1. 
   Rob Beckers permalink

   Great Web site Julian!
   I see the modules were installed in landscape orientation. That’s unusual (requires straight trusses for one). Looking good though. What software are you using for the live production updates?

   Many happy kilo-Watt-hours!

   -Rob-
2. 
   Julian Egelstaff permalink

   Thanks! The orientation was due to the shape of our roof, that’s how they would fit in the narrow space (it’s a townhouse). The software for capturing the stats is free software available for Xantrex inverters. I have a computer in the basement connected to the inverter and the internet, and it sends the details to the website. The graphs are done in PHP using freely available code libraries. Full details are on the How did you make this website? page. A shout out to people in the industry involved in such things…I would be interested in developing some nice, turnkey monitoring systems if anyone would like to collaborate on that, if there’s a business case. I think a lot of the monitoring software about there is hard to read and understand.

   –Julian
3. 
   Ron Bell permalink

   Great looking website! And some nice numbers as well. Just got our microFIT online on the 18th – finally! This is precisely what I’m looking for to monitor our system – 54 Sanyo 210w panels connected to 2 Xantrex GT 5.0 invereters. I have yet to dive into my own website but this might be the push I needed. I also have never done any programming, but from what I’ve seen on the Wordpress site, I should be able to muddle through. Are the finished monitoring programs used on your site available for download? Thanks, and have a great holiday season. Play safe / rb
4. 
   Julian Egelstaff permalink

   Thanks for the comments. The monitoring program I use is SG-View, which is available at the Solar Guppy forums. You can find the link in the Links section of this site. I have a computer running all the time recording logs using SG-View, and those are sent to the website and processed, usually once a day, to create the graphs and update the other data. The processing is done by some custom PHP scripts I wrote, and the graphs are based on the open source pChart library. Details are on the How did you make this website page. The pChart example scripts on their website are probably the best starting place for graphing. As for parsing the data…well that really depends on what you want to capture and monitor and how you’re logging the data too. So it’s highly custom.

   I may polish some things up into general examples some time later, there’s no plans for that at the moment though. It would take some work to rejig them into something of general use and interest. I’m more interested in graphing consumption information since a little while ago I got access to our consumption data through Toronto Hydro. I also want to put a year summary graph online too.

   –Julian
5. 
   Julian Egelstaff permalink

   Update…you can now create graphs from your own Xantrex GT inverter logs (from SG-View or GT-View). Just follow the “Graph logs from your own system” links at the top of every page.

   Let me know how it goes!

   –Julian
6. 
   Peter Sommerfeld permalink

   Thanks for all the detailed info!

   Just got my 10 KW system installed (44 x 235W Canadian Solar, 44 Enphase micro-inverters, with web monitoring). I managed to get an extension under the OPA.

   Just had a quick look at your site, I will definitely dig in deep.

   Thanks for your time!

   Peter

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