[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Am I the only one who does not want IoT in t...
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Ask HN: Am I the only one who does not want IoT in their solar
panel setup?
All solar panel systems I can find seem to require an internet
connection. The (seemingly) best option I have found so far is a
system with an inverter that only requires an internet connection
during the initial installation, which uses a wifi dongle so I can
probably unplug that afterwards. Even then, the manufacturer states
that not having it connected to the internet voids their warranty,
and I'm afraid the software might even have some kind of countdown
where the system will stop working when it hasn't been connected to
the internet after a certain amount of time. I am not interested
at all in connecting something that should help me get off the grid
to the internet. Combine that with security issues[0] and I'm
starting to think we're collectively folding our arms behind our
back and intentionally falling forwards. Maybe I'm too paranoid.
Thoughts? [0]: For example:
https://csirt.divd.nl/cases/DIVD-2022-00009/
Author : harryvederci
Score : 168 points
Date : 2022-09-30 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
| chunk_waffle wrote:
| What features do you need? You must be looking at a different
| range of devices than what I use but I am entirely off grid and
| have no internet connected devices in my solar system. I have
| even avoided Bluetooth enabled things without much fuss.
| sorisos wrote:
| I once worked with developing PV-inverter software. The web
| "features" always made be uncomfortable given the projected
| lifespan of >10 years.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| My solar panels report the amount of electricity generated so I
| get my SREC credits. These are direct payments for generating
| clean energy.
|
| What frustrated me was that the company used a meter that
| reported over 3G, and then wanted me to pay $500 to upgrade my
| meter even though it was under warranty. They eventually found an
| ethernet port in my current meter, but they still charged me to
| run the cable. Fortunately, they got the cost low enough that it
| wasn't worth arguing.
| edent wrote:
| I have a Fronius inverter which has both WiFi and Ethernet - but
| works perfectly well without it.
|
| My installer said that they need access to the inverter during
| set-up in order to configure it properly, but after that it could
| be disconnected.
|
| Personally, I use it to get firmware updates and to use the API
| in order to monitor it.
|
| Although, that said, I'm not sure what sort of security issues
| you're imagining. There's no privacy issue - the inverter only
| has data on what you've generated.
| bombcar wrote:
| One obvious one is if the panels can see the load to the house,
| they can determine occupancy.
|
| There are devices that can monitor your breaker box and tell
| you when appliances have turned on.
|
| You could perhaps prevent this by having it dump everything
| between the meter and the house so it can't tell if it's going
| to the grid or not. I don't know enough about it to say if
| that's reasonable.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I guess they're more worried about what degree of control their
| cloud has over the device, and since it upgrades trough the
| Internet, I guess they have potentially absolute control. The
| idea is minimizing the risk a device like this would become if
| compromised.
| edent wrote:
| Sure. But that also has to be weighed up against the risk
| that the device has a firmware bug which will render it
| inoperable.
|
| Or that a potential fault won't be identified and the owner
| won't be alerted.
|
| There are risks on both sides. But, in the UK at least, there
| are several inverters which don't require an IP address.
| tpxl wrote:
| My parents have an internet controlled heat pump. It works
| fine without, but you basically can't change the settings
| locally. A couple of years ago they bricked it, charged us
| 400EUR for 'repairs' which did jack squat, then it magically
| started working a few weeks later.
|
| Don't buy internet connected appliances.
| f1shy wrote:
| I just keep away of anything requiring an app or internet
| connection. I just can't wait until this IoT hype comes to
| an end...
| karaterobot wrote:
| Thanks for posting this, because it would not even have been on
| my list of questions to ask. I am considering a solar conversion,
| but an IoT connection is a complete deal-breaker for me. Now I
| know that, not only do I have to ask about it, I have to ask a
| lot of follow-up questions.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| We just got a rooftop system from a very hands-off GC-type
| company and I'm so pissed off about it.
|
| If I'd known in advance it'd have _multiple_ Internet of Shit
| crapware devices attached that 'll probably stop working in 5
| years and require expensive replacement and renovation to keep
| working past that, and that it can't produce power _at all_
| unless those pieces of near-future landfill rubbish are happy, I
| 'd 1000% never have gotten it.
|
| _Mea culpa_ --I guess I should have asked, but it just never
| occurred to me--but I'm fucking never getting another solar
| system unless I install it myself. There are other problems (that
| have solidified my usual preference not to let someone else GC a
| project for me, because they usually just skim money and do a
| terrible job--they fucked up our roof _bad_ , for one thing, many
| thousands of dollars of damage so now we get to sort _that_ out
| too, the hassle 's not worth a few hundred in savings per year
| assuming all else goes well which at this point I'm sure it _will
| not_ ) but IoT shitware would have been a deal-breaker on its own
| if I'd known it required that _to function_ , not just for
| monitoring or whatever.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I totally feel your pain and would feel exactly the same way in
| your shoes. This also ties into the broader problem of
| contractors treating their clients horribly because their
| services are so in-demand. Basically, contractors can show up,
| do a horrible job, and they will completely disappear on you as
| soon as they get their money.
|
| There's so much demand in their industry that all the best
| people are working on high paying corporate job sites (like
| building hospitals and new FAANG campuses), that the average
| homeowner is left dealing with garbage companies who treat
| their clients like shit.
|
| Hopefully rising mortgage rates and falling house prices can
| cool demand a little and we can get some decently competent
| contractors again.
|
| WRT solar, I was super impressed with jerryrigeverything's
| solar installation that he did himself. Basically you can get a
| kit that you install yourself and it's much cheaper than having
| a garbage contractor rip you off and ruin your roof in the
| process.
|
| His video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSa1tvrrFZg
| bombcar wrote:
| If you can find a contractor you can trust, even if they're
| not versed in the installation of solar, you can work with
| them. I'd much rather have an electrician and roofer that I
| trust work on a kit like that than depend on some random
| contractor I don't know.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Right--contractors are fine, it's GCs that (mostly--I'm
| sure exceptions exist) blow.
|
| I'd rejected GC bids for things before because they were
| crazy-expensive and they were proposing mediocre work
| despite their very high rate, then gone on to basically GC
| the project myself, engaging contractors for most of it and
| DIYing a few things here and there, and those have all been
| great. My mistake was making an exception this time, I
| guess, but OTOH the savings from solar also wouldn't have
| been worth it if I'd had to do that, even with a
| hypothetically-cheaper installation cost, so I'd not have
| done the project at all in that case.
|
| As it is I don't see how the system won't end up _losing_
| us money by the time everything 's accounted. Probably 5-10
| years off our roof lifetime even if they fix all the acute
| damage but don't do a full replacement (I very much doubt
| they'll do that without us spending more money fighting for
| it than it's worth), plus it'll cost more to replace when
| it's time because of the damn panels.
|
| But they didn't like our proposal that they take it all
| down (which they'll have to do to fix the roof anyway--it's
| _bad_ ), fix our roof, take all the equipment back and zero
| out our bill so we can all pretend this never happened.
| Sigh.
|
| Been up for weeks and still hasn't generated a single
| goddamn watt of power so far, either. The IoT shitware
| refuses to do its job and of course they're not in any
| hurry to get out and fix it. Pretty sure it's gonna end up
| with attorneys involved, which is something I've managed to
| avoid my whole life so far and I'm dreading.
|
| Blue Raven Solar, for the record. May as well name-n-shame,
| but my understanding is this kind of thing's extremely
| common in the solar industry so it's not just them. I
| suspect heavily-astroturfed reviews, in their case. Again,
| I really should have known better.
