Your inverter knows a lot about your solar system. It records how much the panels produce, how much the house uses, how full the battery is and every fault it detects, minute by minute, every day.
Remote monitoring is how that information gets off the wall in your garage and onto a phone or computer, where someone can actually use it. On a surprising number of systems, nobody is.
Most modern inverters have a small data logger, either built in or plugged into the inverter as a separate dongle. It connects to your home Wi-Fi and sends the system's data to the manufacturer's online portal. You see it through an app or website.
A typical portal shows:
Most solar problems don't announce themselves. A failed panel string, a battery losing capacity or a setting that's wrong can cost you money for months without anything obviously going wrong in the house. In the monitoring data, they show up as a dip in production, a battery that empties sooner each evening, or a grid bill that creeps back up.
Our guide to whether your system is underperforming shows what to look for.
Whether you need more panels, more battery or different settings, the answer is almost always in the history. Our guide to adding panels or a battery explains how to read it.
Batteries are the most expensive part of most systems and the one most affected by how they're used. Monitoring shows how hard the battery is working and whether its capacity is falling faster than it should. See battery lifespan and replacement cost.
If a component fails, a manufacturer may want to see how it was used. A record of the system's history can make a claim much more straightforward.
On many systems, someone with the right access can adjust inverter settings remotely, so a change that would once have needed a site visit can be done in minutes. How much can be done remotely depends on the brand and the set-up.
Monitoring only helps if it's working and someone is looking. These are the problems we see most often:
Plenty of owners keep an eye on their own systems, and with alerts switched on and a monthly look at the numbers, that works well.
The difference with professional monitoring is that someone who knows what to look for reviews the data regularly, spots the slow trends that are easy to miss, and acts on them before they turn into a failure or a bill.
A Solar Health Check includes getting your monitoring back online, making sure you own your account and have the right access, switching on alerts, and reviewing the history for anything that needs attention.
[PLACEHOLDER: replace with the monitoring service once its scope and price are decided.] If you'd like us to keep an eye on your system on an ongoing basis, ask us about monitoring when you book.
Where we find work that needs doing, a registered electrical contractor you contract directly does it and issues the CoC in their own name. We scope it, coordinate it and check it's done.
We work across Blairgowrie, Linden, Randburg, Ferndale, Northcliff, Fairland, Emmarentia, Greenside, Parkhurst and the suburbs around them.
Book a Health Check, or start with our free checklist, "Is your solar system legal and safe?".