SMA is an historic manufacturer of photovoltaic inverter has always provided a complete range of monitoring solutions through multiple possibilities: local or remote monitoring, simple or complex, short or detailed.
SMA monitoring: online monitoring or via interfaces
No matter if you want to monitor the performance of a small residential roof system or a multi-megawatt solar power plant, SMA always has the right solution.
All the current SMA inverters have the Speedwire / Webconnect interface, the latest in addiction the WLAN interface, which can be easily and intuitively displayed the data on any device such as a laptop, smartphone or tablet.
If an internet connection is available, you can subscribe to the free Sunny Portal SMA monitoring, so you can see system performance from anywhere in the world and be emailed of any malfunctions. The limit of this type of monitoring is only in the number of inverters per plant that must be at most 4.
Data Loggers for plant data stocking
If the system has more than 4 inverters or when you want to have a local physical memory of the inverter data then you will need to add a data logger: SMA Cluster Controller if you have Sunny Boy or Sunny Tripower inverter up to 50 kW, if instead the system is made with STP 60 you will have to insert the SMA Inverter Manager.
These data loggers, in addition to data storage and subsequent transmission to the Sunny Portal, have numerous analog / digital input / output interfaces to connect meteorological sensors with which to fine-tune plant performance monitoring, but also to control active and reactive power of the system or connect Modbus external devices.
If you have a residential or commercial facility, and in addition to the performance of the PV plant you want to keep track of consumptions, including specific equipment, the proper SMA monitoring device is the Sunny Home Manager with EMETER metering counter.
Through these devices, you can automate loads connected to specific commands or via the EEBUS communication protocol directly on some appliances from some big manufacturer.
In addition, with Sunny Home Manager, you can check the charge / discharge of the battery connected to the Sunny Boy Storage by time control, further enhancing the storage advantage.
Finally, if you have inverters with the old RS485 communication protocol but want to exploit the innovations of the new data loggers that communicate via Speedwire as the Cluster Controller and Home Manager, SMA has studied an appropriate device the SMA Com Gateway to interface the two protocols of communication.
