Monitoring My Office

It would have been reasonably easy to run an electric line in a trench between our “barnpartment” and my separate little office building (16’x22’), but why do that when you can install a completely separate PV and battery system? Right? Well, that’s what I did, and I don’t regret it. I’ll talk about that system in a separate post but I’m on sort of a monitoring theme right now as I told some acquaintances that I’d give them a link to the systems I use for monitoring, and these blog posts are the easiest way to do that. Anyway, for the office I use a small Victron 2KVA (think 2 KW, although that’s not technically correct) inverter with a separate Victron charge controller, connected to a probably-way-more-than-needed EG4 outdoor-capable (heated) 14.2KWH wall mount battery. I keep track of usage with a Victron BMV-712 monitor, which basically just their SmartShunt device with a little LCD screen (that I never, ever use, at least yet). A shunt is a device that tracks the electricity that flows through it in both directions, so it’s a great way to keep track of how much energy one is using and producing, and the current state of charge of the battery(ies).

Victron makes a device called a CerboGx that is just fantastic for monitoring a PV system. It has a color screen, the ability to control lots of parameters on their connected devices, incredible display of data, etc. I don’t own or use that, though. Instead, I use the free VenusOS software that Victron very kindly makes available, that can run on a Raspberry Pi device. They also offer a free cloud-based service called Victron Remote Monitoring, or VRM, so I use that as well, to connect to my system from anywhere with an internet connection. VRM does most of what Solar Assistant does on the larger system in the “barnpartment”, and given the price tag and fantastic function, I can’t pass it up. So, that’s how I monitor the PV system and battery SOC in my office.

At least until I get the mini-split installed in a few weeks (when the snow is gone), the office battery rarely goes below 95% SOC and the 2.4KW PV array on the building can produce far more power than I can possibly use, even with the sauna next door also connected to the office for lighting (and I have another PV system designed and sitting in the garage for the sauna building, of course). So, monitoring this system isn’t yet really necessary. But I really like Victron equipment, the Victron VenusOS software, and Victron VRM, so it’s all a pleasure to use. If you have Victron equipment, I don’t think you can beat their monitoring system.