Building a PV dashboard people check every day

The operating data of our photovoltaic system lived in three places: two inverters with their own web interfaces, the meters inside the building controller, and no weather context at all. Answering “is the system running as expected?” meant opening all of them.

One screen instead of three portals

The dashboard collects every source on the server, normalises it into one data model and serves it through its own REST API. A React frontend shows generation, grid draw, feed-in and self-consumption side by side: in the browser, on the company network, without a vendor account.

• Live values and history from both inverters.
• Meter readings from the Homematic controller.
• The weather forecast as context for a weak day.

Built to stay out of the way

The backend polls on a fixed schedule and serves from a cache, so the devices see the same load no matter how many people have the dashboard open. If one source is down, the rest keeps working.

The full write-up with lessons learned follows.