|
| One point of advice for others: call out a roof person you
| trust before starting one of these projects. Ours, it turns
| out, would have told us our roof was too steep to safely
| install solar on without totally fucking up the shingles in
| the process, and that would have been the end of it.
|
| [EDIT] Heh, incidentally I think the near-impossibility of
| putting the panels back up without wrecking the roof
| _again_ is what might save us and get them to back out the
| whole project. IDK how they 're gonna re-install the system
| after the roof's fixed.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, a good GC is either so astronomically expensive you
| can't even talk to their lawyer's cat, or simply not to
| be found (or you marry one or into the family).
|
| I would get legal involved sooner rather than later; but
| a good lawyer can be as hard to find as a good GC.
|
| Maybe you should just get the roof fixed and sell the
| house and try again.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Maybe you should just get the roof fixed and sell the
| house and try again.
|
| LOL, the "unplug it and plug it back in" of major house
| mistakes, I guess.
| bombcar wrote:
| Real talk, if it isn't obvious foundation damage and the
| roof isn't currently on fire, it'll probably sell just
| fine.
|
| You can hire a home inspector after it's "fixed" and see
| what he says. Just disclose that you have solar and that
| you had an issue and it was resolved, provide paperwork,
| and most people will yawn.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Side note: home inspectors are typically lazy GCs who
| realized it was easier money.
|
| They're not actually liable for anything more detailed
| than what you could notice yourself, which... why are you
| paying them again?
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, you have to find the home inspectors that the
| realtors _hate_ - those are the ones who may actually do
| something useful.
|
| But if they don't see anything wrong, then any other ones
| won't see anything, either.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| When buying houses, I've really only hired them because I
| don't want to get on a roof myself if I don't have to :-)
| Or crawl around in an attic, for that matter.
|
| Most folks are pretty bad at spotting problems with
| houses, because they simply don't know what to look for
| (and why would they? It's hard to know _everything_ ), so
| an inspector's probably a good idea.
|
| Me, I spend the entire time at an AirBnB distracted by
| noticing every single place work wasn't done quite right,
| every cut corner or lazy shortcut, every interesting (or
| "interesting") material choice, "oh, looks like they
| replaced this shower insert but didn't want to fully redo
| the drywall so took the lazy route and added trim", "uh
| oh, this tile shower floor has serious drainage
| problems", "interesting, this doorway must have been
| added", et c., but most people aren't like that.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The problem is that GCs have the same incentive as real
| estate agents. It's more profitable to do 2 quick jobs
| (even at 80% of top pay) than 1 quality job (at 100% of
| top pay). Quantity > quality.
|
| Lesson learned from watching my parents build a home &
| personal projects: treat any payment of funds as a sign
| off on the work and expect you'll never hear from them
| again.
|
| If a GC baulks at 1/2 withheld until
| completion/inspection, move on.
|
| If you have any concerns about the quality of work,
| refuse to pay until it's completed.
| jonnycoder wrote:
| It was paused but California was proposing Net Metering 3.0
| rules in which you would have to pay $10/mo for each kw/hr of
| grid-tied solar panels. So for a small 5kw/hr panel setup (15
| panels at 370w each), they proposed that new solar homeowners
| would pay $50/month to PG&E simply for having 15 panels. Most
| people I know have double or triple that.
|
| Will Prowse on Youtube has great videos on off grid solar
| including equipment that is all UL certified. Getting over the
| hurdle of roof mounting panels or ground mounting up to code
| (seems to mainly be around using conduit for the wiring), I
| could buy a pallet of 10 solar panels, a converter/invetor all
| in one from EG4, and an EG4 5kw lithium iron phosphate battery
| for around $6000.
|
| Battery: https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-
| battery-48... Offgrid Converter:
| https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-6-5k-off-grid-inverter-6500ex...
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| I hope you're not too upset about that - there's a pretty
| good justification for it: It's both expensive and valuable
| for the utility to be there for your burst needs beyond
| whatever your panels generate at any particular time. But
| with net-metering by itself, there's no way to charge you for
| that expensive value if your net pull from the utility is
| zero, even though you might pull a lot at certain times.
|
| You could go off-grid to avoid this, or install your own
| batteries, but both of those are obviously expensive and
| inconvenient in their own ways.
|
| I'm not saying they got the price right ($10/kWh) or the
| model (more for larger arrays), but the overall principal is
| fine.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 1)This sort of thing is covered by connection fees
| independent of usage fees
|
| 2)People providing green energy into the grid should not be
| charged _more_ than others.
| akira2501 wrote:
| If they are providing "green energy" into the grid, are
| they doing it for free or is there some kind of financial
| consideration for them? If so.. are they actually being
| charged _more_ than others who simply use power from the
| grid, or are they receiving an entirely different class
| of service all together?
| eastbound wrote:
| Then charge peak price for peak demand.
| mikepavone wrote:
| Everyone (including non-solar customers) is getting moved
| to time-of-use billing with some sort of phase in
| schedule and I believe it's already required for new
| solar hookups. Part of CPUC's proposed replacement for
| NEM 2.0 combined fairly agressive TOU billing with moving
| credits for grid exports to an "avoided cost" model so
| that you get very little for exporting in mid-day when
| there's currently an excess of solar generation and much
| more in the late afternoon when there's a big mismatch
| between demand and renewable generation.
|
| I think you can definitely argue about the specific
| values they chose, but the broad strokes make sense.
| mikepavone wrote:
| It's $8/month per-kilowatt and for PG&E customers the Market
| Transition Credit makes it $6.38/month per-kilowatt (at least
| initially). So you'd be paying ~$32 to PG&E for a 5kW system,
| not $50. It's really hard to know if the numbers CPUC settled
| on are really achieved the right balance, but they are trying
| to deal with a real problem here. There are a bunch of fixed
| costs associated with being attached to the grid that are
| currently baked into electric rates and since solar lets you
| avoid a bunch of electric charges (especially with the
| current NEM 2.0 rules) this represents a fairly large
| subsidy. As solar grows in share, the value of each
| additional solar installation falls unless its paired with
| storage to shift that generation to when there's the most net
| demand.
|
| Now I don't actually know if CPUC actually stuck the landing
| here. The proposed rulemaking is a pretty dense document and
| it seems non-trivial to model costs from parsing that.
|
| > I could buy a pallet of 10 solar panels, a
| converter/invetor all in one from EG4, and an EG4 5kw lithium
| iron phosphate battery for around $6000.
|
| 3.7 kW of panels (assuming these are 370 watt panels like you
| mentioned above) and 5 kWh of storage is not going to go very
| far in an off-grid system unless your electric use is pretty
| low. The thing about going completely off-grid is that you
| need a substantially larger system than in a grid-tied
| scenario both in terms of generation and storage.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| After going with Tesla panels, this is my plan next time. I
| could have had 3x the system for 1/2 the price. At that cost/
| scale I could truly be off the grid.
| pridkett wrote:
| Funny thing I look at Tesla and my system and I'm seeing
| that my all in price for my panels + 3 powerwalls in 2020
| is within 10% of what people in my town talk about paying
| for panels today. A lot of that cost gets eaten by
| installation and inefficient practices.
|
| I'm kinda with you on building my own off grid system -
| but, I don't think I would've had the know how of where to
| start without the knowledge I got from getting my Tesla
| system installed.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The electric utility still has to pay for grid upkeep. Most
| of their costs in fact are grid upkeep. Until you go off grid
| you need to contribute to that. The status quo in california
| is that solar owners get to use the grid as a free limitless
| lossless battery, and that was just never going to work. It
| means the rich are being subsidized by the poor.
