Solar Analytics Users Plagued By Dropouts

Solar Analytics has long offered some of the best energy monitoring software on the market, but some customers recently have been plagued by dropouts and poor customer support. We’ve investigated to see what’s going on.

We’ve been longtime fans of Solar Analytics, who offer a solar monitoring app that provides users with insights about their solar, the ability to diagnose faults, and control to optimise performance.

A handful of Solar Analytics customers in recent times however have approached us over some turbulence in their once-trusty software.

One customer, who asked to be referred to as Krubi, was experiencing issues, including dropouts also reported by other Solar Analytics users to us.

“We’ve had Solar Analytics for 6+ years, and until about 8 months ago it was great — it allowed us to monitor our usage and generation in near-realtime,” she told Solar Quotes.

“Since SA was bought out by Catch Power, the performance has dropped dramatically, noticeably so since the move from 3G to 4G. We now have system communication failures about once a week that typically require 2 or 3 reboots to get it working again. Even when the system is working, the displayed data lags by as much as 0.5-1 hour (both app and web). This means I can’t adjust my usage to advantageously use solar generation as I no longer have up-to-date data on which to make decisions. This problem is not isolated to one system — we own a duplex and have the same problem with data-lag and unreliability on both systems.”

Solar Analytics Points The Finger At 3G

Around 12 months ago Solar Analytics was taken on by Catch Power, which meant the subscription business model, found difficult by the likes of ChargeHQ, was no longer a problem. Becoming a feature of the Catch Control hardware delivered both a steady economic base for the service and an array of extra features for Catch Control devices.

We reached out to Solar Analytics, with a representative claiming the dropouts were related to the shutdown of the 3G network, not the acquisition by Catch Power, but clarified that the lag issues Krubi reported were not a problem they had seen before.

With the 3G network closing down, bandwidth is being redistributed, which is the whole point of the operation. It means the limited radio spectrum can be better utilised by more wireless devices.

However it means old reliable 4G sites with solid signal strength are being made marginal. The new lack of signal strength causes dropouts and patchy service.

There’s no single pain point, with multiple companies, networks, different generations of SIM cards and access contracts involved.

Solar Analytics recommends people affected by dropouts add a hi-gain antenna, or upgrade to to a Catch Control system, for which the company is offering a 50% off RRP discount to existing Solar Analytics customers, reducing the installed cost for single phase home to about $400.

When you buy CatchControl there is no ongoing subscription cost for any of their apps. You get Analytics for free, including the retail plan optimiser.

Catch Control also has it’s own monitoring portal called the Monacle, which is the only one I’m aware of offering a ready notification that your network has activated dynamic limiting or emergency backstop.

The shutdown of 3G in favour of 4G and 5G has caused a raft of issues for some Solar Analytics customers.

One Unhappy Customer

The recommended fixes weren’t of much help to Krabi, however.

“We have already installed a high-gain antenna (yes, easy DIY), with only limited improvement. We have two adjacent properties (duplexes) and have installed high-gain antennas mounted on the roof of each. In each case, only minimal improvement has been effected by the antennas,” she said.

“It’s not clear to me how I might access the discount for the Catch Control — I’ve searched the website and found nothing about the discount for existing Solar Analytics customers, nor can I find anything on the Solar Analytics website.”

Customer Service Is Dropping Out Too

Solar Analytics customers aren’t just experiencing dropouts in the technology — they are also copping them in customer service.

Several customers told us that they were getting little to no response despite making multiple complaints about the issues being experienced.

I have fielded complaints about unanswered tickets or long delays for plenty of other companies in the sector too — these issues stretch across the solar industry. Catch Power has been recruiting and so have all the other solar industry manufacturers to get more people on board.

WattWatchers Better Watch Out

Solar Analytics used to subcontract the actual hardware we installed in switchboards from Wattwatchers, and in my experience, that hardware has been randomly blowing up for years.

I recall vividly pulling one from a switchboard in a childcare center which had a hole burnt through it. The inner workings had self-immolated, and luckily, besides a scorch on an adjacent circuit breaker, nothing else was damaged.

Sadly, some continue to fail, but Wattwatchers are still making them in Australia and sending them out.

We have it on good authority that delays and poor service will see Solar Analytics take their business elsewhere if things don’t improve soon. This reminds me I need to chase up one of my own units that never came back from a warranty claim.

The only image I have of a din rail mounted analytics unit, taken just to record serial numbers. The other side had a hole burnt through it.

Top Technical Tip : If your analytics device is playing up and you want to reset it by switching off & on again you MUST have patience. 30 seconds isn’t enough to fully shut down these units, even when the lights go out on the unit they retain functionality to ride through short power outages. Turn it off and come back 5 minutes later to re-energise it.

 

The figures can be pretty eye watering when you have 200kW of solar on a nursing home.

Still A Useful Tool

Despite the issues being faced by some customers, I personally still find Solar Analytics to be a useful tool. For example, we recently had a customer with a solar problem. The root cause was some large trees on the median strip, but the complaints were mainly about perception. While the installer had gone over and above to deliver a great system, there was consumer doubt about its performance, which simply couldn’t be assuaged by the installer, the inverter maker or my own judgment. Having an independent source of truth was a great help.

Solar Analytics is great for individual or fleet monitoring with unique ability to compare output for your system against others in the district. It means the particular weather across your locality becomes part of the calculation.

I’ve written before about places such as nursing homes that can save themselves thousands of dollar per quarter if they will only pay some attention to monitoring.

Analytics won’t send false alerts when the network is doing random curtailment for flexible exports or backstop control, but it will flag performance problems with your solar when something fails or when performance falls off due to shade from a growing tree.

It also has the smarts to identify when my heat pump hot water comes on at night, triggering an email suggestion to save money by moving it to the daytime.

It’s very clever, and it’ll keep a trained eye on your system, which has a better attention span than this solar electrician.

There are many alternatives for monitoring like Powersensor or Clipsal Cortex, however if you’ve already got years of data saved with Solar Analytics then it’s brilliant resource for reviewing the real performance of your system.

Long term data is unarguable and that’s priceless if you need to make a warranty claim for panel degradation or over promised sales quotes.