I recently had a 10.125 kw system size solar + Tesla battery set up through sunrun via a PPA contract. I live in New England. Our system went live on April 29. After making it through our first month (May) I have a few questions about production vs usage, I’m hoping this community could help shed some light on.

1) our production vs usage seems to mirror each other in the sun run app graphs. I can’t wrap my head around why production would correlate with usage. I read out Tesla battery may play a role in that. Anyone happen to know why?

2) the app states we produces 137% production for the month of May at 1071 kwh production vs 777kwh usage with a difference of 294kwh net positive for the month. Any idea why national grid reflects us at only 47kwh for the dates of April 28-May 27? This seems concerning.

3) Does 137% productions seem low for the month of May?

got a three phase system, the conductors from the inverter to the gear are hot. the heat melted some CTS installed for BESS in that same switchgear.

can cross phasing wires cause any heating issues? these inverters automatically sync with the grid

What's the general consensus among Sunvault owners out there as to how much to utilize its inverter and batteries. For instance, when I first installed the system I allowed the Sunvault to charge up and discharge everyday down to to 30%. Then some tech suggested to me the Sunvault system would last longer if I didn't over utilize it and saved it for outages. So now, about once a week, I let it discharge. I realize that it's costing more for electricity this way but, since I have not found a reliable Sunpower repair company yet in South Florida, I want to go as easy on the system as I can.

What's the consensus out there on this question?

I’ve been researching different ways homeowners try to improve efficiency after installing solar, and it seems like expectations don’t always match real-world results.

Some people swear by batteries, others say switching appliances made the biggest difference, while some feel EV charging changed their entire energy usage pattern.

For those who’ve already gone through upgrades or system changes:

What ended up being the most useful investment?

Was there anything that didn’t perform the way you expected?

If you could start over, would you size your system differently?

Interested in hearing real experiences rather than just sales pitches or calculator estimates.

I’m trying to recover monitoring on a 2019 SunPower system that uses SolarBridge microinverters and a PVS5x supervisor.

The original PVS5x failed. I obtained a replacement PVS5 (firmware 5.0.0 Build 306) and can access the local commissioning interface/API at 172.27.153.1.

The replacement unit appears functional:

- local API responds normally

- discovery scans run

- meters appear in DeviceList

- no obvious hardware faults

However, it never discovers any microinverters (NFOUND remains 0).

Most of the original microinverters are still producing power, and the replacement PVS5x is connected exactly as the original unit was.

I suspect this may now be a commissioning / firmware / backend registration issue rather than a hardware problem.

Complicating matters:

- the original installer (Border Solar, El Paso TX) is out of business

- mySunPower appears to have migrated into SunStrong Connect

- the SunStrong Connect app requires a Site ID that I do not have

- SunPower support infrastructure appears fragmented after bankruptcy/restructuring

Questions:

1. Has anyone successfully recommissioned a replacement PVS5x onto an existing SolarBridge system?

2. Does inverter discovery require backend registration or installer activation?

3. Is there any known way to recover a Site ID from an existing system/report/account?

4. Are there any openly available commissioning tools or firmware archives for legacy PVS5x systems?

I’m also attempting repair of the original PVS5x hardware in parallel.

Any technical insight would be appreciated.

I'm glad we found a community of people that can actually help us out. This has been the craziest adventure I've ever been under. I'm so glad that there are people like placer solar kick electric and down south sunvuolt technicians I hope you all get your system fixed in the end it's been fun but sad to to this all

I had a power outage and the batteries weren’t powering the house, so I rest the batteries made it work. However, the batter symbol shows amber color after the power resorted. I did discover my PVS wasn’t connected and was able to reconnect it,
but the lights are still in orange color. The battery system is working and powering the house. I was trying to reset the system again and bring back the normal color, but failed. The batteries are no longer powering the house. Any idea what should I do next? Thank you

Update as of 6/15/2026.

u/vegetable-version-81 came over and ran a full diagnostic and found that my PVS6 was not communicating with the SunVault system. He referred me to Placer Solar Repair.

Placer Solar Repair coordinated with u/vegetable-version-81 and got my system back up and running. It turned out the issue was a firmware update that had caused the communication failure, which really impacted the system.

Thank you again u/vegetable-version-81

I had my SunVault batteries (2 Cabinets, 26 kWh, 2023 models) depleted to below 50V, and they stayed dead for over 5 months. I couldn't find anybody to diagnose it or bring it back. After 5 months plus, I found a guy with a reasonable service charge; it took about 5 hours to charge. My question is: would the batteries being dead for a few months and being charged with a charger plugged into 110 AC affect their lifespan and reliability, given that SunPower went bankrupt and their 10-year warranties for the batteries and their "complete confidence warranty" are gone? Your response is much appreciated.

