Canadian Solar monitoring with PVBiz

Canadian Solar plants are read from the SmartEnergy Portal (EU) with a portal username and password. PVBiz hashes the password locally before signing in and stores the credentials encrypted. There is no share route. Canadian Solar is available on the PVBiz Installer Platform today, where installers and O&M teams monitor fleets across brands. Homeowner subscriptions do not currently include it.

What PVBiz reads

From each inverter PVBiz reads output power, per-phase power, voltage and current, frequency, solar power, lifetime yield and daily energy, plus AC and boost temperature. It reads MPPT strings 1 to 10 with voltage, current and power, with strings 5 to 10 only where the inverter has them. From the grid meter it reads frequency, power, voltage, current and per-phase power. Readings poll about every five minutes and totals refresh hourly. Totals backfill from the plant’s creation year with a floor of 2020, and cover solar, load, import and export.

No battery data

The key limit is storage: Canadian Solar plants are read as solar-only. Every battery field is empty, so there is no state of charge, no charge or discharge totals and no battery alerts. Today’s grid import and export figures are also not populated, although grid power is read from the meter.

Alarms

Unlike most brands, Canadian Solar’s alarms are brought in. PVBiz pulls the alerts from the last 6 hours, grades them critical, warning or info, and de-duplicates them by alert. They are never closed automatically, so a cleared alarm stays until someone closes it. On top, PVBiz’s own rules give inverter offline, plant offline, communication failure and your thresholds.

Known limits

PVBiz does not publish a rate limit for the portal because none is documented, and spaces its calls conservatively. There is no control: PVBiz is read-only on Canadian Solar, and Sunsynk is the only brand where it can change inverter settings.