Sunny Portal Registration for Sunny Boy US With Webconnect: Customizing the Sunny Portal Plant

In the second installment of our three-part Sunny Boy US Sunny Portal Registration series, we covered the final step to register the Sunny Boy US using the Plant Setup Assistant tab on the Sunny Portal homepage and now the plant can be viewed and customized.

Once To the PV System is clicked, the new plant will be displayed in Sunny Portal. The PV System Overview page is the default landing page, and shows a dashboard view above a production curve for the system. If this is a Power+ system, the lower part of this screen will show module level information.

Click on the To the PV System button to view the plant in Sunny Portal as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. New PV plant in Sunny Portal

The seven standard pages listed on the left under the plant name are created by default and are viewable by all users of the plant. The Configuration tab below it is only available to Installer or Administrator level users of the plant. Three of these pages are commonly used: PV System Properties, Report Configuration and User Management.

User Management is only accessible to Administrator level users, and is used to add or delete users from the plant.  Figure 2a and 2b show the details of adding a user; Click on Add User and enter the email for the user and select the appropriate access level. The differences between these levels are explained in Version 1.3 of the Webconnect Plants in Sunny Portal – User Manual. This manual can be accessed via the User Manual link at the bottom of the screen.

Figure 2a. Adding a New User to a Webconnect plant

Figure 2b. Select the role and enter email for new user, then click Save

Report Configuration allows the activation of up to three Daily Info, Monthly Info and Event Reports. Any of these reports can be sent to multiple emails, and can be tailored for what information they contain and when they are sent. Click Edit to adjust active reports or to activate additional reports.

Figure 3. Report Configuration page, showing active Daily report details

The PV System Properties page allows for adjustment of the plant name, changing the plant password (remember this changes the on-site Installer password too!), and where an image for the plant can be loaded. Click Edit to make changes or load an image. Maximum size is 500kB and can be JPG, GIF or PNG.  The new plant image is shown on the PV System Profile page.

Pages from the Webconnect plant can be made public on Sunny Portal or embedded in other webpages. To enable this, click on the Configuration button at the bottom of the page to expand the window as shown in Figure 4 for the PV System Profile window.

Figure 4. Configuration choices shown for PV System Profile

Clicking the box to the right of Approval will allow anyone to find this page when searching on Publicly Available Plants in Sunny Portal.  Only those pages that are released will be viewable. The URL to the right of URL of the Page is a link that can be placed in the HTTP code of another webpage to allow viewing of only the contents of the pane of that Sunny Portal window. The plant page list to the left and the Configuration buttons are not viewable. This function allows for easy embedding of Sunny Portal data so it can be viewed by a large number of people without them being added to the Sunny Portal plant directly, or making any pages publicly viewable.

While we have shown Sunny Portal as it appears on a computer, there are apps for Sunny Portal for iOS and Android operating systems to allow for easy access to Sunny Portal information while on the go.

SMA inverters with Webconnect technology and Sunny Portal allow for easy viewing of PV system data as well as remote monitoring of the status of the plant. No wonder it is the largest PV monitoring site in the world (according to “Global PV Monitoring 2016–2020: Markets, Trends and Leading Players”, GTM Research and SoliChamba Consulting).