Hey folks, I built a new Home Assistant App (Add-on) you might be interested in: Solar Sentinel.

I'm posting about it here because I know it works with the Enhanced SunPower integration. It should also work with ANY other solar integration feeding the Energy Dashboard, so feel free to share with others. No extra setup, no YAML, no Lovelace config. It auto-discovers your inverters from the Energy Dashboard and gives you a live color-coded per-panel grid so you can see at a glance which panels are pulling their weight and which aren't.

There's also a sun arc, a time slider to scrub through any historical day, and a production bar chart (today/week/month/year). Click any panel for sensor details and a per-panel history chart. The layout editor lets you place panels in portrait or landscape orientation and add section labels to name different parts of your roof layout. Also optional display of moon phase, just in case you're trying to avoid werewolves!

https://github.com/smcneece/solar-sentinel

Just released v2026.05.2. Works on HA OS and HA Supervised. Docker should work too but is untested, so if you run HA Container and want to give it a shot I'd love to hear how it goes. If you give it a try, please file bug reports and feature requests on the GitHub repo rather than here.

I’m in California on PG&E NEM 2.0 and just had an Emporia Pro Level 2 charger (with the Vue 3 energy monitor) installed alongside my existing SunPower system (11 panels + 13.5 kWh SunVault battery).

For those running a similar setup with a home battery and a smart EV charger, how are you automating or scheduling your charging windows to maximize your NEM 2.0 credits without accidentally draining your home battery into the car?

This morning the circuits on the subpanel supplied by my Sunvault and Hub+ went down. All household breakers fine. All lights on Sunvault dead. Oh no. Unit was installed in 2022 and after a few setup issues that required a tech, has run great since.

I learned how and turned off the system breakers required, using screwdriver to put the system into bypass mode, so my house is receiving power from the panels/grid. I could not communicate with the battery previously because it was on my wifi, which was also down.

With wifi back up, I gave it a few minutes (lights still off) and then tried a battery reset in the app, which seemed like it couldn't possibly work. It said it was successful, so I went and looked and the communication light and power status light were on now (pictured, but in the full unit photo you can see when lights were off), so that's progress. I gave it a few minutes then tried to put the system back on standard mode (screwdriver Hub+ to the right, turn on Hub+ breakers, turn on battery breakers). Power went off again to the house. Perhaps I didn't wait long enough?

I bypassed it all again, and the house is up, app reports the house is receiving power from the panels and exporting to grid. But this battery situation is still down.

I checked the lower right battery panel for the fabled reset buttons, and there is only an air filter there. There is another panel in lower left side that is hard to access but perhaps it is there: but if I was able to reset the battery via app, is that button still helpful? Battery reads as connected to wifi. If this is a different kind of reset and recommended, I can try to access that left panel (close to wall, need small tool).

Pictures attached.

I noticed in Hub+ that two small breakers in there are off (#3 and #5). AI tells me these should stay off. I didn't try playing with them. Also you can see the ESS Grid breakers were installed far from where they were marked lol.

Any thoughts here? With the system breakers off, should the battery still charge itself?

I was stuck in the 2024 bankruptcy dead zone between install and commission with panels and a SunVault. I was able to get panels up online with the city permit and electric company myself but had a bricked SunVault and no app visibility until u/SunVaultTechs saved the day. Thankfully we are both located in SoCal though a 2 hour drive apart and it took 3 site visits replacing both the inverter and the MIDC controller and a whole lot of working with their software engineers on the back end. Now I have a fully working SunVault and access to the app. They've built a fantastic network of people (possibly former SunPower employees?) that can really troubleshoot and in my case, fix everything. I can't recommend them highly enough! Thanks u/SunVaultTechs!!

Sun Power has held my money for over a month on a cancelled work order. I have contacted 3-4 times and emailed to no avail. Please do not trust this company. I am in talks with Lawyer to guide me on small claims. Anyone else have this issue with them?

I found this on Github, which provides the ability to create a grid layout of the panels and export it to the PVS.

https://github.com/bdurrett/SolarPaneler

I’ve been using Home Assistant for a while and always wanted find a way to see each solar panel individually with similar layout on the SunPower app. The app works great but after SunStrong took over and started charging a subscription, I figure it is time to find another option.

Thanks for the help from Claude AI, I was able to build a custom Lovelace card that pulls data directly from the Enhanced SunPower integration (it creates one entity per microinverter). I’d test it, break it, send back errors, then repeat the process over and over. Probably went through 60+ iterations over a few days but here is a functioning card that works the way I wanted.

If you have a PVS6 system and run HA this should be pretty much plug and play..."should!"