|
| And tbh if enough people go off grid I expect the state to
| enact a "grid tax" that every homeowner has to pay,
| regardless of if they're connected, because otherwise
| electricity costs for on grid users would skyrocket as fixed
| costs are spread between fewer users.
| bombcar wrote:
| @Syonyk has some good stuff here:
| https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar/ - I'm sure he'll comment on
| this eventually, but he has built his own solar in Idaho.
| jonnycoder wrote:
| I skimmed most of his off grid article and he states this:
|
| "If you want to get a rooftop solar system that powers your
| home with the grid down, you can do it! The hardware is out
| there. But such a system will be significantly more
| expensive than a normal grid tied system, and it will
| likely never "pay off" in terms of money saved."
|
| That may be true if he was paying $0.10 kw/hr in Idaho, but
| that's definitely false for a few reasons.
|
| -In California, it's $0.43 kw/hr so the ROI for
| solar+battery is getting much faster with the price of
| panels, inverter, battery coming down. Price of electricity
| will continue to go up in the short term.
|
| -A lithium iron phosphate EG4 5kw/hr battery for $1600, or
| even an EcoFlow Delta Pro for $2500 is a good deal
| considering around 8000 discharge cycles
|
| -Most critically, net metering (grid tie) means that all
| that excess solar power you are producing in the middle of
| the day is being bought back by the power company at
| CHEAPER rates than what you are paying, so that needs to be
| accounted for in grid-tie vs off-grid pricing. If you are
| off-grid producing x amount of your power needs and you are
| using 100% of that power via lithium battery (at night),
| you are getting full retail price for producing your own
| power at $0.43 kw/hr or $0.49 kw/hr peak rate from 5-9pm in
| California. Off-grid doesn't mean truly off grid if you
| already have electric hookup, it just means an off-grid
| panel for some or most of your house. Think of it like
| this... if you have 15 solar panels grid-tied, you are
| being "taxed" ~4 panels by your power company.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, the off-grid article is from almost five years ago
| now, things have changed, and power companies are more
| cognizant of it, too.
| outworlder wrote:
| > In California, it's $0.43 kw/hr
|
| PGE is ridiculous. But apparently whatever serves San
| Diego is even worse.
|
| There's Silicon Valley Power, with rates that are a
| fraction of PG&E's, smack in the middle of the Bay Area.
| Can get as low as $.10 Kw/h during off peak hours.
| ZacharyPitts wrote:
| BTW, in California the acronym PG&E is for Pacific Gas
| and Electric
|
| Confusingly when I moved to Oregon years ago, its PGE
| (without the ampersand) for Portland General Electric.
| bombcar wrote:
| That would be ... SDGE!
| marssaxman wrote:
| It would never have occurred to me, either! There was certainly
| none of that crap attached a decade ago when I had solar
| installed on my previous house. Glad to know this is something
| to screen for - but chagrined that it exists, naturally.
| bombcar wrote:
| Whenever quoting an install of basically anything, ask for
| the list of part numbers, and then you can look them up
| yourself.
|
| My furnace and AC have no internet connection; the thermostat
| I installed myself does.
| askvictor wrote:
| Some places have a legal requirement to do this; I think in order
| to be able to protect the grid (not quite sure why the smart
| meter can't handle this though; maybe to do with frequency
| matching or diagnostics)
|
| But the main reason they do this is pretty mundane - LCD panels
| often fail after a few years in the kinds of environments
| inverters are often installed in (hot, sunny). So they move the
| display to be an app instead, and you need an internet
| connection.
| brk wrote:
| Where do you live, and what products are you looking at?
|
| I have an 11.6Kw solar system with a SolarEdge inverter. It does
| not need an internet connection to function. I currently have it
| connected to use the app that reports performance data, but it's
| not a requirement for functionality.
| anilr wrote:
| pGuitar wrote:
| not sure why it would need internet but I would DIY with an
| ESP8266 if it does (no cloud involved)
| naikrovek wrote:
| being able to DIY a high-wattage inverter would mean that this
| person already has everything they need to avoid asking this
| question in the first place,
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| '8266 is an MCU with built-in Wi-Fi. They're not talking
| about DIY'ing an entire inverter, just the web interface to
| it.
| naikrovek wrote:
| web interface to what? the inverter, right? and to monitor
| voltage and current of the input(s) and output (s) of an
| inverter you need to know how to connect up the sensors,
| keep them protected in whatever environment, and make sure
| they're reading correctly.
|
| a person that knows how to "DIY" these things correctly
| already knows how to use a microcontroller to log the data
| and either present it or send it somewhere that can present
| it.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I work in the industry on the commercial side. Access to that
| data and the ability to sell a homeowner's power generation and
| storage out from under them to the utility (double-dipping,
| because often the homeowner pays for the systems) is a big thing
| right now. If you buy solar or batteries and the company wants
| you to constantly be connected to their network, then they are
| somehow making money off of you, much like Sony will charge you
| for a TV then put ads on it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Access to that data and the ability to sell a homeowner's
| power generation and storage out from under them to the utility
| (double-dipping, because often the homeowner pays for the
| systems)
|
| Can you elaborate on this? How does this work?
| ok_dad wrote:
| First, the data is helpful in aggregate to learn about
| homeowner power usage and sell and stuff. Second, these
| companies are often selling some sort of contract or carbon
| token, or some sort of virtual aggregation of power to a
| utility. For example, Tesla is famously paying huge amounts
| to sell their customer's power to SCE right now in a pilot
| program. I can tell you from experience, the prices they're
| paying their customers per kilowatt-hour are way higher than
| the market rate for that sort of thing, so it's not going to
| last. Eventually, these Tesla customers will be stuck in some
| contract, probably, selling Tesla their power for pennies on
| the dollar.
|
| None of the VPP software running in the cloud cannot be run
| locally. What we should have is a small computer optimizing
| homeowner's devices (solar, batteries) on-site, but instead
| all that crap is in the cloud. It's "Generation as a Service"
| at this point, and it's bullshit.
|
| What we need is an open-source building energy management
| supervision software with a diverse driver and plugin
| ecosystem. I want to write it, but I have a family to feed.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| It's a "me too" situation. One company releases appliance X with
| IoT features and all the competitors panic because it's something
| they don't have that consumers will see as missing, so they rush
| to throw something together. This kind of herd mentality drives a
| hell of a lot of feature bloat.
|
| Problem is that consumers really do see "internet/mobile
| connected" as a desirable feature even if they're just going to
| use it once for the novelty and then forget about it.
| don-code wrote:
| Some of these features probably lead actual usage. If you'd
| asked in 2009 how many people wanted to adjust their air
| conditioner temperature remotely, command their vacuum to
| clean, or see video of their front door when the delivery
| driver drops off a package, I'd bet those numbers would be low,
| but we today have IoT poster children like Nest, Roomba, and
| Ring making those desirable features.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > Some of these features probably lead actual usage
|
| This is an interesting comment and from my experience I'm
| sure it's often true.
|
| Around 2008 or thereabouts I was the lead engineer on my
| company's first foray into what is now called IIoT:
| Industrial Internet of Things. At the time we just called it
| Remote Monitoring. There was (is?) even an magazine by that
| name.
|
| We built large, complex medical instruments that required
| periodic servicing both by the customer and by our Field
| Engineers. Engineering's value proposition for the project to
| the Technical Support/Field Service group was that we could
| reduce the frequency of expensive and unscheduled field
| service callouts and provide considerably more debug
| information from an instrument when a customer called in with
| a problem. We should be able to reduce diagnosing an
| instrument failure from hours to minutes. And in the future,
| we'd probably be able to tell when a consumable part was due
| for replacement and schedule it ahead of time.
|
| It was a freaking _battle uphill both ways in the snow_ to
| get them to accept that. All they wanted was a slightly
| faster version of the tool they already had which was already
| inadequate for the task. They couldn 't actually stop us from
| implementing this, but there a a strong reluctance to the
| point of "well it sounds nice but I don't see how it would be
| helpful to us."
|
| Postmortem:
|
| Fast forward two years. The system is in the field. Tech
| support keeps telling us how they can't imagine that they
| were able to get along without it and keep asking for new
| features!
