Service Description
The field of applications for the Sunny Home Manager ranges from its use as a simple energy meter to monitoring a PV system and intelligent energy management.
Sunny Home Manager as energy meter
The Sunny Home Manager detects energy flows in both directions:
Continuous recording of the energy generated by the PV system
Measurement of the feed-in of generated energy into the utility grid as well as the consumption of energy from the utility grid takes place at the point of interconnection.
Sunny Home Manager in systems without self-consumption
Monitoring
Basic PV system status monitoring to confirm correct system performance:
All energy flows are recorded and evaluated. You will be notified about disturbances at an early stage.
Limitation of Active Power Feed-In
Local legal regulations, for example the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) in Germany, can call for permanent limitation of active power feed-in for your PV system - that is, a limitation of the active power fed into the utility grid to a fixed amount or a percentage share of the installed nominal PV system power.
The Sunny Home Manager monitors the active power that is fed into the utility grid. If the active power feed-in exceeds the prescribed threshold, the Sunny Home Manager will limit the PV generation of the PV and hybrid inverters.
Sunny Home Manager in systems with self-consumption
Self-consumption means that the energy produced by your PV system is consumed at the site where it is generated. Self-consumption reduces the amount of energy that you feed into the utility grid, but also the amount of energy that you purchase from your grid operator.
Energy Management - Monitoring and Forecast
Creation of a PV generation forecast - based on the location-based weather forecast
Creation of a load profile - based on individual analysis of time-dependent energy consumption:
Taking into account different electricity prices, the Sunny Home Manager makes recommendations for the prudent use of electrical energy. This allows you to selectively switch on loads at times when electricity is cheap (loads include, for example, home appliances such as dishwashers, dryers, washing machines, as well as heating and hot water preparation via heat pumps, and heating elements, but also charging stations for e-mobility).
To learn the load profile, the consumption data should be available over a period of at least 2 weeks.
The forecast generated by the Sunny Home Manager is calculated from the estimated energy balance from generation and consumption for the next 48 hours.
Optimized self-consumption through load control
The Sunny Home Manager measures the power consumption of all connected loads and records both the power consumption and the usage time of a load. The Sunny Home Manager uses this individual load profile combined with the location-based weather forecast to support your increased self-consumption:
To control loads, there are the following options:
Control of loads that do not communicate directly via switching devices such as radio-controlled sockets or relays, e.g. Modbus devices that control the SG Ready interface of loads
Control of directly communicating loads via the standard protocol interfaces EEBus or SEMP
The Sunny Home Manager switches home appliances on automatically when PV energy is available.
Optimized self-consumption through dynamic active power limitation
Through forecast-based load control, the Sunny Home Manager ensures that even on sunny days there is hardly ever a loss of PV energy that is not fed into the grid and has to be "curtailed" due to the limitation of the active power.
When using SMA battery inverters, the Sunny Home Manager prevents derating losses that can be caused by limiting the active power feed-in. Taking the PV generation forecast and the consumption forecast into account, the time and duration of battery charging are chosen so that the battery is charged when PV energy is available.
Increased self-consumption through forecast-based battery charging
The Sunny Home Manager increases the efficiency of your PV system by storing the PV energy that is not fed into the grid and was generated during the midday peak, which is not allowed to be fed into the utility grid due to the active power limitation, in batteries.
By means of the location-based weather forecast, the Sunny Home Manager can predict the solar irradiation for some hours to days and check whether derating losses due to the limitation of PV grid feed-in are to be expected for the current or following day. This means that in the afternoon of the current day only as much PV energy is charged to the battery as to ensure that, with the remaining battery charge, grid-supplied power at night and on the morning of the next day can be avoided. Any derating losses forecast for the following day are avoided by the free storage capacity of the more heavily discharged battery.
Increased self-consumption through peak load shaving
In systems with SMA battery or hybrid inverters, the self-consumption portion can be additionally increased and more electricity costs saved by virtually distributing the total storage capacity of the battery between increased self-consumption and peak load shaving (multi-use). In doing so, the battery can be integrated even more flexibly into your energy management
Increased self-consumption - through flexible use of the self-generated solar power stored in the battery at times when insufficient or no solar power is produced
Peak load shaving - limitation of power consumption from the utility grid; any increased energy demand at certain times is drawn from the battery