Owl Intuition PV

vince31

Anyone bought one of these (Owl Intuition PV) for monitoring their solar power generation at the same time as their home consumption?
I'm looking to get one in a few weeks and get it set up so I can monitor my PV output in real time on my phone over the net.  Planning to try and use the PV power more intelligently by switching on devices remotely as the generation goes up on a sunny day.  I know the power output will be variable with the sunshine and cloud cover during the day but its worth a try in my opinion.  Anyone else tried this?

zircon3035

Vince,

Yes, I bought a system last week and connected it last Friday. It's been working well, allowing me to look at the data remotely. Well, until lunchtime today, when a pop-up message on my PC said "disconnected from server". I've been unable to reconnect, even after a fresh install of the Tx and Rx. Maybe their server is offline? Hopefully this is a one off as I had just started to study the data and had borrowed a power meter to track down where my precious energy is going!

The first week of data is interesting in that it shows when the solar power is available and when my peak demand occurs. The online graphs are quite low resolution, but you can select a range and download the data in csv format.

Overall, it's a useful gadget although I will change my mind if the server remains offline.

HTH,

Ian

vince31

Zircon, thanks for the info, hope to get my system next weekend, sounds promising if the server stays up!I will post review after a month or so.

zircon3035

Well the server came back this afternoon just after 2pm. Unfortunately it ruined 2 days data. Hopefully it won't be a regular event.

riseabdn

We supply these with some solar PV systems and you need to be aware that below around 200w the accuracy of the sensor drops off, such that the inverter can be reporting 100W and the Owl will report anywhere between 50W and 500W.

Having spoken to owl, this cannot be helped as the current transformer's (CT) which monitor the current dont deal well with low currents.

Aside from that they are great units.

vince31

Had the Owl Intuition PV installed for a month now and I must say its working well and I access it daily on my phone and use it all the time on my pc so I can monitor the excess being exported and then switch on the dishwasher or washing machine etc.  Just what I wanted!

crivvens

I installed the intuition-pv earlier this year and very pleased with its performance. went on to install the intuition-c to control my central heating. It also multicasts its data on my local lan so was able to add its data to my local database for no extra outlay.

vince31

so how do you set it all up for local data logging, I cant find any info on this anywhere. I can see the option to input my local ip, I gerss that will transmit it to my pc, but what do I need to do next to get the data into a spreadsheet so I can use it etc?

Flugel Hound

Guess a washing machine needs to be quite 'manual' to switch on a wash when powered up?  Ours have always need you to push 'start'.  

I have been looking at a Chorus PV | Green Energy Options  this will soon include smart sockets i believe that will activate/dump at a threshold. not enough info yet but promising?

Trevor Boardman

I have an owl intuition set to monitor solar panel output and electricity usage. This was working fine up to a few days ago but now the website says nothing is being generated but all lights on all devices are flashing as normal. The inverter and export monitor indicate indicate about 3kw which is normal for this time.
Has anyone else experienced this?