SolarWorld’s bankruptcy in 2018 resulted in various inconveniences for Suntrol Portal users. During the period, Solytic managed the servers and made sure that the PV monitoring portal would stay live with all its data. Since its official takeover on March 8, the Solytic team’s focus has been to stabilize the portal, a process which has been completed after only threee months.
For instance, 4,500 users with Kostal PIKO inverters and 2,800 users with SolarWorld eManagers that had no functioning connection for months now have access to their data again. This was achieved despite the maintenance work hundreds of new users registered which increased the total number of connected assets to around 23,400 and rising.
Suntrol offering
First of all, the Suntrol Portal is and will stay free of charge.
Also, users can still decide if they want to keep their asset’s data private or share it, enabling the comparison of an asset’s performance with others close by.
For a clear visualization of yields in charts (daily, monthly, yearly and complete overview) users can choose to receive yield data or error messages via email. Using thresholds, users can adapt monitoring to changing conditions throughout the year. Yields are also available on an MPP tracker level. All of this runs smoothly and is user friendly. In the most important menus, icons were added for simpler navigation.
If there is a consumption meter available on-site, self-consumption can also be visualized – and the same goes for batteries.
Installers also continue to profit from Suntrol Portal by monitoring their whole customer portfolio. Additionally, they have the option to create a company page with their own logo which will also be displayed on their managed assets. The “my profile” view can be used to present the company as well as a reference asset in talks with customers. Various portfolio sorting options, e.g. by logger type, make it easier to work with a multitude of assets.
The best is still to come
In the future, users who require more professional features will have the possibility of easily transferring their assets to the Solytic monitoring portal. The first users have already made the switch to Solytic and the door is open for more.
Future developments will be focused on two topics. On one hand, let the Suntrol Portal participate in innovative development of the solar PV market. On the other, the server structure will be optimized to keep stability and speed despite further growth. The former includes the integration of new features. The first pilot project will be presented in a few weeks.
Efforts so far have focused on improving the maintenance and efficiency of PV assets. An update of the general portal design is not planned for now, as the current version already allows for a positive user experience. Thousands of users are working successfully with Suntrol and many more are expected.
