I am not interested at all in connecting something that should help me get off the grid to the internet. Combine that with security issues[0] and I'm starting to think we're collectively folding our arms behind our back and intentionally falling forwards.
Maybe I'm too paranoid. Thoughts?
[0]: For example: https://csirt.divd.nl/cases/DIVD-2022-00009/
There was an ethernet cable plugged into the inverter panel, which ran to a Comcast box.
We switched to FIOS after a couple of months, and never switched the connectivity of the solar panels. Everything worked fine, but ...
A few months later, I received a strongly worded email from an organization I had never heard of, saying that I needed to get the solar panels back online, because it was a requirement of the contract the previous owner had entered into to sell the SRECs generated by the panels. Failing to connect the panels to the Internet could lead them to pursue action related to a lien they had on our property.
Wait, what contract? And what lien? This was the first I'd heard of either, and the lien hadn't come up during the title-insurance process.
It turns out the previous owner of the house had entered into a contract with an organization in our state that pays you a lump sum, if you sign away the rights to the SRECs your system generates. The owner had used that lump sum to help pay for the panels.
But then he sold the house to my wife and me, without ever disclosing the existence of the contract. So basically he sold the SRECs to both of us. He sold them to the organization by virtue of their contract, and he sold them to us, by virtue of the ownership of the panels transferring to us when we bought the house.
And the lien never came up because it was not against the real estate itself; rather, it was against the SRECs -- the Solar Renewable Energy Credits that are generated by the panels. They're not physical assets, but they do have substantial value.
It took the retention of a lawyer and a whole bunch of back-and-forth between us, the seller, our buyer and seller's agents, the lawyer who handled our settlement, and the SREC-buying organization to get the whole mess sorted out.
In the end, we got the lien and contract dissolved ... and then we hooked the panels up to FIOS, and I get handy little charts of all the SRECs we're generating :)
If I'd known in advance it'd have multiple Internet of Shit crapware devices attached that'll probably stop working in 5 years and require expensive replacement and renovation to keep working past that, and that it can't produce power at all unless those pieces of near-future landfill rubbish are happy, I'd 1000% never have gotten it.
Mea culpa—I guess I should have asked, but it just never occurred to me—but I'm fucking never getting another solar system unless I install it myself. There are other problems (that have solidified my usual preference not to let someone else GC a project for me, because they usually just skim money and do a terrible job—they fucked up our roof bad, for one thing, many thousands of dollars of damage so now we get to sort that out too, the hassle's not worth a few hundred in savings per year assuming all else goes well which at this point I'm sure it will not) but IoT shitware would have been a deal-breaker on its own if I'd known it required that to function, not just for monitoring or whatever.
I was aware that my inverter could connect to the Internet, and probably would be connected to the Internet during setup, but my full intention was to disconnect it following the install. I was pretty happy that the one that the vendor gave me was poll-able from an internal Web server, so I could scrape the metrics myself.
It turns out, none of this was to be. I found out about the Internet connectivity requirement for the warranty _after_ it was on my wall and producing power - and when you've spent five figures on a system with a 25-year warranty, unfortunately I had to suck up my pride and let it phone home to the manufacturer's cloud. It now sits on a separate VLAN for "untrusted" devices.
What's more, I also found out that the manufacturer had intentionally removed the local web server feature, instead making it totally reliant on the cloud service for metrics. It has a laughable rate limit of 300 calls per day, which gives me roughly 5-minute granularity (I could get better granularity if I made my metrics-gathering scripts poll differently overnight, but still), and I really dislike having to reach out to a vendor for data that's produced in my own home.
Here's a related forum thread: https://diysolarforum.com/threads/sol-ark-needs-a-serious-ch...
If the installer can do that, so can the analytics company and probably any competent hacker. I don’t think security is top of mind for this industry.
So, no internet connected solar panels for me.
Problem is that consumers really do see "internet/mobile connected" as a desirable feature even if they're just going to use it once for the novelty and then forget about it.
It doesn't need to be connected to the internet during configuration either, we set it up and got it going before connecting the data logger to it.
