Charge HQ only supports the use of Solar Analytics "Classic", where a separate Solar Analytics device has been installed in your switchboard. If you are using Solar Analytics Integrated, where Solar Analytics obtains your solar data from your inverter directly, you should connect Charge HQ to your inverter API directly; you should not connect Charge HQ to Solar Analytics. Charge HQ can obtain data from your inverter directly with less delays than going via Solar Analytics.
For more details on Solar Analytics Classic and Integrated please see this page.
When used in Solar Tracking mode, Charge HQ relies on a stream of data which describes the solar production and household consumption (if a meter is present) to adjust the rate of charge. This data is supplied via an API from each device manufacturer or provider.
The API data is subject to delays, which vary between different devices.
The longer these delays, the slower Charge HQ is to adjust the charging power when tracking available solar. For example, when you switch your electric oven on, it will typically take Charge HQ around 30 to 60 seconds to receive the updated data and react by reducing the charging power. Some inverters have longer delays.
As a rough guide, solar tracking is around 95% effective for inverters with shorter delays (1-2 minutes), and around 80% effective for those with longer delays.
The rate at which we update solar data is constrained by the speed each vendor makes it available to us. Note that often the API we have access to may not update data as frequently as vendors app does.
If we become aware of options to reduce the data delays for a given vendor we will schedule the work to upgrade our systems.
Users with application development skills can implement their own systems that collect data locally and upload it to our servers via our PushAPI.