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _the manufacturer states that not having it connected to the
| internet voids their warranty_
|
| I dunno about much of the rest of the world, but in Australian
| Consumer Law such a declaration would certainly be unlawful.
| bombcar wrote:
| They're very tricky about wording it, they'll say things (like
| the car companies do) such as "not being connected to the
| monitoring service MAY void your warranty" (if a fault happens
| and you don't detect or correct it - just like changing your
| own oil and replacing it with baby oil will void your
| warranty).
|
| And you can be hella sure they'll default to any excuse not to
| honor their warranty, because they know that you'll probably
| not bother fighting them in small claims court.
| Faaak wrote:
| SMA inverters (at least) do not need an internet connection to be
| configured. They of course support ethernet but it's not
| mandatory at all. Everything is self hosted and they can be run
| air-gapped
| toss1 wrote:
| Completely agree -- thank you for the heads-up! Right up front, I
| wouldn't have expected this to be another sh*tware connectivity
| thing unless I was doing net-metering (it kinda does have to talk
| to the elec utility for that).
|
| My general expectation is to do a small circuit for things that
| don't need to be connected at first (like electricity for the
| workshed), then get fully off-grid if I do a full system. No way
| do I want to be off-grid and relying on some of the components
| calling their mothership.
|
| I'm also deeply suspicious of all of these schemes where solar is
| "free", whether they are fronting the cost to reap the solar
| credits for themselves or installing to charge you a fixed-rate
| electrical bill. Far too many opportunities for things to go
| sideways.
| neilv wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/aloi5v/pro...
| egeek wrote:
| I have a Solis inverter [0], while it has WiFi built in, and we
| have the data logging dongle, it doesn't need to be connected to
| the internet to function, and you can configure the dongle to
| talk to MQTT locally (but I haven't done this).
|
| It doesn't need to be connected to the internet during
| configuration either, we set it up and got it going before
| connecting the data logger to it.
|
| That said, I do use their portal to see my generation and
| consumption. It's pretty handy. But I also do scrape their data
| and store it locally as well.
|
| [0] https://www.ginlong.com/rhi_3pinverter1/29118.html
|
| * I'm not affiliated with them in any way, it's just the one we
| have
| don-code wrote:
| > the manufacturer states that not having it connected to the
| internet voids their warranty
|
| I was aware that my inverter could connect to the Internet, and
| probably would be connected to the Internet during setup, but my
| full intention was to disconnect it following the install. I was
| pretty happy that the one that the vendor gave me was poll-able
| from an internal Web server, so I could scrape the metrics
| myself.
|
| It turns out, none of this was to be. I found out about the
| Internet connectivity requirement for the warranty _after_ it was
| on my wall and producing power - and when you've spent five
| figures on a system with a 25-year warranty, unfortunately I had
| to suck up my pride and let it phone home to the manufacturer's
| cloud. It now sits on a separate VLAN for "untrusted" devices.
|
| What's more, I also found out that the manufacturer had
| intentionally removed the local web server feature, instead
| making it totally reliant on the cloud service for metrics. It
| has a laughable rate limit of 300 calls per day, which gives me
| roughly 5-minute granularity (I could get better granularity if I
| made my metrics-gathering scripts poll differently overnight, but
| still), and I really dislike having to reach out to a vendor for
| data that's produced in my own home.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| How does this even make sense, if the power goes out or the
| internet goes down your warranty can be voided? At least I know
| what question to ask when I go shopping for these...
| IanNorris wrote:
| I see you also have a Solar Edge inverter. I had no idea about
| the warranty, I didn't read the ToS because I wasn't asked to
| agree to one.
| anm89 wrote:
| Absolutely not. I would not want any of that to be connected in
| my personal setup
| freedude wrote:
| An old-timer I used to work with once told me, "A warranty is
| only as good as the company selling it." There is more truth to
| the saying then I want to believe. Many of you have proved this
| by your comments.
|
| In many states the "contract" is invalid if it wasn't presented
| as a requirement in the sale or when it was agreed upon. It
| doesn't matter if it is in the TOS if the TOS isn't signed and
| dated by the person paying for the Internet access. Legally you
| have a leg to stand on. You would need to get a lawyer and
| possibly go to court. Then trust them to honor the warranty
| later. That sounds like fun doesn't it.
|
| Good luck.
| bombcar wrote:
| These solar companies are gonna pop up, do a bunch of installs,
| and then disappear or go bankrupt.
|
| And the manufacturers will say you have to deal with the
| installer, and the installer will be gone.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| IoT does not make sense for residential applications, except as a
| kind of gimmick.
|
| As for other domains like, industrial, manufacturing,
| agriculture... that ship has already sailed. HN would do well to
| remember there's more to IoT than WiFi lightbulbs.
| m00x wrote:
| It absolutely makes sense.
|
| Knowing how much capacity you have, monitoring intake, output,
| charge rate, battery temp, etc. are very important things to
| know and keep track.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Geeks who pay attention to that sort of thing are also the
| sort of people who could do it locally...
| outworlder wrote:
| Networked devices make a lot of sense even in the home - my
| Home Assistant is pretty damn useful. The problem is the
| 'internet' part. I'm moving everything to the local network,
| but it's getting increasingly more difficult. To the point that
| I'm avoiding wifi devices (in favor of zigbee and possibly
| bluetooth).
| fy20 wrote:
| I have a Huawei SUN2000 inverter and the network dongle is an
| optional extra, which is not required once the initial setup is
| completed. During setup you need it to provide a WiFi connection
| to the mobile app, but the installer could use their own dongle.
|
| When I had my solar installed I had no internet connection at the
| property, so the installer gave me instructions of how to pair
| the inverter when I did. I had a smart meter which gave hourly
| data, so there wasn't really much need in connecting the inverter
| up. It has indicator lights to tell you when something goes
| wrong.
| randyrand wrote:
| Mobile apps only work for a few years. Apple requires that apps
| are updated at least every 3 years.
|
| i.e. after a few years, you will not be able to re-setup your
| inverter again.
| bmacho wrote:
| He can run an android emulator on pc/mac.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I had no idea. I'd be okay with that if the firmware was open
| source, but I can dream.
|
| On the other hand, if something bad happens (virus, remote
| bricking, disabling some functionality that was in the contract
| in un update), you can probably sue them. Granted, if they face
| massive service disruption, you may not be able to gain much from
| it.
| IYasha wrote:
| No, you're a totally sane person. People often mistake "smart"
| with "automated". I'm all for automaiton, but not for devices
| that think, decide and do things without me. And also the main
| question is "who's in control". So, you're not alone.
| rufius wrote:
| Most systems that are connected to the grid require it by local
| code from what I've read. When the city did the inspection on my
| system after the contractor finished up installation, one of the
| things they checked is that it was on an approved list of
| inverters. It's not clear to me that the approved list required
| that those inverters be internet-connected, but I wouldn't be
| surprised if there was a requirement about "off site
| upgradeable/diagnosable" and so on.
|
| If you're off grid, you can easily get away with not having that
| sort of thing.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Completely agree.
|
| That said we shouldn't reserve the "IoT" moniker for crappy cloud
| based things requiring constant internet connections to work.
