:12:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/solar-comms.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"628\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Richard Chirgwin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@solar_quotes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@solar_quotes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Richard Chirgwin\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d2e4d6f75c9033945224b9de834d9be6\"},\"headline\":\"The Standards Gap Holding Back Solar Homes Becoming Smart Homes\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-06-17T05:12:02+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/\"},\"wordCount\":1011,\"commentCount\":37,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/solar-comms.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Solar Inverters\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/\",\"name\":\"The Standards Gap Holding Back Solar Homes Becoming Smart Homes\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/solar-smart-homes-standards\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/solar-comms.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-06-17T05:12:02+00:00\",\"description\":\"Do you want your solar inverter to wirelessly control some smart plugs? 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