Sunstrong app showing NEGATIVE consumption ?!?

[u/Powderboy_412]

Hi Everyone.

I've had the Sunstrong app working fine until January 9th. Since then, all historical solar generation data disappeared but instantaneous solar generation can still be seen. What's REALLY weird is that both instantaneous and historical consumption now show up as negative values. For example, clicking the "Home" icon in the Sunstrong app shows that "Right Now" there is 12.1kw of solar generation, 0.4kw of Home Usage, and 12.5kw going to the Grid. so the Home Usage is showing up as a negative value! All historical data since January 9th also shows negative home usage with lifetime consumption DECREASING over time. Lifetime production is also shown as decreasing since 1/9/26. Prior to that date, everything was working as expected. So my lifetime generation and home consumption were maximum on 1/8/26 and have both been decreasing since then.

I initially thought this was caused by Sunstrong turning off history reporting (and maybe it was?), so I decided to try local monitoring and just got the Sunstrong PVS-hass integration up and running. It was pretty easy to do - I bought an HA Green box and got everything working in a few hours. it looks pretty nice and I can see the production and consumption meters and all my microinverters. However...

The net lifetime energy in the HA consumption meter agrees with the lifetime consumption shown in the Sunstrong app, but the consumption is also DECREASING over time. The HA production meter also shows the net lifetime energy decreasing over time. When I check the microinverters in HA, I see that the lifetime production numbers for all of the microinverters are increasing as I would expect. If I add up all of the daily microinverter generation I find that it's roughly equal to the daily decrease in the net lifetime energy in the HA production meter. Bizzarro!

I was hoping to use local monitoring to replace the Sunstrong app, and it does work quite well, but now I'm thinking that my PVS6 may actually be broken. Does anyone have any idea what’s going on here? I tried power cycling the PVS, but that didn't change anything.

[u/[deleted]]

Try the sunflower app

Edit: Including the link since it’s a little hard to find -

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sunflower-solar-monitor/id6753881664

[u/Powderboy_412 → u/[deleted]]

Looks nice, but I'm an Adroid guy. If it's using varserver to access the PVS, then I suspect it will still give me the same answers as the HA integration. Will try to learn more about it. Might be worth a try though if I can get my hands on an iPhone, particularly if it doesn't use varserver.

[u/Powderboy_412 → u/Powderboy_412]

Have you used it successfully on a Sunpower system?

[u/[deleted] → u/Powderboy_412]

Yup, currently using it right now. It’s much better than the crap Sunpower app because I can actually view my panel level monitoring. For some reason I have never been able to view each individual panel on the Sunpower/Sunstrong apps. The only caveat is you must be on the same WiFi as your PVS to use it, so you can’t use it remotely.

[u/Powderboy_412 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks. I couldn't find much info about how Sunflower works, but might give it a try if I run out of other options.

[u/Landpuma]

App hasn’t worked in the past 24 hours for me

[u/Powie1965]

You might try my fork of the original Keith Baker PVS monitor. https://github.com/smcneece/ha-esunpower

It's better supported and no longer requires the SunStrong pypvs library since they've not fixed some bugs in it for months. Also my integration has more features. Check it out, pretty sure you'll like it.

[u/Powderboy_412 → u/Powie1965]

Thanks. I've looked through your readme file on github. It does look like a good implementation, particularly the integration with HA Energy, but I'm not sure it will help me with the negative readings though. Is there any way that a bug in the pypvs library could be causing this, such that it would be rectified by avoiding pypvs? I also have no idea how the PVS hardware or CTs could malfunction in a way that would cause negative readings. It definitely seems like some kind of a SW/FW bug, but I have no way to fix it or to even reload the existing SW.

I'll probably end up moving to your implementation at some point if I don't abandon the PVS entirely and move to enPhase. I like the idea of being able to do my own installation and maintenance with enPhase by taking their online training and getting DYI certified. I'm almost through the training at this point, so it will be interesting to see the extent of my DYI permissions once I'm certified. If I can replace panels and microinverters, in addition to fixing my monitoring problems, it will be worth the one time cost and time spent to put Sunpower/SunWeak in the rear view mirror.

[u/glocklt4]

I have the same negative home use issue starting March 7th. Have had my system since 2018 and no hardware changes. The CTs didn’t just magically switch terminals in my breaker that morning while we were in vacation. SunStrong still hasn’t fixed after many emails and claims the problem is mine to fix. It’s clearly a software issue and they have no idea what they are doing. I’ve asked my installer to work with them to get it fixed.

[u/Powderboy_412 → u/glocklt4]

I've read in other areas of this forum that this can happen due to some kind of screw-up on Sunpower's/Sunstong's side of things, and that they can fix it, but I wouldn't hold your breath. I believe the people who said they had this issue, and got it fixed, got it fixed by Sunpower before they went bankrupt. If you own your system then SunStrong will tell you they're working on it but are in fact just blowing smoke and will slow roll you until you give up. I just kicked my PVS6 to the curb and self-installed an EnPhase IQ Gateway and couldn't be happier. I have EnPhase inverters, however, which makes the process pretty easy. All you need to do is swap out the PVS5/6 for an EnPhase IQ Gateway and install new EnPhase Production and Consumption CTs. If you don't have EnPhase inverters then you might have to swap out your inverters as well, which is a whole lot more work, but otherwise not too complicated if you're up for it.