| That's the internet of shit (as popularized by
| https://mobile.twitter.com/internetofshit)
|
| I definitely want some connectivity in a solar panel setup. But
| in the case of a solar panel array there is no point for that
| connectivity to use be more than local, or offer more than simple
| monitoring. A local polling api that offers a simple json blob
| with stats? Does that qualify as "IoT"?
| justizin wrote:
| no.
| alkonaut wrote:
| No as in... you think "IoT" means gadgets with cloud
| connections?
| bombcar wrote:
| Internet of Turds seems to involve some worthless "cloud
| service" that they try to charge you for.
|
| It is sometimes accompanied by a local API that works without
| internet (Apple HomeKit stuff seems to somewhat work sometimes
| in an internet outage, and the Hue buttons keep working).
|
| It can be quite hard to distinguish the two.
| alkonaut wrote:
| The HomeAssistant project has pretty good docs on which
| devices use what class of communication e.g "local polling"
| should be the minimum for any device I get (regardless of
| whether I want to use it with HomeAssistant)
| boringg wrote:
| As someone who works in renewable energy and has a dose of
| skepticism on most IoT devices. I very much want to have a read
| on how much energy my solar assets are creating therefore I am
| very comfortable with an inverter shipping out production values.
| That way I can resolve them when it isn't producing due to
| soilage or any other issue.
|
| I would chalk it up to being overly paranoid. However if you are
| in a foreign country and have a system that is connected via
| payments that is a different matter all together (i.e. that you
| don't own the asset and you are paying for the electricity
| produced).
| ericdfournier wrote:
| From an academic research scientist that works on energy system
| analysis:
|
| In addition to outputting telemetry data about a solar array's
| production - whether that is meant to be used for the homeowner
| to monitor their system's performance or a third party to use for
| SRECs verification - the IoT modules on modern PV inverters are
| increasingly being designed/included for the purpose of receiving
| external input signals. These would either come from the local
| utility, distribution system operator, or regional balancing
| authority - and would communicate the need to change the inverter
| module's mode of operation to ensure the stability of the
| distribution circuit that it was interconnected to.
|
| Small scale utility customers are typically only billed for the
| "real power" that they consume (real power is metered in kilowatt
| hours, kWh). This billing can come in different incarnations -
| i.e. volumetric tariffs, time-of-use tariffs, net-metering
| tariffs (as with bi-directional solar metering). However, in
| order to operate a reliable AC power distribution system you need
| to also be concerned with the supply of "reactive power" (metered
| in kilovolts-amps reactive, kVA). Reactive power is consumed by
| inductive loads (like electric motors) in large volumes
| particularly when starting up. Moreover, reactive power cannot
| easily be transmitted over long distances in the same way that
| real power can. The consumption of reactive power can cause the
| voltage and current curves of an AC power flow to shift out of
| phase with respect to one another. This effectively reduces the
| apparent power delivered by the system. This can also cause other
| problems with maintaining the system's nominal frequency and
| voltage.
|
| Large AC generator units, that are essentially comprised of a
| large spinning mass ( such as a natural gas turbine for example)
| naturally output a more even balance of real and reactive power
| components. However, when you try to replace these units with
| lots of small DC generators, like solar panels, whose AC power
| characteristics are determined by the design of the inverter
| modules, what you end up finding is that there is a deficit of
| reactive power supply. Inverter modules can technically be setup
| to produce reactive power - but they generally are not tuned to
| do so. This is because it detracts from the amount of real power
| that they produce. And remember, that real power is the only
| thing that you get paid for under a net-metering tariff. There
| are currently no markets which would compensate you as a
| homeowner for the production of reactive power.
|
| So, with the knowledge that many of these inverter systems will
| have 10-15 year lifespans once installed - and that grid
| operators will likely need to call upon them in the future to
| dynamically control the supply of reactive power at certain
| locations (particularly as more renewables come online)
| regulators are increasingly requiring that all new inverters have
| networked communications capability so that they will be ready
| once such a command-and-control protocol is eventually developed
| and implemented.
| w10-1 wrote:
| Your comment seems highly relevant and sadly ignored. Some
| relevant links:
|
| - [IEEE 1547-2018 -
| proprietary](https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/1547/5915/)
|
| - [CA energy commission 2020](https://www.energy.ca.gov/sites/d
| efault/files/2021-05/CEC-50...)
|
| - [IEEE power and energy commission report
| 2020](https://www.nrel.gov/grid/ieee-
| standard-1547/assets/pdfs/sma...)
|
| AFAICT, the mandate to permit not only network connection but
| control is coming, but the security of this link was expressly
| deferred.
| [deleted]
| whycombinetor wrote:
| Are we talking about powering a whole 4 bedroom home? Or just a
| few panels, a small charge controller, small battery, and like
| 2000w inverter? Renogy (etc.) sells all of the latter on Amazon
| that AFAIK don't require any connectivity. But you can't put it
| in circuit with your house's existing wiring and still be up to
| code.
| savrajsingh wrote:
| Will Prowse has DETAILED answers and breakdowns for you:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/WillProwse
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I don't even know where to begin.
| outworlder wrote:
| <network> Of Things is great.
|
| <Internet> of things isn't.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| I read the "warranty" part, thought "no way", but sure enough
| Enphase says in section 5 of their warranty:
| https://enphase.com/download/2022-04-30-enphaseenergy-microi...
|
| >The Covered Products should be continuously connected to the
| internet during the warranty period, except where interrupted by
| causes outside of the Covered Owner's reasonable control. This
| will help ensure that potential defects in the Product can be
| diagnosed remotely and that the Product can receive over-the-air
| firmware updates.
|
| Interesting use of "should".
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I've skipped out on products _specifically_ because they have an
| app. I see apps as a liability, not a feature. Give me dumb
| products please. My air purifier doesn't need a god damn app,
| just an on/off switch with some LEDs, please!!!
| bavila wrote:
| When I got my security system in my home installed, I asked the
| sales representative about getting a key fob to arm/disarm the
| system. Her response was basically, "Oh, haha, you're too young
| to be asking for one of those. You can just use the app!"
|
| Right, because I really want to have to take out my phone,
| unlock it, click an app icon, wait for it to load and
| authenticate my credentials (assuming I'm not forced to sign in
| -- again), find the arm/disarm button in some cluttered UI, and
| then click the button. As opposed to just pulling out the key
| fob and clicking the arm/disarm button? No apps, please.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Did you end up being able to get a fob?
| bavila wrote:
| Yes, for like $60 or something ridiculous like that.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Not to mention that the whole app thing will rely on a server
| and a functional internet connection, so you can forget about
| interacting with your alarm system if there's a cloud or
| network outage.
|
| I feel like modern-day developers have effectively forgotten
| how to do local network communication. I know about NAT
| traversal and similar problems, but you can still architect
| your system in such a way that your cloud backend is a dumb
| NAT traversal helper/proxy, which then makes it trivial for
| your client to offer a cloud-less, local connection option
| for those users that know how to forward ports/have IPv6/etc
| (or when you go out of business and your cloud service goes
| offline).
| jjav wrote:
| Agreed. Anything with an app is a liability I want to steer
| away from.
|
| Not only due to the obvious security, privacy and availability
| problems, but because the lifetime of apps is very short in the
| grand scheme of things.
|
| I'll bet there is zero chance a phone app for a solar install
| today is still going to be working in the 25 year lifetime of
| that solar panel system.
