Monitoring a solar system: inverter, meter and the flow of energy

Good energy automation starts with observation. Until you can see where the current flows — how much the panels produce, how much the house consumes, what the battery charge is and what goes to the grid — every setting is made blind. HoumeOS gathers those four numbers into one visual flow and keeps them live in real time.

What you see on screen

• Production from the photovoltaic system — instant, daily, monthly and yearly.
• Household consumption — total and by key appliance where the installation allows it.
• Battery state — charge, flow direction and the emergency reserve.
• Grid exchange — how much is imported and how much exported at any moment.

Where the data comes from

The inverter reports production and the battery; the meter reports the grid boundary. Most modern devices are read over Modbus TCP or through the manufacturer's API, and the data lands on the common MQTT bus. That keeps the whole system inside one interface for all brands instead of living in ten separate apps.

From observation to automation

Displaying numbers saves nothing by itself. The benefit arrives when those figures feed rules: on surplus, current goes to hot water and flexible appliances; on shortage, the house draws from the battery down to the reserve; and only then from the grid. The same logic applies to charging the car from the sun.

The profile you size the battery from

Monitoring shows the home's real hourly profile. That is also the best answer to how big a battery you need — instead of guessing from a table. You can see when the peak is, how long the battery holds and when the reserve kicks in.

History and reports

Values are recorded locally: raw samples for the day, an event journal for the month before and aggregations for the year. That is where the reports come from — where the energy actually goes, how much was saved, and whether the rules are doing a job or just gathering dust.

What to expect

On one property you see the numbers from day one. On another, with an older inverter, part of the data needs an extra sensor or gateway. That is why we begin with a survey — we check what can be read, and only then set the distribution priorities.