Cumulus Support

Is there any way of making use of the output data from a Solar Panel array, to Cumulus? Here is an example of one day's data.

Hi
Not directly,
But look at this : viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11204&hilit=SRSunshine
and here viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1052

Not currently, sorry.
It had to be done!

Hi,

Note that Davis actually fit a spirit level (bubble) to their Solar Sensors, so that they can be set exactly horizontal. Also, one of the reasons that Caneira (Werk) used a small PV panel (only some tens of square cms) in preference to a traditional photo diode or transistor, in his Weatherduino project, was to make it easier to set the sensor accurately horizontal. The efficiency of Solar panels does also fall somewhat as they age.

If the Solar panels are not horizontal, then you (and Cumulus) would need to know the Slope and its Azimuth (if not due south in the Northern hemisphere) before any "useful" measurements could be made / calculated. Also, as soon as the "sensor" has a significant slope, which of course the majority of PV panels do (either to increase the amount of energy collected - or just to fit a sloping roof! ), then in summer it becomes possible for the sun to be above the horizon but behind the plane of the panel(s). So potentially a fair bit of complicated mathematics for not much (meteorological) reward?

Cheers, Alan.

Sounds like it would be pretty well impossible to get accurate and comparable readings, but, for the amateur, it would broaden the weather picture for each day.

I don't know whether I can be of any help, my weatherstation is totally home built and completely stand alone, i.e it runs on a Raspberry Pi with its own web server and has no contact with external servers and I am in this forum because I use the Steel Series Gauges.
I recently added power measurements to my weatherststion by using three non-invasive current clamps for power and an unregulated 240V to 8V transformer for voltage measurements. On the Raspberry I generate my own realtimegauges.txt and I have added my power measurements to the bottom of this file. For the power gauges I have hacked three of the weather gauges (with apologies to Mark) and created my own powergauges.js from the original gauges.js and these gauges must be on a different web page to the web page with the the weather gauges for this to work.
I originally tried to get the data directly from by solar inverter but the company wanted $200-300 for an adaptor so I went my own way with all the information I needed to do this coming from openenergymonitor.org.
Lloyd.