| mcbishop wrote:
| I'm slowly working to start a solar-install company -- your post
| helps confirm my belief that offering a private no-internet
| option... is a worthwhile differentiator. I have a lot to learn,
| but the Sol-Ark inverter or Outback (Radian) inverter might be
| the way to go. Otherwise, it might have to be some obscure
| inverter without reliable warranty.
|
| Here's a related forum thread:
| https://diysolarforum.com/threads/sol-ark-needs-a-serious-ch...
| LexGray wrote:
| I would bring up all the things in this post in your
| advertising. Installation suitability reports about roof types.
| Functions without external configuration, off site monitoring,
| and shortened lifespan due to outdated software. The purchaser
| owns the equipment so not a permanent lease against the
| property.
|
| Just creating awareness should drive a lot of business.
|
| I think some variety of IOT is valuable, but it should have a
| web server backup that provides both html interface and raw
| data which does not require dedicated apps.
|
| There should definitely be a disconnect from the grid option
| for the extended wind related power outages of the Northern
| California.
| boringg wrote:
| I don't think thats enough of a differentiator for people to
| head to your product, no offense. Solar price, payback terms,
| incentives, green ambition and neighborhood also putting up
| solar are probably the biggest drivers. The amount of people
| who would want no internet connection is incredibly niche.
| mcbishop wrote:
| I'll be installing in East Bay, California. And I'm only
| planning to install one or two systems a month. ...I think I
| can find my little tribe of privacy people. But, yeah, I'll
| have some other differentiators.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| This is why I don't want 5G. It is not going to make my cellular
| service better or cheaper, but it is going to enable every
| internet-of-shit device manufacturer to buy bandwidth from telcos
| and a new generation of "smart" devices will be able to call home
| without asking you for wifi password.
| strangattractor wrote:
| What does 5G have to do with that? There have been devices
| using 3G for years. It is very cheap and the infrastructure is
| pretty much everywhere.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| A fully deployed 5G network will be able to support a much
| higher device density. Up to a million devices per sq km.
| Basically an antenna on every block and they will be able to
| connect every IoS device and scatter around a bunch of
| sensor, and still have some bandwidth left.
| fragmede wrote:
| Depends on where you are, but 3G's being deprecated.
| api wrote:
| I think low speed protocols like LoRA or relatives of it are
| more likely to be used for this. They're very low power, low
| overhead, and hard to block.
|
| That's exactly the privacy endgame though: stuff a chip with
| cellular capability into everything you can and stream data to
| data brokers for double-dip profit whether the customer likes
| it (or even knows it) or not. The market for data about people
| seems to be almost infinite and bottomless.
|
| This can only be fixed with legislation. I predict it will
| become a major battle in the future.
| gz5 wrote:
| Definitely not paranoid. This is the time to get ahead of this.
|
| For distributed energy scenarios in which various sites operated
| by different administrators (my_neighborhood_solar, big utility,
| your_personal_site) may exchange energy, then how do we securely
| design the communication between the smart meters?
|
| For example, perhaps dedicated SIMs would get the traffic off our
| home networks, but the resultant network would need security.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| No, you're not the only one.
|
| It's ironic to see on this same HN front page a story about
| police & face recognition. We should oppose _all_ forms of social
| credit / new world order / cashless / corporate fascism.
|
| It shouldn't just be "the police are bad, so let's deny them this
| tool," it's "the police will just enlist private companies to do
| their dirty work for them, so let's deny _everyone_ this tool. "
| colechristensen wrote:
| You can deny the police the tool even though third parties.
|
| Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/politics/trump-
| twitter...
|
| Twitter is a third party but a court ruled that Trump blocking
| critics violated their first amendment rights.
|
| It is simple enough to ban the government from using AI in the
| process of law enforcement and that ban would extend to
| whomever they enlisted to help them.
|
| If you worded the statute correctly.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| You're right about facial recognition, but I was extending
| that same concept to other domains. For example, the police
| can go to the solar company and get them to make your panels
| stop working. Or something.
| turtlebits wrote:
| I have several off-grid inverters, solar charge controllers and
| AIO systems, none of them have any IoT or any connectivity
| requirements.
| jawns wrote:
| I bought a house with solar panels 6 years ago.
|
| There was an ethernet cable plugged into the inverter panel,
| which ran to a Comcast box.
|
| We switched to FIOS after a couple of months, and never switched
| the connectivity of the solar panels. Everything worked fine, but
| ...
|
| A few months later, I received a strongly worded email from an
| organization I had never heard of, saying that I needed to get
| the solar panels back online, because it was a requirement of the
| contract the previous owner had entered into to sell the SRECs
| generated by the panels. Failing to connect the panels to the
| Internet could lead them to pursue action related to a lien they
| had on our property.
|
| Wait, what contract? And what lien? This was the first I'd heard
| of either, and the lien hadn't come up during the title-insurance
| process.
|
| It turns out the previous owner of the house had entered into a
| contract with an organization in our state that pays you a lump
| sum, if you sign away the rights to the SRECs your system
| generates. The owner had used that lump sum to help pay for the
| panels.
|
| But then he sold the house to my wife and me, without ever
| disclosing the existence of the contract. So basically he sold
| the SRECs to both of us. He sold them to the organization by
| virtue of their contract, and he sold them to us, by virtue of
| the ownership of the panels transferring to us when we bought the
| house.
|
| And the lien never came up because it was not against the real
| estate itself; rather, it was against the SRECs -- the Solar
| Renewable Energy Credits that are generated by the panels.
| They're not physical assets, but they do have substantial value.
|
| It took the retention of a lawyer and a whole bunch of back-and-
| forth between us, the seller, our buyer and seller's agents, the
| lawyer who handled our settlement, and the SREC-buying
| organization to get the whole mess sorted out.
|
| In the end, we got the lien and contract dissolved ... and then
| we hooked the panels up to FIOS, and I get handy little charts of
| all the SRECs we're generating :)
| disillusioned wrote:
| We have a solar loan that we procured for our system. We're
| entitled to 100% of the generation, it's just a simple loan for
| the $40k system cost itself. But when we went to refinance, it
| was a pain in the ass explaining to the lender (Chase) that the
| loan has a lien against the SOLAR SYSTEM itself, and NOT the
| property. It shows up as a "second mortgage" in many systems,
| but it is EXPRESSLY NOT secured by the underlying physical
| HOUSE, just the solar panels and inverters themselves. We
| finally were able to get the lender to waive their positioning
| on the lien to clear the way for the refi, which was nice, but
| it was a _process_.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| So, the solar panels conveyed with the house (as physical
| property), but the contracts covering them were never
| (re-)agreed to by you? And the lien wasn't against the physical
| solar panels?
|
| I'd be curious how the state organization thought they had
| cause to pursue you?
|
| How is that not the seller not lying about property (they
| didn't own the panels free and clear) and thus liable for
| effectively selling stolen property? In which case, state
| organization would be free to sue the seller, and you have no
| part in the proceedings.
|
| What laws did it end up turning on?
| bombcar wrote:
| My guess is title companies haven't caught up to this -
| they've never had unreal/intangible property associated with
| real estate before.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Mineral rights? But that's probably specialized to certain
| parts of the US (upper midwest, southwest, NE Appalachia).
|
| And water rights, but mostly a west-of-the-Mississippi
| thing?
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, those would be things they might know about, but
| mineral rights usually DON'T convey (in some places they
| do) and water rights is usually a farmland thing.
|
| I daresay this title company will now be on the lookout
| for things like this!