That said, I do use their portal to see my generation and consumption. It's pretty handy. But I also do scrape their data and store it locally as well.
[0] https://www.ginlong.com/rhi_3pinverter1/29118.html
* I'm not affiliated with them in any way, it's just the one we have
>The Covered Products should be continuously connected to the internet during the warranty period, except where interrupted by causes outside of the Covered Owner’s reasonable control. This will help ensure that potential defects in the Product can be diagnosed remotely and that the Product can receive over-the-air firmware updates.
Interesting use of "should".
My installer said that they need access to the inverter during set-up in order to configure it properly, but after that it could be disconnected.
Personally, I use it to get firmware updates and to use the API in order to monitor it.
Although, that said, I'm not sure what sort of security issues you're imagining. There's no privacy issue - the inverter only has data on what you've generated.
I didn't go as far as isolating them from internet/rest of my network- I am mainly concerned about them losing my data/going bankrupt/trying to charge for "cloud" features.
But the main reason they do this is pretty mundane - LCD panels often fail after a few years in the kinds of environments inverters are often installed in (hot, sunny). So they move the display to be an app instead, and you need an internet connection.
The part i'm not sure about, is whether this system depends on the internet connection, or whether there's some other wireless system build into these things.
For distributed energy scenarios in which various sites operated by different administrators (my_neighborhood_solar, big utility, your_personal_site) may exchange energy, then how do we securely design the communication between the smart meters?
For example, perhaps dedicated SIMs would get the traffic off our home networks, but the resultant network would need security.
As for other domains like, industrial, manufacturing, agriculture... that ship has already sailed. HN would do well to remember there's more to IoT than WiFi lightbulbs.
In many states the "contract" is invalid if it wasn't presented as a requirement in the sale or when it was agreed upon. It doesn't matter if it is in the TOS if the TOS isn't signed and dated by the person paying for the Internet access. Legally you have a leg to stand on. You would need to get a lawyer and possibly go to court. Then trust them to honor the warranty later. That sounds like fun doesn't it.
Good luck.
That said we shouldn’t reserve the “IoT” moniker for crappy cloud based things requiring constant internet connections to work. That’s the internet of shit (as popularized by https://mobile.twitter.com/internetofshit)
I definitely want some connectivity in a solar panel setup. But in the case of a solar panel array there is no point for that connectivity to use be more than local, or offer more than simple monitoring. A local polling api that offers a simple json blob with stats? Does that qualify as “IoT”?
When I had my solar installed I had no internet connection at the property, so the installer gave me instructions of how to pair the inverter when I did. I had a smart meter which gave hourly data, so there wasn't really much need in connecting the inverter up. It has indicator lights to tell you when something goes wrong.
If you're off grid, you can easily get away with not having that sort of thing.
What frustrated me was that the company used a meter that reported over 3G, and then wanted me to pay $500 to upgrade my meter even though it was under warranty. They eventually found an ethernet port in my current meter, but they still charged me to run the cable. Fortunately, they got the cost low enough that it wasn't worth arguing.
I installed everything myself - built the barn on which the panels are mounted as well - so I know what is where. The only net-connected part of the solar installation is the inverter, once I hook up battery that'll probably have a network connection as well so it can join the fray on the IoT-VLAN.
This solution with a separate network - VLAN or physically separated is up to you - which is reverse proxied onto the wide world gives the best of both worlds in that you remain in control while you still can use the networked functions of whatever it is you're dealing with. You won't be surprised by updates, the equipment does not get to phone home, nobody gets to data mine you.
It's ironic to see on this same HN front page a story about police & face recognition. We should oppose all forms of social credit / new world order / cashless / corporate fascism.
It shouldn't just be "the police are bad, so let's deny them this tool," it's "the police will just enlist private companies to do their dirty work for them, so let's deny everyone this tool."
Or, just an automatic firmware "update." Most are made in a country that we are not currently on very good terms with. No, I don't trust any that require internet access, or an "account" of some sort to activate it.
