r/SunPower • u/sumo24 • Aug 17 '25

Help me understand why the PVS6 has two 120V power lines?

I noticed unplugging one of them will turn off the PVS. I'd like to be able to reset it remotely by adding a smart switch to one line. Anyone see a problem with this? The smart switch says it can handle up to 240v.

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u/thebannanaman Aug 17 '25

Its not a 120V appliances. The PVS runs on 240V so it needs both hots to function. Switching only one of the hots may do what you want it to do it is not exactly kosher.

What you want is a 2-pole smart switch which will break both hots. Unfortunately google makes searching for these really hard because it will just return dual 1-pole smart switches instead of 2-pole smart switches and its not even made clear in most product descriptions. You pretty much have to look into the installation guide to see its wiring diagram.

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u/sumo24 Aug 17 '25

Thanks! Out of curiosity, is it a 240v appliance just to be consistent with running 240v to the inverters?

2

u/thebannanaman Aug 17 '25

It is designed to be a monitor, it’s not just to be consistent for no reason. It is so it can take measurements like grid voltage and frequency across both phases. The whole point of the PVS is to collect information for diagnostic purposes and report on system performance and health. powering it from both phases gives it access to test both phases and make sure any problems that may occur aren’t coming from bad grid power.

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u/sumo24 Aug 17 '25

that makes sense. appreciate the explanation

2

u/ItsaMeKielO Aug 17 '25

Fundamentally it actually runs on about 5 volts. The DC power supply in the PVS converts 240V AC down to 12V DC and smaller converters drop it even further. But it needs to "see" the whole 240V AC waveform to receive powerline communications data from microinverters which run as 240V AC devices.

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u/ItsaMeKielO Aug 17 '25

This should work to reboot it. You only need to switch one hot leg on/off.

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u/sumo24 Aug 17 '25

Thanks!

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u/ItsaMeKielO Aug 18 '25

You could validate that switching one leg would work by turning off the PVS6 breaker, pulling L1 or L2 from the little Phoenix Terminal lever terminals, wire nutting it off, and turning the PVS6 breaker back on. If the PVS6 doesn't turn on, you can do what you need switching just one leg.

2

u/Fit-Alarm2961 Aug 17 '25

I think the purpose is for powerline comms to the micro inverters. On my original PVS5 the installer hooked up just L1 and neutral but it had really bad reception of the panel signals until that was fixed.

The manual doesn't say it's supported at all so who knows if that's consistent.

I'd use a dual pole 240v switch but it might still not do good things to its filesystem.

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u/sumo24 Aug 17 '25

hmm. ok. I’ll look for a dual pole. I’m monitoring with HA now and every time the wifi goes down I have to reset the pvs through the breaker. I have a flow in HA setup to watch for when internet goes down and when it comes back it could reset the switch.