GivEnergy and my system installer have suggested an external wi-fi booster might help stop my annoying intermittent disconnection from the 4g dongle but I don't know which to go for.
Anyone got any suggestions that have worked for them?
The router is about 10 metres from the shed where the inverter is installed. When we first tried to connect it to our house Wi-fi, the signal wasn't strong enough, hence the 4g dongle.
Any ideas?
Is there an option for a powerline adaptor?
You don't want a booster if you have stuff installed in the shed. It'll eat your airtime (performance) on the rest of the wifi.
You want an external wifi access point, preferably one with PoE (power over ethernet) so one hole in the wall, one network cable back to router/somewhere for power for the PoE injector. That way you have wifi coverage in the garden/shed without eating all the airtime (phy rate) on the internal wifi setup. Easy DIY job, no problems with electrical regs as its classified as ultra-low voltage DC and as such needs no certs.
Note that modern (post 2015 or so) double/triple glazed units have a metallic layer sprayed onto the glass which attenuates (reduces) the wifi signal by about 80%.
DreadorUK Is there an option for a powerline adaptor?
In general they only work well on the same ring main. If you have to go through the consumer board/RCBOs then it's very much hit and miss (for a long run out to the garden) - especially with RCBOs IME.
Edit - its also worth bearing in mind that they cause a LOT of EM noise which can affect VDSL (FTTC) broadband services.
netty what inverter is it.
Vestas I use powerline adaptors and they work great - but maybe I'm lucky. My router is in the house, upstairs front bedroom and my inverter is in a detached garage behind the house and about 25m away. They even have seperate consumer units and still the network link stays connected. I have installed a full wifi access point (ubiquiti) in the garage coming off the adaptor which the inverter connects to. All my rear external lights, CCTV come off this AP too.
SteveCook It's GIV-HY5.0
Vestas "Easy DIY job" he says (sideways laughing emoji) ... but thank you for taking the time to reply.
I might suggest this to the installers.
We don't have any double glazing in the room next to the shed so it wouldn't be the window issue. Interesting though.
Vestas Just for clarification I wasn't hinting at using power line as booster, I meant more hardwired option.
Try Googling Tp- Link Wi-Fi range extender. I have a chain of two them to get to my garage. On the plus side I now have Wi-Fi in my front garden as well😊
I had tp link powerline adapters in the house and my inverters were connected to the repeater for most of the year.
I found they worked ok on the same fuse box, maybe once a month or so they’d just randomly disconnect and I’d have to unplug them to cause a reboot.
Working across fuseboxes to our extension they were much less stable
And they’re susceptible to electronic noise on the ring main. Cheap usb power transformers can kill the signal
I’ve now moved to a MERCUSYS ax3000 mesh Wi-Fi and it’s more reliable
Just to update you, it turns out that we just needed a new router (which has different bandwidths for our different appliances rather than one bandwidth) and with a little EE booster disc (which we already had in my son's room) the solar panel company returned, took the 4G dongle away and managed to connect us to our own router.
Voila!
Now the inverter never goes offline and I can set it at any point to take advantage of Power-ups etc.
Thanks all for help and advice.
netty if you can, get a LAN cable to your shed, then put in a switch and connect your inverter using patch cable. i would not recommend powerline adaptors for something so critical as GE inverter
deepanshus not all inverters have LAN capabilities however, I'm gen 1 and stuck on WiFi unfortunately
deepanshus
It's not really critical, though, is it? 99.9% of the time it's just pushing data up to the cloud or HA. Bandwidth requirements are minimal.
Have been happily using powerline adapters (on different circuits, too) between office and Gen 2 inverter in detached garage about 30M away. No problems at all.