Monitoring solar panels and our home’s energy usage/mix via Modbus using PRTG (ft. SMA Sunny Island and SMA Sunny Tripower)

We have solar panels on our roof which are able to generate a peak power of 10 kW. An energy controller controls the converter, our heat pump and our battery with the goal that most of the solar energy is used locally. First we use the solar energy in our home, we charge the 230V-battery, and we load the heat storage tank. Only if even more solar power is generated we send the rest into the grid.

To visualize this and I am monitoring this system with PRTG using the Modbus protocol.

The converter is a SMA Sunny Tripower 5000TL-12000TL and the battery system is a SMA Sunny Island 4.4M / 6.0H / 8.0H system. Both support the ModBus protocol and are connected to a Loxone controller and the heatpump via a private Ethernet network (see my previous blog article for details about the multi-homed network setup of the remote probe).

The Modbus documentations for the SMA Sunny Tripower as well as the battery system are identical and are available from the product page on the vendor’s website. Both devices have a whole bunch of metrics to choose from:

Again I decided to write a Powershell script that I can use as an EXE/Script Advanced sensor in PRTG. The metrics are encoded differently this time, so I had to change the heatpump script a lot.

I also need to talk to both systems (converter and battery) to get all the interesting parameters.

# Monitoring of SMA Sunny Tripower and SMA Sunny Island
# via Modbus Protokoll

param( 
	[string] $remoteHost = "enter IPs below!!", 
	[int]$port = 502
) 

function modbusread ([string]$remoteHost, [int]$port, [int]$startaddress,[int]$bytecount,[string]$signed) {

    write-host "Reading Register #$startaddress"

    # Build Request Data

	[byte[]]$sendbuffer=00,110  # Transaction Identifier
	$sendbuffer+=00,00			#Protocol identifier
	$sendbuffer+=00,06			#Length
	$sendbuffer+=03				#Unit ID
	$sendbuffer+=04				#Function Read Input Registers
	$sendbuffer+=[byte]([math]::Truncate(($startaddress)/256)),([system.byte](($startaddress)%256))		
	$sendbuffer+=00,($bytecount)

    # Send Request Data

	$tcpclient = new-object System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient($remoteHost, $port) 
	$netStream  = $tcpclient.GetStream() 
	$netStream.write($sendbuffer,0,$sendbuffer.length)
	start-sleep -milliseconds 50

    # Receive Data

	[byte[]]$recbuffer = new-object System.Byte[] ([int]($bytecount+9)) 
	$receivedbytes = $netStream.Read($recbuffer, 0, [int]($bytecount+9));
	$netStream.Close() 
	$tcpclient.Close() 

    # Process Data

	$resultdata = $recbuffer[9..($recbuffer[8]+8)]

    [byte[]] $bytes = $resultdata[3],$resultdata[2],$resultdata[1],$resultdata[0] # need to reverse byte order

    if ($signed -eq "signed")    {
        $result=[bitconverter]::ToInt32($bytes,0);
        write-host  "Received int=" $result
    }
    else     {
        $result=[bitconverter]::ToUInt32($bytes,0);
        write-host  "Received  uint=" $result
    }
    $result
}

# Process One Dataset

function onedataset([string]$name, [int]$theid, [string]$unit, [int]$divider, [string]$type,[string]$signed) {
    write-host "==== $name ===="
    $value=((modbusread $remoteHost $port ($theid) 4 $signed)/$divider)
    if ($value -eq 4294967295 -Or$value -eq 2147483648  -Or $value -eq  -2147483648)
        { $value=0 }
            "    <result>`r`n"
            "        <channel>"+$name+"</channel>`r`n"
            "        <customunit>"+$unit+"</customunit>`r`n"
            "        <value>"+($value/$divider)+"</value>`r`n"
            "        <float>1</float>`r`n"
            "        <mode>"+$type+"</mode><SpeedTime>Hour</SpeedTime>`r`n"
            "    </result>`r`n"
        }
    

# Main code

write-host "Let's go..."
[string]$prtgresult=""
$prtgresult+="<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""Windows-1252"" ?>`r`n"
$prtgresult+="<prtg>`r`n"
[bool]$errorfound = $false


try {

    $remoteHost = "192.168.21.15" # Let's look at the Battery System SMA Sunny Island

    $prtgresult+=onedataset "Power from Grid" 30865 "W" 1 "Absolute" "signed"
    $prtgresult+=onedataset "Power from Battery" 30775 "W" 1 "Absolute" "signed"
    $prtgresult+=onedataset "Power to Grid" 30867 "W" 1 "Absolute" "signed" 

    $prtgresult+=onedataset "Battery Charge" 30845 "%" 1 "Absolute"
    $prtgresult+=onedataset "Battery Current" 30843 "A" 1 "Absolute" "signed"
    
    $status=(modbusread $remoteHost $port (30201) 4)
    switch ($status) {
        "35"	{$prtgresult+="<text>Status: Error</text><error>Status: Fehler</error>`r`n"}
        "303"	{$prtgresult+="<text>Status: Off</text>`r`n"}
        "307"	{$prtgresult+="<text>Status: OK</text>`r`n"}
        "455"	{$prtgresult+="<text>Status: Warning</text>`r`n"}
    }

    $remoteHost = "192.168.21.14" # Let's look at the PV System SMA Sunny Tripower


    $prtgresult+=onedataset "Power from PV" 30775 "W" 1 "Absolute" "signed"
    $prtgresult+=onedataset "Solar Energy Total" 30529 "Wh" 1 "Absolute"
    $prtgresult+=onedataset "Solar Energy Today" 30535 "Wh" 1 "Absolute"

    $prtgresult+="</prtg>"
}
catch {
	write-host "Unable to Connect and retrieve data $_.Exception.Message"
	$prtgresult+="   <error>2</error>`r`n"
	$prtgresult+="   <text>Unable to Connect and retrieve data  "+($_.Exception.Message +" at "+ $_.InvocationInfo.PositionMessage)+"</text>`r`n"
    $prtgresult+="</prtg>"
	$errorfound = $true
}

if ($errorfound) {
	write-host "Error Found. Ending with EXIT Code" ($prtgresult).prtg.error
}
write-host "Sending PRTGRESULT to STDOUT"
$prtgresult

This script gives me the following metrics in PRTG:

Using a Sensor Factory sensor in PRTG I created two derived sensors that display the data in an easy to read graph:

The energy mix (where does the power we are currently consuming come from?). The green part comes from the sun, the red part from the grid, and the turqoise part from the battery (which is stored solar energy):

The usage of solar power (what is the power of the solar panels used for?). The green part is used in the house at once, blue goes into the battery and red is exported into the grid.