Would you buy a brand-new car and never check the oil, tyre pressure and water levels? Of course not! Similarly, it’s important that you monitor your solar system. Solar is easy to forget after installation, as it’s out of sight on the roof, and out of mind! But unless you regularly check on your system, you won’t know how it’s performing and if something has gone wrong.
Monitoring is beneficial because it allows you to see:
- How much electricity is going into your home / building and the grid
- When you are using solar the most, and how much you’ve produced throughout the day or month.
- Any faults in your system
- If your panels or inverter performance drops
- Why your bill may have gone up or down
- How you can improve your energy efficiency
- Your return on investment
At Cardinal Solar, we offer two types of monitoring:
1. Self-monitoring, where you download an app and monitor the solar system yourself. Cardinal Solar uses inverters that include free programs to track system performance, and we install the programs for all customers free of charge.
| Pros | Cons |
| You can check the app at any time and as often as you like | Monitoring is entirely up to you, so if you don’t do it there will be no automatic updates |
| It is free of charge | You must have an internet connection. Otherwise you need to buy a Telstra dongle to connect through 4G (if you are in a rural area)or mobile hotspot. |
| While unlikely, if anything goes wrong in your solar system you will be able to see at any time |
2. Solar analytics, which is external monitoring with email updates sent to you. There is an additional subscription fee with this option.
| Pros | Cons |
| You can check the app at any time and as often as you like | Monitoring is entirely up to you, so if you don’t do it there will be no automatic updates |
| It is free of charge | You must have an internet connection. Otherwise you need to buy a Telstra dongle to connect through 4G (if you are in a rural area)or mobile hotspot. |
| While unlikely, if anything goes wrong in your solar system you will be able to see at any time |
My recommendation
In most situations I recommend self-monitoring as you can check on your solar system at any time and receive much more in depth information, at no cost. I usually suggest customers check the app once a week, but I also check for customers every now and then, to make sure there are no glaring issues
It’s not that we don’t recommend solar analytics, but, if you are time poor and know that you won’t monitor regularly it may be the better choice for you, even with the additional cost.
In the end, the most important thing is that you keep track of your solar system and how it is behaving, to make sure you get the most out of your investment. Check out our products page here, for more information.
