SMA PV Inverter Monitoring
Once the decision and aquisition for a PV system has been made , you wll need to plan for the long-term, protecting your source of income. This means that the system must function smoothly at all times.
SMA products for system monitoring offer you the widest range of possibilities: wireless or internet based, compact or complex, concise or elaborate. Regardless of whether you want to monitor the yield of a home roof system or an open-field solar power station. SMA will find the perfect solution for every application.
SUNNY PORTAL
Web service free of charge for the visualization and archiving of system data.
SUNNY BEAM with Bluetooth®
Simple, fascinating, wireless: The all-in-one service package for the home
SUNNY BEAM
Comfortable: wireless plant monitoring for small PV systems.
SUNNY SENSORBOX
Interruption free performance monitoring: Sunny Sensor Box gathers environmental data from PV systems.
SUNNY WEBBOX
Professional data logger for solar power stations - and ambitious PV system operators.
SUNNY MATRIX
Large-format display for the individual presentation of system data.
SUNNY BOY CONTROL
Solid and proven data logger. Optimally primed for all system sizes.
SUNNY BOY CONTROL PLUS
For those who want more: inverter and solar generator monitoring in one.
A comparison of the two systems
To monitor solar power systems, data has to be transmitted. For example, power values or energy yields. For the communication between the solar inverter and monitoring devices, SMA provides two basic choices: wireless and wired variants. Both have advantages and are used with different sized systems. Here, you can discover which method of communication best suits your solar power system.
| | Bluetooth (radio) | RS485 wiring |
| Typical application | Especially for small and mid-sized solar power systems | For medium and large solar power systems |
| Advantages | Reduced costs and effort | High speed and reliability |
Number of participants
(System monitoring and inverters) | Up to 50 per Bluetooth network | Up to 50 per RS485 bus |
| Range | Up to 100 m in open air
between individual devices | 1200 meters per RS485 bus |
Data retrieval devices
(for example, Sunny Beam or Sunny WebBox) | Up to four per network (depending on number of participants) | One per RS485 bus |
With SMA Bluetooth, wireless networks can be created simply and quickly – without the additional effort of having to lay cables in walls, re-plaster or paint. Therefore perfectly suited to your private home rooftop system. Bluetooth, the international wireless standard, makes your monitoring flexible and extendable. You save time and installation costs. Thanks to Bluetooth, all new inverters are recognized in a flash and automatically integrated into the system. Due to intelligent networking, up to 50 devices can be integrated in a network. Because Bluetooth Class 1 is used, large distances between the devices are possible. And if that should ever not be enough, for example if walls or ceilings are in the way, the SMA Bluetooth Repeater can be used. Bluetooth also stands up in terms of reliability. Thanks to constant frequency changes and the transmission of data packets in small units, the radio connection is extremely stable. And the broadcast power is always adapted to the particular requirement. By the way: the password protection built in to all devices secures your data against unauthorized access.
SMA Bluetooth Information
RS485 is a classic in the area of communication technology. This wired variant has been used by SMA for many years and has proven itself in countless systems. All devices are simply connected in a chain (a so-called data bus). At the end of this chain, the Sunny WebBox collects all the data and reliably on the status of the solar power system. The advantage of RS485 wiring: functional lengths of up to 1,200 meters and reliable data transmission even in interference-prone areas. Because with larger solar power systems in particular, you require maximum security and reliability.
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