Relaunching @edent_solar. Part 4 - Dual String MPPT APIs

By @edent · api fronius solar · 850 words · read ~314 times.

I'm hooking my solar panels up to the Internet!

My solar panels have an API! It tells me the total amount of power they've generated each day. But there's a small problem... I have panels on the East and West sides of my roof. My solar inverter has two MPPT "String" inputs. That is, East and West supply power separately. Luckily, there's an API for that!

Thanks to "Grannos" on the PVOutput forum for their excellent open source code which helped get me started.

API Call

This is slightly hidden in the official API documentation. You have to query the historic data. If you query today's date, you can get sort-of real time data.

This is the call - replace the IP address with your own:

http://192.168.0.123/solar_api/v1/GetArchiveData.cgi?

   Scope=System&

   StartDate=2020-03-25&

     EndDate=2020-03-25&

   Channel=Voltage_DC_String_1&

   Channel=Current_DC_String_1&

   Channel=Voltage_DC_String_2&

   Channel=Current_DC_String_2

Data Structure

This is a truncated view of the data:

{

    "Body": {

        "Data": {

            "inverter/1": {

                "Data": {

                    "Current_DC_String_1": {

                        "Unit": "A",

                        "Values": {

                            ...

                            "57000": 3.3999999999999999,

                            "57300": 2.8300000000000001,

                            "57600": 2.6400000000000001,

                            ...

                        },

                    },

                    "Current_DC_String_2": {

                        "Unit": "A",

                        "Values": {

                            ...

                            "57000": 0.42999999999999999,

                            "57300": 0.41999999999999998,

                            "57600": 0.41000000000000003,

                            ...

                        },

                    },

                    "Voltage_DC_String_1": {

                        "Unit": "V",

                        "Values": {

                            ...

                            "57000": 215.5,

                            "57300": 233.40000000000001,

                            "57600": 228.90000000000001,

                            ...

                        },

                    },

                    "Voltage_DC_String_2": {

                        "Unit": "V",

                        "Values": {

                            ...

                            "57000": 271.10000000000002,

                            "57300": 264.19999999999999,

                            "57600": 260.5,

                            ...

                        },

                    }

                },

The timestamps are seconds-since-midnight. They're sampled every 5 minutes (300 seconds) - so 57000 is 15:50.

I've got the power!

To get the power, multiply the Amps by the Voltage. That gets you the Watts. SCIENCE!

I'm sure there is a better way to do this, and I'd be grateful for any pointers.

Get today's data from the inverter

 Python 3today = now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d")



# Get today's data from the inverter

API_url = "http://" + fronius_IP_address + "/solar_api/v1/GetArchiveData.cgi?Scope=System&StartDate=" + today + "&EndDate=" + today + "&Channel=Voltage_DC_String_1&Channel=Current_DC_String_1&Channel=Voltage_DC_String_2&Channel=Current_DC_String_2"



response = requests.get(url=API_url)

data = json.loads(response.text)

Add it into a structured and ordered format

 Python 3string1_current = data["Body"]["Data"]["inverter/1"]["Data"]["Current_DC_String_1"]["Values"]

#   Keys to ints, Values to floats

string1_current = {int(k):float(v) for k,v in string1_current.items()}

string1_current = sorted(string1_current.items())



string2_current = data["Body"]["Data"]["inverter/1"]["Data"]["Current_DC_String_2"]["Values"]

#   Keys to ints, Values to floats

string2_current = {int(k):float(v) for k,v in string2_current.items()}

string2_current = sorted(string2_current.items())



string1_voltage = data["Body"]["Data"]["inverter/1"]["Data"]["Voltage_DC_String_1"]["Values"]

#   Keys to ints, Values to floats

string1_voltage = {int(k):float(v) for k,v in string1_voltage.items()}

string1_voltage = sorted(string1_voltage.items())



string2_voltage = data["Body"]["Data"]["inverter/1"]["Data"]["Voltage_DC_String_2"]["Values"]

#   Keys to ints, Values to floats

string2_voltage = {int(k):float(v) for k,v in string2_voltage.items()}

string2_voltage = sorted(string2_voltage.items())

Calculating the power

 Python 3timestamp_list = []

string1_watts  = []

string2_watts  = []



for current, voltage in zip(string1_current, string1_voltage):

    timestamp_list.append(str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=current[0]))[:-3]) #   Remove the seconds

    string1_watts.append(int(current[1] * voltage[1]))



for current, voltage in zip(string2_current, string2_voltage):

    string2_watts.append(int(current[1] * voltage[1]))



#   Remove the first 4:30 hours (54 * 5 minutes)

#   Earliest sunrise about 04:40

#   Latest sunset about 2130

timestamp_list = timestamp_list[54:]

string1_watts  = string1_watts[54:]

string2_watts  = string2_watts[54:]



#   Total Power Generation

#   Bit sketchy. Only samples ever 5 minutes.

string1_kWh = str(round(sum(string1_watts) * 5 / 60 / 1000, 2))

string2_kWh = str(round(sum(string2_watts) * 5 / 60 / 1000, 2))

Write the CSV

This is my least favourite part of the code. It zips together the timestamps and the wattage from the first String. Then zips it with the 2nd String.

 Python 3with open(csv_file, 'w', newline='') as csvfile:

    writer = csv.writer(csvfile)

    for a, b in zip(zip(timestamp_list,string1_watts),string2_watts):

        t  = str(a[0])

        w1 = str(a[1])

        w2 = str(b)

        writer.writerow([t,w1,w2])

Source Code

All available on my GitHub