PVoutput.org Tool

[jasonacox]

Several in the community publish their solar production data to PVoutput.org, a free service for publicly sharing and comparing PV output data. Since this Powerwall-Dashboard project stores all energy production data, it is relatively easy to pull this out of the dashboard and publish it to PVoutput on a one-time or regular basis.

I have created a python script, pvoutput.py to publish Powerwall data to PVoutput. The script is in the tools directory for this project.

To use the script:

• Sign up at pvoutput.org to get an API KEY - update the settings in the script with your API_SYSTEM_ID and API_KEY.
• Update the INFLUXDB_HOST in the script to the address of your Dashboard host (default = localhost) and INFLUXDB_TZ to your timezone.
• Run the script:

python3 pvoutput.py 

It will run an interactive mode:

Select Custom Date Range
 - Enter start day (YYYY-mm-dd): 2022-06-20
 - Enter end date (YYYY-mm-dd): 2022-06-26

Sending Solar Data [2022-06-20 to 2022-06-27]
2022-06-20:    Generated = 49256 - Exported = 9067 - Consumed = 43501 - Imported = 2455 - Published
2022-06-21:    Generated = 49543 - Exported = 8386 - Consumed = 47026 - Imported = 7581 - Published
2022-06-22:    Generated = 39698 - Exported = 243 - Consumed = 46923 - Imported = 9212 - Published
2022-06-23:    Generated = 47508 - Exported = 127 - Consumed = 58052 - Imported = 12342 - Published
2022-06-24:    Generated = 48716 - Exported = 4474 - Consumed = 51203 - Imported = 8881 - Published
2022-06-25:    Generated = 49506 - Exported = 5609 - Consumed = 51118 - Imported = 9041 - Published
2022-06-26:    Generated = 48904 - Exported = 1083 - Consumed = 54617 - Imported = 8280 - Published
Done.

You can also add it to a daily cronjob by specifying a optional parameter: 'yesterday' or 'today'.

# Pull and publish yesterdays data
python3 pvoutput.py yesterday

# Pull and publish todays data so far
python3 pvoutput.py today

I used this script to import of all the data since my system was installed. Keep in mind that PVoutput has a rate limit of 60 updates per hour so be careful. If you are only updating once a day, this shouldn't be a problem. I donated to help their cause which also increase my rate limit. That was useful while I developed this script.

You can see my published data here: https://pvoutput.org/aggregate.jsp?p=0&id=104564&sid=91747&t=m&v=1&s=1

[cwagz]

I am getting an error on line 28. Looks like it can't pull the module.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/chad/Powerwall-Dashboard/tools/pvoutput.py", line 28, in <module>
    from influxdb import InfluxDBClient
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'influxdb'
chad@powerwall:~/Powerwall-Dashboard/tools$

[cwagz]

Hi @jasonacox,

With version 2.5 would we now be able to send "live" data to pvoutput.org with weather data included? I had already signed up for an openweathermap api key, but it didn't seem very useful when only sending data once per day.

Thanks for all the work on this project!

[jasonacox]

Yes! I didn't even think of that. PVOutput allows us to send temp_min (tm) and temp_max (tx) data for each day.

The new pvoutput.py script now pulls the min/max temp data from InfluxDB (since we are storing that now) and pushes that to PVOutput.

I just tested by resending all my August data which includes several days of temp data now (uploaded here). Let me know if it works for you!

[cwagz]

@jasonacox - awesome! I will give this a try soon.

I assume the script would need more work to be able to send hourly or 15-min increment data? I setup my TOU in pvOutput but it would require "live" data so that it can track savings as the rates change. I see you have some mention of TOU in the script already.

If I have time, I might try tinkering around with it. It would be a good challenge for me.

[pgatty]

Awesome! Wow, great production! I set up a cronjob on my system to send daily updates at 12:07am.

# m h  dom mon dow   command
7 0 * * * /home/tesla/pvoutput.py yesterday > /dev/null 2>&1

@jasonacox - Sorry for necroposting, but I'm trying to get your pvoutput.py script running from root's cron, but it's not working. I have updated the pvoutput.py script with my API key and other necessary values. I can run the script manually via ./pvoutput.py yesterday and it works as expected, but it doesn't run from cron. Here's my cron entry created with sudo crontab -e

10 12 * * * /home/pgatty/Powerwall-Dashboard/tools/pvoutput/pvoutput.py yesterday > /dev/null 2>&1

I've following these instructions for setting up the python environment.

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install influxdb

Do this so it always uses that venv
echo "source .venv/bin/activate" >> ~/.bashrc

When I pipe the cron job output to a file, I get this message
ERROR: Missing python influxdb module. Run 'pip install influxdb'.

I've previously run 'pip install influxdb` as root. How do I get the cron job to use it?

[pgatty]

I figured it out. You need to use the python binary of your venv in your cron. So this is what my cron job look like now.

0 5 * * * /home/pgatty/.venv/bin/python /home/pgatty/Powerwall-Dashboard/tools/pvoutput/pvoutput.py yesterday > /dev/null 2>&1

[cwagz]

I was looking at some other python scripts and yours. It seems pretty tricky to do live data with a battery in the mix. There does not seem to be a good way, in pvoutput, to account for all the scenarios that can occur with where the power is coming from or going to. This is probably pretty similar to trying to calculate TOU savings on the dashboard.

[jasonacox]

Yes, I'm fairly certain that is why I gave up on making my script do accumulated updates instead of daily. I believe it assumes energy generation beyond consumption is exported back to the grid. Daily allows you to explicitly report how much is generated, imported, exported, and consumed. It may be interesting to see if anyone has solved how to do the updates with an ESS.

Speaking of which, I need to work on better savings calc for the dashboard that does include TOU rate differences. :)

[billraff]

I just started using this tool a week ago. It's starting to get hot in Texas and when my job ran to post the daily update to pvoutput last night I received this error -

Sending Solar Data [2025-05-14]
2025-05-14: Generated = 42328 - Exported = 75 - Consumed = 44631 - Imported = 69 - Temp = 71.0 / 100.4Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/volume1/homes/billr/Powerwall-Dashboard/tools/pvoutput/pvoutput.py", line 213, in <module>
push_daily(day, generated, exported, consumed, imported, tm, tx)
File "/volume1/homes/billr/Powerwall-Dashboard/tools/pvoutput/pvoutput.py", line 110, in push_daily
raise ValueError(response.read())
ValueError: b'Bad request 400: Max temp [100.4] greater than 100 degrees celsius on 20250514'

Why is it reporting in celsius?I have my Powerwall-Dashboard set for Imperial for measurements and my pvoutput is set to use Fahrenheit.

[jasonacox]

You need to adjust the script. It is set to use metric values, see this line:

Powerwall-Dashboard/tools/pvoutput/pvoutput.py

Lines 47 to 48 in 13a5d98

	# Weather Settings
	WEATHER_UNITS = "metric" # metric, imperial or standard

change it to imperial for your setup.

[billraff]

Jason, as always, I appreciate your help.