Growatt Noah 2000: Some Newbie questions

[OLibutzki]

Hi,

at the moment I don't own a Growatt device, but I think about extending my running system by using a Growatt Noah 2000.

Unfortunately, Growatt does not provide the possibility to monitor and control the devices locally. Obviously, the vendor is eager to track everything in its own cloud.
I don't want to use the cloud for two main reasons:

1. I don't want to give data and control access of my device to a (chinese) company.
2. I don't want to be dependent of the availiablity of a cloud service. One thing is the unrealibility of the service, but what if Growatt decides to charge for the service or to shut it down entirely?

That being said I am searching for a solution whcih offers the possibilty to monitor the Noah's data and to control the battery.

By browsing through this project, some of my questions were not answered or I just didn't get it, so I decided to use this baord to share them.

1. Is GroBro intended to work without the Growatt Cloud at all? I saw that there is an issue (Parallele Verwendung der ShineApp #5) about using the ShineApp in parallel, so the default is that no data is sent to the cloud?
2. Can I monitor and control the Noah using GroBro? I am not sure about the features GroBro provides for the Noah. As GroBro also supports the NEO micro-inverter the information seems to be a little bit mixed up for me.
3. I use Home Assistant. Do I get it right that the usage of two MQTT brokers is recommended. One broker speaks TLS and is connected to the Noah and the GroBro brdige and one broker is connected to the GroBro bridge and Home Assistant?

That's it for now. I am sure there will be some more questions to pop up in the future.

Thanks for the time you invest in Open Source!

[SohnyBohny]

Let me try to answer based on how I understand the current state of the project.

Is GroBro intended to work without the Growatt Cloud at all?

Yes! I'm running GroBro behind a firewall such that my Growatt Inverter does not have internet access at all. (And so is Robert, see #2)

Can I monitor and control the Noah using GroBro?

Currently, not. Currently, only data send by the device is monitored. But if I understood correctly, people are currently investigating into the other direction, i.e., how to send commands to the inverter. See #3 and also #5 is work into that direction.

Do I get it right that the usage of two MQTT brokers is recommended. One broker speaks TLS and is connected to the Noah and the GroBro brdige and one broker is connected to the GroBro bridge and Home Assistant?

This describes how I understood it and matches the setup I'm currently running. I also wondered whether one wants one or two MQTT brokers. But one motivation for having two is that the device is not getting confused by other messages and that other messages are not leaking (via the device, be it a Noah or Neo).

[OLibutzki]

Thanks for your answers, @SohnyBohny. It really looks like GroBro is the project I have been waiting for. 👍🏼