An issue was originally noted here (in #9)
The value of
gridPurchasedTodayEnergyis (according togridPurchasedTodayEnergyStr) inkWh. Yet it's claiming ~650, suggesting it's actually inWh
The values seemed to have normalised when I checked the next day though.
It looks like gridSellTodayEnergy as its own oddities:
Yesterday, once the battery was charged, we allegedly went from exporting nothing to having exported 40 kWh. We've got around 4kWp of installed capacity, so the panels would need to be delivering max capacity for around 10 hours (and exporting all of it) to get anywhere near that.
It's not an issue in the plugin itself, because the Soliscloud UI reports the same figure
My clamp meter doesn't discriminate between the direction of flow, and so (by happy luck) reports the rate at which power was being exported at the time
That time period shows "consumption" of a total of 5.34kWh which sounds much more reasonable.
Now, curiously, if - rather than using Daily energy to grid (gridSellTodayEnergy) - we use Total energy to grid (ridSellTotalEnergy) we get a more reasonable figure
Given that clamp meters aren't 100% accurate, the two are pretty well aligned.
Activity
04-Jun-23 11:29
My understanding was that
xTodayEnergywas a daily counter forx, whilstxTotalEnergywas an incrementing counter since time began.That understanding (aside from making sense) is supported by the figures used for drawing energy from the grid:
I think, maybe, the API has the two figures inverted and is erroneously reporting the total instead of the daily value (although that wouldn't explain the sudden jump from 0).
The Soliscloud UI appears to have support messaging capability, so I'll ping them to ask.
In the meantime though, should probably update to capture the Totals - if nothing else, they're interesting information.
04-Jun-23 11:39
Bizzarely though, if we look at the graph for today the figures look like they're the right way round
04-Jun-23 11:43
This more or less mirrors what we saw with
gridPurchasedTodayEnergyin #9 - it was wrong on the first day, and then right after that.Yesterday was the first day that we actually exported, so will have been day 1 for whatever counter they're using.
I guess, then, that the answer is that (for whatever reason) these counters will give invalid readings on the first day that they register a value.
Should update the
READMEto that effect.04-Jun-23 11:53
I've added the following to the
READMEUnexpected Initial Values
It's been observed (in [utilities/telegraf-plugins#9](/issue/utilities/telegraf-plugins/9.html) and [utilities/telegraf-plugins#10](/issue/utilities/telegraf-plugins/10.html)) that the Soliscloud API can report unexpectedly high values for some counters on the first day that a reading is registered for that particular counter.
The following counters have been observed to do this
gridBuyToday(will usually be the first day that the inverter is online)gridSellToday(may occur later - it'll be the first day that energy is actually exported to the grid)After the first day's high values, readings appear to normalise and report correctly.
Oddly the corresponding "Total" fields are unaffected, so on the first day,
gridBuyTotalandgridSellTotalcan be used to obtain a more accurate read.04-Jun-23 11:54
changed title from Soliscloud Grid Energy {-figure looks wrong-} to Soliscloud Grid Energy {+Export figure is unexpectedly high+}
04-Jun-23 11:59
I don't think there's anything we can really do to address this then - it only appears to affect the first day's reading and there isn't really a good way to logic it out.
Although we could check whether
gridSellToday > gridSellTotal(and swap the values if so), that'll cause major issues ifgridSellTotalresets at some point in the future. Although frustrating, it seems better to tolerate a single day's misreporting than risk reporting bad data in the future.We're now capturing those total fields, so if such logic is desirable, it can be used at query time.
The documentation update is in place, so I'm going to close this issue out as being caused by the upstream API.
04-Jun-23 12:00
mentioned in commit github-mirror/telegraf-plugins@0404172d9ed69b7eb6a90f2b5d29010f3ed38e89
Commit: github-mirror/telegraf-plugins@0404172d9ed69b7eb6a90f2b5d29010f3ed38e89 Author: B Tasker Date: 2023-06-04T12:31:42.000+01:00Message
Add total grid bought and sold ([utilities/telegraf-plugins#10](/issue/utilities/telegraf-plugins/10.html))
This adds two new fields
gridBuyTotal: The total energy bought from the gridgridSellTotal: The total energy exported to the gridHowever, as noted in [utilities/telegraf-plugins#10](/issue/utilities/telegraf-plugins/10.html) there's a possibility that the Soliscloud API is currently misreporting
gridSellTotaland instead giving the daily value (whilst giving the total value in the daily field).04-Jun-23 12:00
mentioned in commit github-mirror/telegraf-plugins@d12bf3948ca450fac1a5922d70a7464e367d90eb
Commit: github-mirror/telegraf-plugins@d12bf3948ca450fac1a5922d70a7464e367d90eb Author: B Tasker Date: 2023-06-04T12:52:21.000+01:00Message
Update README to add observations from utilities/telegraf-plugins#10
This adds a note about the odd initial readings that Soliscloud gives for grid energy
04-Jun-23 12:05
changed the description