Solar PV Setup

This guide walks you through setting up monitoring for a solar photovoltaic (PV) plant. By the end, you will have a site with inverter and weather station assets, connectors to your data sources, variable bindings, and an edge gateway streaming telemetry data.

Prerequisites

• A Fleetera account with an organization set up
• A Linux server at the solar PV site (see hardware requirements)
• Access to the site's data sources (for example, an OPC UA server on the inverter gateway or a Modbus-enabled weather station)

Step 1 — Create the site

1. Navigate to Sites and click + New Site
2. Fill in the form:
   • Name — for example, "Solar Park Riverside"
   • Site Category — select Renewable Energy Site
   • Status — set to Active
   • Location — use the map picker to set the GPS coordinates
3. Click Create Site

Step 2 — Create templates

Solar PV plants typically include inverters, string combiner boxes, and weather stations. Create a template for each asset type.

Inverter template

1. Navigate to Templates and click + New Template
2. Enter a name (for example, "SMA Sunny Central 2500-EV") and select a solar inverter category
3. Add variables from the platform's solar PV variable library:
   • AC power output, AC voltage (L1/L2/L3), AC current, AC frequency
   • DC input power, DC voltage, DC current
   • Inverter temperature, efficiency
   • Operating state, fault codes
   • Daily energy yield, total energy yield

Weather station template

1. Create another template (for example, "Weather Station")
2. Add variables:
   • Global horizontal irradiance (GHI)
   • Plane-of-array irradiance (POA)
   • Ambient temperature, module temperature
   • Wind speed, wind direction
   • Humidity

Optional — combiner box template

If your plant monitors at the combiner box level:

1. Create a template for string combiner boxes
2. Add variables for string currents, string voltages, and combiner box status

Step 3 — Build the asset hierarchy

1. Open your site and go to the Asset Hierarchy tab
2. Instantiate your inverter template using Bulk mode:
   • Set the count (for example, 20 inverters)
   • Name pattern: "Inverter" with zero padding 3 (Inverter-001 through Inverter-020)
3. Instantiate your weather station template:
   • Typically 1–3 weather stations per site
   • Name them descriptively (for example, "Weather Station North", "Weather Station South")
4. If using combiner box templates, instantiate them as children of the appropriate inverters

The hierarchy might look like this:

Solar Park Riverside
├── Inverter-001
├── Inverter-002
├── ...
├── Inverter-020
├── Weather Station North
└── Weather Station South

Step 4 — Create connectors

Solar PV sites often use multiple protocols. Create a connector for each data source.

OPC UA connector for inverters

If your inverter gateway exposes data via OPC UA:

1. Go to the Connectors tab and click + New Connector
2. Select OPC UA as the protocol
3. Enter the endpoint URL for the inverter gateway
4. Configure security settings to match the server
5. Attach the connector to the site root or individual inverters

Modbus TCP connector for weather stations

If your weather station uses Modbus TCP:

1. Create a new connector with protocol Modbus TCP
2. Enter the IP address and port (typically 502)
3. Set the unit ID for the weather station
4. Attach the connector to the weather station asset

Step 5 — Bind variables

Inverter bindings (OPC UA)

For OPC UA-connected inverters, first run a discovery crawl on the connector to populate its data model, then use match suggestions:

1. Open the OPC UA connector and go to the Data Model tab
2. Run a discovery crawl to populate the data model
3. Go to the Bindings tab and click Run Matching
4. Review the inline suggestions and click Accept All High-Confidence to create bindings in bulk
5. Adjust any remaining variables manually
6. Set appropriate sampling intervals:
   • Power and energy: 5--10 seconds
   • Temperatures: 30--60 seconds
   • Status and faults: 10--30 seconds

Weather station bindings (Modbus TCP)

For Modbus-connected weather stations, use manual binding:

1. Open the Modbus connector and go to the Bindings tab
2. Click the binding action on each variable
3. Use the Modbus address form to configure:
   • Register type (holding, input, coil, or discrete input)
   • Start address
   • Data format (for example, 32-bit float)
   • Byte order and word order for multi-register values
4. Configure scale and offset if the device returns raw values (for example, irradiance as integer with scale 0.1)
5. Set sampling intervals (typically 10--60 seconds for weather data)

Step 6 — Deploy the edge gateway

1. Go to the Edge Gateway tab
2. Click + Add Deployment
3. Enter a name and select the server architecture
4. Copy and run the installation command on your Linux server at the site

curl -sSL https://api.fleetera.ai/api/edge/install.sh | \
  sudo bash -s -- --api-url https://api.fleetera.ai --token <TOKEN>

Wait for the deployment status to change to Online.

Step 7 — Publish and verify

1. Check the Config Sync Status on the deployment detail page
2. Publish the configuration if it has not been auto-published
3. Wait for the sync status to reach In Sync
4. Verify that data is flowing by checking the deployment heartbeats and service statuses

What's next

• Define KPIs for computed metrics like performance ratio and specific yield, or install a ready-made KPI pack
• Add asset associations to link inverters to their corresponding tracker or combiner box
• Monitor the deployment on the deployment detail page
• Create additional connectors for meter data or tracker systems