Yes. They aren't using these features to serve you ads. They aren't using them to lock you in to their platform. They added these features because the vast majority of users are not particularly technical and they want some dashboard they can login to to see some cute metrics about their system. They added these features because downtime alerts are genuinely useful but it is difficult to implement without some sort of remote connectivity. And if your local utility needs the data for some reason, or needs the ability to coordinate power delivery to the grid, either now or in the future, there is a mechanism in which they can do so.
The number of users who consider this an anti-feature is such a small minority of users that it isn't really worth their time to accommodate. IOT certainly has its issues. TVs absolutely don't need it. For other appliances it can be a toss up. But there are also genuine use cases for it.
My general expectation is to do a small circuit for things that don't need to be connected at first (like electricity for the workshed), then get fully off-grid if I do a full system. No way do I want to be off-grid and relying on some of the components calling their mothership.
I'm also deeply suspicious of all of these schemes where solar is "free", whether they are fronting the cost to reap the solar credits for themselves or installing to charge you a fixed-rate electrical bill. Far too many opportunities for things to go sideways.
I have an 11.6Kw solar system with a SolarEdge inverter. It does not need an internet connection to function. I currently have it connected to use the app that reports performance data, but it's not a requirement for functionality.
I've replaced a bunch of various appliances and etc, furnace, hot water heater, washer and etc. All have various internet connectivity options but they're all OPTIONAL. They are there at least from the start as an option for the owner to participate in, in exchange for some level of convince. That seems like a premise I would also expect from a solar panel setup ...
On the other hand, if something bad happens (virus, remote bricking, disabling some functionality that was in the contract in un update), you can probably sue them. Granted, if they face massive service disruption, you may not be able to gain much from it.
I dunno about much of the rest of the world, but in Australian Consumer Law such a declaration would certainly be unlawful.
In addition to outputting telemetry data about a solar array's production - whether that is meant to be used for the homeowner to monitor their system's performance or a third party to use for SRECs verification - the IoT modules on modern PV inverters are increasingly being designed/included for the purpose of receiving external input signals. These would either come from the local utility, distribution system operator, or regional balancing authority - and would communicate the need to change the inverter module's mode of operation to ensure the stability of the distribution circuit that it was interconnected to.
Small scale utility customers are typically only billed for the "real power" that they consume (real power is metered in kilowatt hours, kWh). This billing can come in different incarnations - i.e. volumetric tariffs, time-of-use tariffs, net-metering tariffs (as with bi-directional solar metering). However, in order to operate a reliable AC power distribution system you need to also be concerned with the supply of "reactive power" (metered in kilovolts-amps reactive, kVA). Reactive power is consumed by inductive loads (like electric motors) in large volumes particularly when starting up. Moreover, reactive power cannot easily be transmitted over long distances in the same way that real power can. The consumption of reactive power can cause the voltage and current curves of an AC power flow to shift out of phase with respect to one another. This effectively reduces the apparent power delivered by the system. This can also cause other problems with maintaining the system's nominal frequency and voltage.
Large AC generator units, that are essentially comprised of a large spinning mass ( such as a natural gas turbine for example) naturally output a more even balance of real and reactive power components. However, when you try to replace these units with lots of small DC generators, like solar panels, whose AC power characteristics are determined by the design of the inverter modules, what you end up finding is that there is a deficit of reactive power supply. Inverter modules can technically be setup to produce reactive power - but they generally are not tuned to do so. This is because it detracts from the amount of real power that they produce. And remember, that real power is the only thing that you get paid for under a net-metering tariff. There are currently no markets which would compensate you as a homeowner for the production of reactive power.
So, with the knowledge that many of these inverter systems will have 10-15 year lifespans once installed - and that grid operators will likely need to call upon them in the future to dynamically control the supply of reactive power at certain locations (particularly as more renewables come online) regulators are increasingly requiring that all new inverters have networked communications capability so that they will be ready once such a command-and-control protocol is eventually developed and implemented.
I would chalk it up to being overly paranoid. However if you are in a foreign country and have a system that is connected via payments that is a different matter all together (i.e. that you don't own the asset and you are paying for the electricity produced).
How are all those rural places too remote for the internet working?