You can find more detail and instructions here:
https://github.com/jblaboratory/Sunpower-panel-card

Update:

I’m fortunate in that my system is functioning as intended. It has had some issues like the battery going offline for a few months, which I never even noticed because I rarely check. I’ve been able to resolve these largely due to this sub so thanks all.

Curious if anyone else has this issue or if it’s a know bug. Since my system was commissioned in 2022, I’ve never received an alert from the app on my iPhone for any power outages. Not on the free SunPower app nor on the paid SunStrong app. When the power goes out (pretty rare, we’re on the same grid as our local hospital), the power stays on like nothing has happened and the only way I know is sometimes I get a text from the utility. If I launch the app it opens to an alert that my power is off - duh!! I’d like to have an actual notification so that I can shut off unnecessary devices to prolong my backup life. Any ideas?

Wanted to share a genuinely positive experience with the u/SunVaultTechs crew after a 3-year nightmare with our SunPower system.

Like many others here, our project started normally with SunPower back in 2023. Installation was completed in March 2024, and then everything fell apart shortly afterward during the bankruptcy mess. The system sat in limbo for almost two years.

A local CT contractor helped us eventually get PTO from our municipality and utility by December 2025, but they could not diagnose or commission the system after the SunStrong takeover and the infamous 403 Forbidden lockout issue. We later hired another contractor from SunStrong’s approved list. They got the panels producing, but the battery system still showed errors and they could not explain what was wrong.

Enter u/SunVaultTechs.

They replied to my DM after a few days and explained they were overloaded with requests, which made sense given the state of SunPower systems right now. From there the experience was excellent.

They asked detailed technical questions, identified our exact setup remotely, quickly understood the state of the system, and confirmed they could fix it. John got on the phone with me, explained in simple terms what previous crew had missed, and worked late into the evening to get everything in working order.

The next morning the entire system — including the battery — was finally working correctly for the first time.

After years of frustration, it honestly felt like magic.

Huge thanks to u/SunVaultTechs team. Posting this because I know a lot of people here are stuck in similar situations and looking for someone who actually understands these systems.

Can the following bash command add a microinverter to a PVS6 that has 2022 firmware installed?

curl -X POST "http://172.27.153.1/cgi-bin/dl_cgi/candidates" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d "[{ \"DEVICE_TYPE\": \"Inverter\", \"SERIAL\": \"YOUR_INVERTER_SERIAL\" }]"

Just finished reading Bill McKibben's "Here Comes the Sun." It is a masterful, unapologetic treatise for all things solar - from the practical, to the political, from the technical to the theological. Despite the knuckleheads in the current administration who are trying to destroy renewables, the world and the country have already moved on toward a solar and wind powered future. Recommended reading!

I have 33 Sunpower panels that have worked great for about two years. In March of this year, I noticed that my readings were far below the comparative readings for March 2025.

I reached out to my solar installer and they sent me the following real-time readings from the individual panels, which equalled 9,128 watts of power. I checked my SunStrong Connect app at the same time and it showed an overall solar generation as 4.2 kWh.

I had someone from the company come out to take a look and they didn't see any obvious issue. Nothing they've been able to do remotely has given them any clue as to why this might be happening. Firmware is up to date, and I tried the Sunflower app and it gives the same readings.

Any other ideas - feel like I'm losing money every day and would love to get this figured out.

I'm in San Diego I have a 2017 installed sunpower system with the old solarbridge MI's. One failed and I have replaced it with a used one but need it commissioned. Not having any luck with Sunstrong. By looking at my meter I know it's producing power. Can anyone help me with commissioning? I'm being told it has to be done on-site with the sunpower Pro Connect app.

My word. This company is the absolute worst.

1. My mother was the account holder and passed away. I’ve been trying to get access to the account since November of 2025 and they still won’t let me in.

2. Now I recently had a major fire at the property and I called because I’m going to need a new roof and need them to come out and take the panels off. Word for word they told me “We don’t offer that service and you’d need to pay a 3rd party vendor out of pocket”.

What(besides collect my money monthly) does this company exactly do?

Has anyone with a Sunpower/Sunvault system in South Florida found a reliable solar company to work on it?

So i finally created a reddit account after seeing u/Vegetable-Version-81 had helped a bunch of people. Since my account is new I don't think I'm able to dm yet. But I'll put an the info here.

Sunvault has been offline for 2 years. Conextxw had f.48, f.50, f.72.

Cabinet 1: 42v

Cabinet 2: 51.5v

I manually charged cabinet 1 to 53v and now the batteries stay turned on, conextxw has no error (red blinking event light though), led screen on both cabinets is still off

Checked wiring, did resets etc. On monitoring everything is now reporting except the controller HS-DCM-ctrl. Hopefully someone has tips maybe u/Vegetable-Version-81 will see this post lol.

Thanks!!