Pic & Berry is a system that allows you to control the photovoltaic system and / or power consumption, you can easily check it through a WEB interface and APP for Smartphone and Tablet.
This way you can optimize your self-consumption.
Pic & Berry is able to know if the PV works, if it is at the best of its potential, if the panels need to be cleaned or if the yield is lower than the minimum guaranteed.
An E-mail will be notified if the system is not running or if your home consumption exceeds the set maximum threshold, allowing you to reduce it before the counter is disconnected.
It's based on the counter data without tampering it, so it is universal and therefore independent of the type of inverter.
Pic & Berry is also designed for those who do not have the photovoltaic system since, by checking the consumption trend, it is possible to check in real time if there are abnormal household appliances.
You are warned of overcoming the maximum power that can be removed so as to avoid the counter detachment.
By Pic & Berry-Deviator and Pic & Berry-Presa modules, you can turn on / off and know the status of sockets and lights in your home at any time and from anywhere you are.
The implementation of the MQTT protocol has made it possible for interfacing, as well as with the dedicated App, to all systems that use this protocol, such as openHAB and Home Assistant. Therefore, it is possible to interconnect all devices, even if they use different protocols, for example if there is a high power output you can create user-rules in openHab to enable or disable some devices.
In addition to all this, the fundamental thing is that by analyzing the graphics you are aware of the consumption of each device (eg decoders that power off consume as much as they ar on !!!).
The software is licensed under the Open-Source license to ensure full control of the device to all users, and to allow maximum flexibility, adaptability and future innovation.
If you want to see it (PV + trade-off):
Contacts
If you are interested you can write an E-mail to:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Project
Pic & Berry allows to control the production of the photovoltaic system and the energy exchange with your provider, the consumption and the ability to control devices inside the home remotely.
The project was born to monitor the domestic PV, the necessary operation to control the production of electricity, thus verifying that there are no performance cuts due to malfunction of the system (otherwise unrecognized) .
In fact at the beginning the project was born only to collect the data in an automatic and simple way (as an alternative to manual reading of the counter), but in this way we realized that PV system actually suffer from notable malfunctions only by checking day by day by analyzing the daily data captured minute by minute by our Pic & Berry (for more details on "malfunctions" you can read the section).
With Pic & Berry, with a simple App on your mobile phone or via a WEB BROWSER you can monitor production to optimize the self-consumption of the energy produced.
With Pic & Berry, you can answer all those questions about the actual productivity of the PV without any doubts, as you can see any "malfunctions" that you can find by checking the data (for more details on "malfunctions" you can read the next section).
Without Pic & Berry, it is practically impossible to notice the degradation of the panels or the inverter because annual output may vary due to weather conditions. Thanks to Pic & Berry, recording the minute production per minute and saving the maximum power achieved every day, you can compare the maximum power gained each year so that you can actually check the power loss of the PV. This comparison is very reliable, because every year there are certainly times when the weather conditions are optimal and therefore the peak is expected to be replicated (this peak must be equal to the maximum nominal power of the PV System).
In addition, always comparing peak and daily productions, you can actually check the need for cleaning PV panels.
Alerts can be set in case the daily output is below a certain threshold, so that you receive an email from Pic & Berry to alert you of the anomaly.
The installation is very simple, independent of the type of inverter and does not cause any tampering in the system since an optical sensor is installed on the counter; The energy recorded is that actually paid by the GSE (with a precision of wattower and not per kilowattower) and not what is counted on the inverter, whose values are very different.
Problems encountered in the productivity of PV
With regard to "malfunctions", for example, it has happened that for a whole month, all panel production was not entered into the home network and therefore even in the national grid because the PV counter was unplugged due to a lightning strike. If we had the Pic & Berry installed, it would send us an "ALERT" (an e-mail as a warning) for the non-productivity of the panels, thus minimizing the losses due to this abnormal event.
In addition, through a Pic & Berry we identified a defective inverter that several times in one day went into protection by reducing or even interrupting the production of electricity at peak times; Thus mobilizing the manufacturer's technicians. As you can easily guess, this problem would be difficult to detect, if not impossible, without taking PV data minute by minute.
How it work (What's Pic & Berry)
Pic & Berry is a system composed by an Raspberry Pi equipped with a radio module through which it communicates with the various devices. The DIN modules are connected to the output counter and / or the exchange counter with the same radio module and a PIC microcontroller that registers and transfers the data to the RaspBerry Pi.
Raspberry Pi also makes webservers loaded with pages that leverage HTML, PHP and JQuery to represent data with graphics. SEE GRAPH
Using an App on your mobile phone you can query the Raspberry Pi and instantly check the power output. SEE IMAGE.
In addition to this, thanks to Pic & Berry-Deviatore and Pic & Berry-Presa modules, you can activate / deactivate or query them automatically, programmed or remotely via App on your mobile or WEB Brovser.
Contacts
If you are interested you can write an E-mail to:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
