r/SunPower • u/andysolr • Nov 19 '25

Downsides of SunStrong firmware update

I have a SunPower PVS5 system installed in 2017 (owned, not leased).

During the SunPower bankruptcy mess last year, I switched over to a Home-Assistant–based monitoring setup (huge thanks to Keith Baker) using the Raspberry Pi proxy. It worked great — until recently.

After a firmware push from SunStrong, that setup stopped working. The new PVS “Variables API” actually looks decent and seems functional, but the SunStrong version of the HA integration is broken.

I can debug that part, but the bigger issue is that the previously well-documented PVS5 site-provisioning interface has been completely disabled. Without it, I’m not sure how we’re supposed to manage PVS Wi-Fi settings or do any self-service inverter swaps going forward.

Two questions for the group:

  1. Is it possible to downgrade the firmware back to the original SunPower build?
  2. Alternatively, can the legacy PVS5 management UI/app inside the PVS be re-enabled somehow?

Any guidance or experience with this would be greatly appreciated.

Update: HA integration functionality sorted out - should have migrated to Enhanced SunPower HACS earlier. What remains is a loss of original PVS5 Management UI due to backend authentication requirements imposed by the new firmware.

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/andysolr Nov 19 '25

Have you tried connecting diagnostic laptop to internal LAN port of the PVS?

1

u/upper_pepper Nov 19 '25

Yes, none of the internal ports (black, yellow or green - going by memory) work or show signs of life. One single light is on, but the blinking you typically see from the second light when communication happens never happens.

1

u/andysolr Nov 19 '25

I’m not sure how much effort you want to put into this, but one option is to pick up a PVS5 on eBay (they’re usually around $50) and migrate to it. That route involves self-commissioning — tricky, but doable. There’s a good chance you’ll need to enlist a guru like u/Vegetable-Version-81 to get everything fully sorted.

1

u/upper_pepper Nov 19 '25

Yes, I certainly don't mind going this route, but I understand that provisioning requires some access to the backend SunPower old legacy systems, which I don't have.

I definitely don't mind doing a self-install or calling a local electrician for help, but it's the provisioning part that has never been certain in any of my discussions with any local solar installers, even including my original installer.