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☀️ Home PV indicator lights (for Pimoroni + Blinkt!) 🚥

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Solar lights

This small script is intended for use with a Pimoroni + Blinkt! header to show domestic PV Production / Consumption / Grid usage data as indicator lights, using the SolarEdge monitoring API.

It does not intend to replicate the functionality of the SolarEdge monitoring portal, but to give a physical indicator in-place of the 'feeling' of how the home system is performing.

Features

  • Shows:
    • Production
    • If overall system is currently importing, exporting or neutral
    • The 'tilt' away from neutral if importing/exporting
    • Consumption
    • End-of-day retrospective of export to self-consumption
  • Use of sunrise/sunset to increase/decrease refresh rate (API is limited!)
  • Has settable dim and off times
  • Web UI explaining current visuals, and current production/consumption values
  • Web UI to modify config (times, colours, etc) and restart

Ideas

  • Flashing to indicate to reduce or increase self-consumption of energy (e.g. after a long period of high import or export respectively)
  • Use of time-of-year to limit max expected production capacity

Security

The web ui (flask app) is really really insecure!

It re-writes a python config file via a web form and issues a reboot command. Do not expose it to the Internet! In the example crontab below, it also uses the Flask dev server -- this is not advised.

Running on a Pi

There's no install script yet, so you just have to bodge it together with a git checkout and a crontab...

Example crontab

@reboot cd /home/pi/Code/solar-lights/ && /home/pi/Envs/solar-lights/bin/python /home/pi/Code/solar-lights/power.py -w 60 > /home/pi/logs/power.log 2>&1 &
@reboot cd /home/pi/Code/solar-lights/ && FLASK_APP=configurator /home/pi/Envs/solar-lights/bin/flask run --host=0.0.0.0 --port=8080 > /home/pi/logs/configurator.log 2>&1 &

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☀️ Home PV indicator lights (for Pimoroni + Blinkt!) 🚥

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