Integrating your solar panels
Gain insight into your energy production by integrating your solar panels into Home Assistant.
If you also set up the Solar Forecast integration, you will be able to see expected solar production and automate based on planned production.
Hardware
Home Assistant will need to know the amount of energy that is being produced. This can be done in various ways.
Using a CT clamp sensor
CT clamp sensors measure the instantaneous current passing through an electrical wire. To translate this into electrical power (W) you also need a voltage measurement, because Power = Current x Voltage.
In Home Assistant we have support for off-the-shelf CT clamp sensors and you can build your own with ESPHome’s CT Clamp Current sensor.
The off-the-shelf solution that we advice is the Shelly EM. The device has a local API, updates are pushed to Home Assistant and it has a high quality integration.
Attention! Installing CT clamp sensor devices requires opening your electrical cabinet. This work should be done by someone familiar with electrical wiring. Your qualified installer will know how to do this.
Connecting to your inverter
Some solar inverters have APIs that can be read by Home Assistant.