Solar Still Works

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Get your solar monitoring back

When an installer closes, the app usually dies for one reason: it was set up under their account, not yours. The manufacturer of your inverter still runs the service. You just have to become the owner of record. How hard that is depends entirely on the brand, so start by figuring out which one you have.

Which brand do I have? Where's the lifetime number? Enphase SolarEdge SunPower Equinox Tesla SMA, Fronius, Generac

Which brand do I have?

Go to the wall near your electrical panel, or the garage, and look for a box with a manufacturer's name. Photograph the label. Drawings of every common box, at the same scale, are on the What's on my wall page. If there's no box, only a small gray unit near the panel and nothing else, you probably have microinverters under each panel, and the box you're looking for is a "gateway" or "combiner" the size of a shoebox.

EnphaseA gray or white box labeled IQ Gateway, Envoy, or IQ Combiner. Microinverters under each panel. Very common on installs since 2018 and on nearly all SunPower Equinox systems.
SolarEdgeA red-and-white or gray wall inverter labeled SolarEdge, often with "HD-Wave" or "Energy Hub." Small optimizers under each panel.
TeslaA white inverter labeled Tesla, or a Powerwall on the wall. The Tesla app is still working and Tesla is not bankrupt. Lower urgency.
SMA, Fronius, Generac, Growatt, othersA single string inverter, often with a small screen. Older systems and some budget installs.

Where's the lifetime energy number?

The free check needs one figure: total energy the system has produced since it was turned on, in kilowatt-hours. Every brand shows it somewhere.

  1. Enphase app: open the app, tap Energy, change the range to Lifetime. If the app won't log in, see the Enphase section below.
  2. SolarEdge app or portal: the dashboard shows Lifetime Energy on the main site view. Older SolarEdge inverters with an LCD screen show it by pressing the green button through the status screens until "Energy" appears with a lifetime total.
  3. Tesla app: Energy, then Lifetime.
  4. Inverters with a screen: look for "Total," "E-Total," or "Lifetime" in the display menu. Fronius and SMA both show it within a few button presses. Check the manual for your model if it isn't obvious.
  5. If nothing works: your utility bill shows the energy you sent to the grid each month. That's less than the system produced, because your house used some first, so a check built on it will read low. Use it only as a last resort and expect a "worth a look" result.

Enphase

Good news first. Enphase accounts belong to the homeowner, not the installer. For most Enphase systems the app kept working after the installer died. What went dark was the installer's own portal and their support line. If your Enphase app still opens, you're already the owner. Run the check and register the warranty.

If you never had an Enphase login, or the installer set the system up under their own email:

  1. Download the Enphase App and choose to create a homeowner account.
  2. Have the IQ Gateway's serial number ready. It's on a sticker on the gateway itself, usually starting with a long number under a barcode.
  3. If the app says the system already belongs to another account, contact Enphase Customer Support and ask for a system ownership transfer. Have the serial, your address, and a photo of the installation contract or a utility bill ready as proof of ownership. Enphase has done thousands of these since the SunPower closure and the process is routine.
Enphase warranties on microinverters are typically 25 years and follow the hardware, not the installer. Register them under your own name at enphase.com once you have your account.

SolarEdge

This is where most of the pain lives. A SolarEdge monitoring site is owned by whoever created it, which was the installer, and the homeowner is usually a guest. When the installer's company dissolves, the guest login may keep working for a while or may stop without warning.

  1. Go to SolarEdge's site transfer page and request an ownership transfer to yourself as the homeowner.
  2. You'll need the inverter serial number (on the label on the inverter), the monitoring site ID if you have it (visible in the app under site details), your installation address, and proof you own the property.
  3. Expect two to four weeks. SolarEdge verifies with the previous owner of record, and when that company no longer answers, the request eventually proceeds without them.
  4. Once the site is yours, you can create an API key under site admin, which is what a future monitoring tool would use. You can also add a new installer as a guest if you ever hire one.
Start the transfer now even if the app still works. Guest access on a dissolved installer's account is on borrowed time.

If the app stopped updating when the installer folded, check how the inverter talks

Many SolarEdge inverters were set up to report over a cellular modem, with the installer paying the cellular plan. When the installer stopped paying, the inverter went silent even though nothing else changed. The monitoring account is fine; the data just isn't arriving. The fix is to connect the inverter to your home network instead: an Ethernet cable from your router to the inverter, or Wi-Fi on models that support it, and a change in the inverter's communication setting from cellular to LAN or Wi-Fi. After that it reports for free, for good. On older inverters with an LCD screen the setting is in the button menu. On newer SetApp inverters without a screen, the setting is changed through SolarEdge's SetApp tool, which may need a licensed installer; a repair visit for this is short and worth it. Contributed by an installer in the Resilient Suns group; corrections welcome.

SunPower Equinox, legacy systems

SunPower's support line went dark on September 20, 2024, but the monitoring outlived the company in two ways. The mySunPower app was bought by SunStrong and now runs as SunStrong Connect: live numbers free, history behind a subscription. And the PVS gateway on your wall still records production and still answers on your home Wi-Fi, so independent apps such as Sunflower ($12 a year, PVS5 and PVS6 on current firmware) can show you panel-level output without a SunPower account. Only if neither works for you does the Enphase route make sense: a replacement IQ Gateway plus commissioning for $699 plus tax, after which the standard Enphase app works under your own name for good. The SunPower page walks through all three in order.

Some SunPower systems used other inverters. Check the wall before buying anything.

Tesla and SolarCity

Tesla is the installer and the manufacturer, and it's still in business. If a third party installed Tesla equipment and then closed, transfer ownership through the Tesla app or Tesla energy support with the system's serial and proof of address. The app itself never went away.

SMA, Fronius, Generac and others

Each has a homeowner portal: Sunny Portal for SMA, Solar.web for Fronius, PWRview for Generac. In most orphaned cases the installer simply never created the homeowner's account. Create one, add the inverter by serial, and if it's claimed by another account, ask the manufacturer's support for a transfer with proof of ownership. Fronius and SMA inverters also show lifetime production on the unit's own screen, so you can run the check today while the portal sorts itself out.

Got your lifetime number? Run the free check and find out where you stand.

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