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Water rights are very common for residential properties
| here in Utah. I currently live in a townhome, but several
| of the homes I had looked at had X "shares" of water from
| the reservoir in the mountains a few miles away.
| tkojames wrote:
| You would think hopefully that having title insurance. That
| the title company would need to do everything for hopefully
| no out of pocket cost.
| flatline wrote:
| Title insurers have not had to do due diligence for decades
| because record keeping has gotten so reliable there is
| almost never a problem. The underwriters just eat whatever
| occasional costs arise, and title agents make bank - at
| least on the East Coast of the US, out West they are
| typically one entity but the process is the same. Solar
| adds an interesting new wrinkle!
| bmitc wrote:
| Did it end up costing you money to get that resolved? It drives
| me crazy that with housing contracts, they protect essentially
| everyone except the buyer. It's never anyone else's problem
| because of the contract somehow covering them (lawyers, agents,
| sellers, etc.), but somehow, the language never quite covers
| buyers.
|
| We purchased a house, and within just days, the basement
| flooded because cleaning wipes were flushed down the toilet by
| the prior owner, clogging the system. So the sellers knew about
| the flooding or they flushed the stuff while moving out. It
| wasn't covered under any clause by interpretation, although it
| should have been by literal reading of the contract. Seller's
| can basically do whatever they want besides burn the house
| down.
| don-code wrote:
| Are you still able to sell your SRECs with the system
| disconnected, or are you foregoing that as a cost of being
| offline?
|
| I'd probably lose out on $500 per year from my system if I
| didn't sell them. At this point, though, it might _actually_ be
| asking the question of how much I value my privacy.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| You can't, because your production is verified by the data
| you upload to the SREC marketplace. You might even lose
| escrow you paid at installation.
| tinco wrote:
| If you sell your SRECs you're basically undoing any potential
| climate good your solar panel might be doing.
| verelo wrote:
| Interesting - can you elaborate on this?
| bombcar wrote:
| The idea is that you're selling your SRECs to someone
| (say a coal-powered bitcoin miner) so they can offset the
| pollution they're doing and not have to build their own
| controls. The argument is that if you did NOT sell, they
| would have to solve the problem some other way.
|
| Just like if Tesla didn't sell electric vehicle credits
| to other manufacturers, those companies would have to
| find other solutions to comply.
| don-code wrote:
| While you're definitely not wrong, there are probably
| better vehicles for home energy users to meaningfully
| affect emissions. I make ~7 SRECs (7MWh) per year, and
| assuming I'm average, it'd take close to 100 homes not
| selling their SRECs for one year to offset an average
| coal plant for just one hour
| (http://www.energyjustice.net/coal/igcc/factsheet-
| long.pdf says the average coal plant puts out 667MW).
|
| My state doesn't have time-of-use based pricing, but I do
| see this as one particularly effective way of shifting
| load (not installed capacity!) towards more emissions-
| friendly sources. The sun shines on home solar panels
| while we're not home; then absent any other incentives,
| we come home in the dark and do all sorts of energy-
| intense activities, like heating rooms and cooking
| dinner.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| SREC mandates are used to achieve a percentage of
| renewable generation, not an emissions quantity.
| bombcar wrote:
| It works out the same, someone doesn't have to build
| solar that would otherwise have to if the homeowners give
| them their credits.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Only if your base assumption is that everyone has to
| build solar, or would otherwise do it out of the goodness
| of their heart.
|
| If your base assumption is that nobody is going to lift a
| finger for the common good, than the purpose of SRECs is
| so that a polluting Bitcoin miner pays _you_ to put solar
| panels on your home, so that you get some good out of it
| and we don 't all have an incentive to be polluting
| Bitcoin miners.
|
| People who believe that everyone will naturally do the
| right thing out of the goodness of their hearts are often
| nicer to be around, but tend to get screwed by their
| inaccurate view of reality.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Yes, the end result is that energy generated in the state
| is sufficiently renewable per the government mandate,
| with homes contributing to it where it makes more
| financial sense than building greenfield solar or wind.
| In states where total demand is falling, conventional
| fuel plants are also likely able to be closed.
| bombcar wrote:
| I think the OP's point is that it would be MORE renewable
| if the homeowners sat on their credits.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Yes, I can see that, but that would have to be balanced
| against the lower number of installations due to the
| higher costs to the homeowners. For many people, the
| payback period would be too long without the credits. As
| solar becomes less expensive, these programs will cease
| to exist, and already don't exist in many sunny states.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| That's not true because the purchase still raises the cost
| of buying credits.
| bushbaba wrote:
| How can one sell their SRECs though? News to me. Have panels
| but never got credits for the SRECs. I do have net metering
| enabled.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Several states have programs that buy them at a price high
| enough to defray installation costs, to encourage adoption of
| solar. Part of the installer's job is to do that paperwork
| for you, so you'd know if you had that option. You can also
| sell them to other states if you set up with a marketplace,
| typically SRECTrade. However, the fees and low sale price are
| prohibitive if you're not in a state that statutorily buys
| them for a higher amount
| superjan wrote:
| This depends per country. But be aware that if you sell them,
| the buyer buys the right to generate electricity using fossil
| fuel, and sell them as if they are green/renewable. If your
| intent is to accelerate the transition to renewables, you
| should not sell them.
| tb_technical wrote:
| You're correct, this seems like a terrible idea. Why not just
| make a cheap, repairable device? It would be better for everyone.
| cronix wrote:
| > I'm afraid the software might even have some kind of countdown
| where the system will stop working when it hasn't been connected
| to the internet after a certain amount of time.
|
| Or, just an automatic firmware "update." Most are made in a
| country that we are not currently on very good terms with. No, I
| don't trust any that require internet access, or an "account" of
| some sort to activate it.
| fest wrote:
| When I set up my Fronius inverters, I did connect them to
| Ethernet, but disabled any cloud features and set up a simple
| script that fetches the stats I'm interested in and stores them
| to a local influx database.
|
| I didn't go as far as isolating them from internet/rest of my
| network- I am mainly concerned about them losing my data/going
| bankrupt/trying to charge for "cloud" features.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| > Maybe I'm too paranoid. Thoughts?
|
| Yes. They aren't using these features to serve you ads. They
| aren't using them to lock you in to their platform. They added
| these features because the vast majority of users are not
| particularly technical and they want some dashboard they can
| login to to see some cute metrics about their system. They added
| these features because downtime alerts are genuinely useful but
| it is difficult to implement without some sort of remote
| connectivity. And if your local utility needs the data for some
| reason, or needs the ability to coordinate power delivery to the
| grid, either now or in the future, there is a mechanism in which
| they can do so.
|
| The number of users who consider this an anti-feature is such a
| small minority of users that it isn't really worth their time to
| accommodate. IOT certainly has its issues. TVs absolutely don't
| need it. For other appliances it can be a toss up. But there are
| also genuine use cases for it.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > They aren't using these features to serve you ads.
|
| Yet.
|
| Experience tells me that everything will eventually turn into
| an ad or data collection platform.
|
| Furthermore, even if there is indeed no nefarious intent from
| the third-party collecting & storing your system's telemetry,
| if you don't get any benefit from it, why give it to them? It's
| still a risk they (or a some malicious attacker, or the
| government) use this data in the future in a way you didn't
| expect.
| don-code wrote:
| This. I'd not expect to become advertisement fodder for a
| product that I pay regularly for. The inverter, on the other
| hand, is something I paid for once, so for years two through
| 25 (the expected lifetime), I'm essentially a cost to them as
| they operate whatever service that it talks back to. There's
| an incentive there to try and recover that cost, and they
| can't do it by increasing my monthly bill.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > I'd not expect to become advertisement fodder for a
| product that I pay regularly for
|
| It's not always _advertisements_. Sometimes, the company
| will hire some oxygen waster that wants to boost
| "engagement" in order to justify their job and salary, so
| now your system is using your telemetry data to find ways
| to waste your time (as well as track whether they've indeed
| managed to waste it) even though _advertisements_
| themselves aren 't (yet) involved.
|
| Not to mention, advertisements don't have to be served over
| the same device that collects the data. The inverter
| company can very well collect the data, sell it to a data
| broker where _other_ ad companies will use this data.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| Please tell me how the output of a solar system will ever
| be useful to an ad company. The fact that you own a solar
| system is easily obtainable in a number of different ways
| (permit data, google earth, etc...). The fact that you
| own a solar system might provide some minuscule value to
| an ad company but the production data of that system is
| literally useless for ad targeting. A solar system is
| passive generation asset. It literally sits there and
| soaks up irradiance from the sun. The variation of that
| output is completely independent of the people that live
| in the house.
| LexGray wrote:
| A little fuzzy AI and it will know your routine to the
| minute. It can guess what room you are in and what
| activity based on power usage alone. It is not only
| monitoring the sun, but how much power is left it can
| feed back into the grid.
| don-code wrote:
| I once worked at a greentech firm. Someone's hackathon
| project one year used energy usage data to predict
| customers' stock prices.
|
| Will it work on the micro level of an individual home?
| Maybe, maybe not, but the potential for that data to be
| used to model behavior is definitely there.
| omniglottal wrote:
| Note how the conversation is actually about _removed_ features,
| and inability to opt-in to unwanted features. This isn 't a
| vehicle where you must choose between 2 or 4 wheels, but is a
| service where your purchase is sabotaged if you opt to prevent
| it from being sabotagable via an unnecesaary network
| connection. To use identical rhetoric, an air-gapped network is
| useful, and consumers need the ability to directly monitor and
| maintain devices in their custody, so there should be a
| mechanism for them to do so.
| lliamander wrote:
| That's great that they provide those features - none of that is
| a reason to require an internet connection to use the solar
| panel at all.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Ads are 100 percent irrelevant.
|
| But the lock-in is there regardless of whether they intended it
| or not. And, by they way, you are insane if you actually
| believe they do not intend a lock-in, given that they're making
| direct (and probably illegal) threats to "void the warranty" if
| you don't stay connected.
|
| If they go out of business in 5 or 10 years, and your system
| stops working, you are screwed. The same applies if they just
| decide it's no longer profitable to support old products. Even
| if they are still in business, they are not going to do
| _anything whatsoever_ to help you keep running without them.
|
| The fact that most users are stupid enough to sign up under
| those circumstances doesn't change the fact that it's a stupid
| thing to do.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| > But the lock-in is there regardless of whether they
| intended it or not.
|
| Are you familiar with these systems at all? You can't lock
| someone into an inverter brand. If you don't like your
| current inverter, you just buy a new one and plug it into
| your system.
|
| > If they go out of business in 5 or 10 years, and your
| system stops working, you are screwed.
|
| I work in the industry. I can assure you that won't happen.
| These are not fly by night VC funded IOT companies selling
| $100 trinkets. The industry went through a rough patch ~5
| years ago, a fair number of restructuring. Literally zero
| incidents where products were EOL'ed due to remote servers
| turning off. There are a number of reasons for this, I can go
| into more detail if you really want me to. But the gist of it
| is that these are revenue generating assets many of which
| have large financial institutions holding the bag. They have
| the leverage to make sure that these types of systems never
| turn off.
| outworlder wrote:
| > You can't lock someone into an inverter brand
|
| Challenge accepted. Just sell a fully integrated system
| that refuses to do anything if the incorrect inverter is
| connected.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| You can't DRM a solar panel. But if you want to devote
| your life to trying, I am not going to stop you.
|
| EDIT: And the more I think about, it is very unlikely
| that you could do the same to an inverter. You could
| certainly brick the control electronics, but the power
| electronics, the stuff that matters, it would be
| difficult. So snipping a few wires and swapping out some
| boards is probably sufficient.
|
| How about this, if anyone on this thread ever has their
| inverter remotely shut off because a company goes out of
| business, I will personally volunteer to develop a work
| around.
| Hizonner wrote:
| > Are you familiar with these systems at all? You can't
| lock someone into an inverter brand.
|
| Unless everything speaks standard protocols and can easily
| be swapped to a different control and monitoring system
| (including one the owner runs locally if they want to do
| that), you can lock somebody into a subscription, on pain
| of having to replace an expensive durable asset that should
| otherwise last a LONG time and requires expensive skilled
| labor to swap out.
|
| And, without having read the ToS, I have a suspicion that
| you can also Alter the Deal under which that service is
| provided.
|
| > The industry went through a rough patch ~5 years ago, a
| fair number of restructuring. Literally zero incidents
| where products were EOL'ed due to remote servers turning
| off.
|
| 5 years ago, how many installed, Internet-connected systems
| were already 5 or 10 years old? How many different backends
| were supporting them?
|
| > But the gist of it is that these are revenue generating
| assets many of which have large financial institutions
| holding the bag.
|
| I accept that that reduces the chance of them being turned
| off. I would in fact be interested in hearing more about
| this revenue model.
|
| Of course, you now have me worried about the risks of them
| being remotely meddled with in various ways to suit the
| interests of whoever is providing this revenue. It's
| usually a bad sign if you buy something, but somebody else
| thinks it's still _their_ "revenue generating asset".
| qqqwerty wrote:
| > Unless everything speaks standard protocols and can
| easily be swapped to a different control and monitoring
| system
|
| We are taking about AC and DC current. That is about as
| "standard" as it gets. Your panels produce DC current.
| Your inverter takes that current and converts it to AC.
| The AC current is then sent to your main panel. The
| inverter is a fraction of the cost of the entire system,
| and most inverters only last 8-10 years, so they are
| expected to be replaced a few times through out the
| lifetime of the system. It would be physically impossible
| to implement some sort of inverter level DRM that could
| then bind up your entire system. You could brick the
| inverter itself, but for reasons explained below that
| would be very unlikely.
|
| > I accept that that reduces the chance of them being
| turned off. I would in fact be interested in hearing more
| about this revenue model.
|
| I don't know the exact number, but the overwhelming
| majority of residential solar systems are financed,
| either through a lease or a PPA. The banks that offer
| this financing maintain lists of "bankable" equipment and
| in order to be eligible for financing the equipment used
| in a project needs to be on one of these lists. And to
| get on these lists manufacturers need to meet a number of
| requirements, one of which is that there are guarantees
| that in the event of a bankruptcy the equipment will
| continue to operate and that warranties will still be
| honored.
|
| > Of course, you now have me worried about the risks of
| them being remotely meddled with in various ways to suit
| the interests of whoever is providing this revenue
|
| That is a fair concern. But if you enter into a financial
| contract with an entity that has the ability and standing
| to shut off your solar system for whatever reason, then
| that is your own problem, and somewhat tangential from
| the topic in this thread. And FWIW, in practice it very
| rarely makes sense to turn these things off. It costs too
| much to repossess them, and the homeowner will just end
| up putting more money towards the utility bill to keep
| the lights on. Instead they just keep the electrons
| flowing and hope their collections department can sort
| things out.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| dvko wrote:
| No. More specifically, I am not interested in IoT for many or
| even most of the things in my home.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't blame you for being disappointed in the situation. I
| would be too.
|
| I've replaced a bunch of various appliances and etc, furnace, hot
| water heater, washer and etc. All have various internet
| connectivity options but they're all OPTIONAL. They are there at
| least from the start as an option for the owner to participate
| in, in exchange for some level of convince. That seems like a
| premise I would also expect from a solar panel setup ...
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