Grafana dashboards for off-grid solar data

Been tinkering with Grafana on the narrowboat for about eighteen months now, and I've got to say it's been a game-changer for understanding what's actually happening with the solar setup rather than just squinting at the Victron screen.

Started simple — just pulling data from the MPPT controller via Modbus, plotting voltage and current. But once you see your generation patterns visualised properly, you start spotting things. Like how the panels catch morning light off the water but get shaded by the bank come mid-afternoon. Changed our mooring position because of that chart.

The real benefit though is the battery side. I've got alerts set up for when the SOC drops below certain thresholds, and it logs consumption patterns across seasons. Makes a massive difference when you're planning winter months on the canal.

What's your setup like? I'm using InfluxDB to store the data — seemed more sensible than hammering a traditional database with constant sensor reads. Grafana queries it and the whole thing runs on an old Raspberry Pi that barely draws anything.

Curious whether anyone's done the same with a Fogstar or Renogy system, or if there's a particular Grafana dashboard template that people rate? I've cobbled mine together mostly from necessity, but I'd imagine someone's already solved the common problems more elegantly.

Also keen to know if anyone's integrated weather data (rainfall, cloud cover) to correlate with generation. That's my next rabbit hole.

Got Grafana running on a Raspberry Pi pulling from my Victron CCGX and it's brilliant for spotting patterns you'd never catch on the display alone—like how my morning cloud cover costs me a solid hour of charging every April.

The real win is historical data; you can see when your battery performance starts degrading instead of guessing. Set up InfluxDB as your backend if you haven't already, makes the queries snappier than the Victron app alone.

Fair warning though: took me a week of faffing with Node-RED to get the data pipeline stable, and the dashboard takes a hammering when you're trying to render eighteen months of five-minute intervals at once.

What's your data source? If it's a Victron setup I can recommend my exact config.

Yeah, Grafana's proper useful for spotting the dodgy bits before they become proper problems. I've got it pulling data from a Victron SmartShunt in the van and it's revealed some mad consumption patterns I'd never have noticed otherwise.

Main thing I'd add — make sure you're logging enough historical data. Mine was set to keep only 7 days initially, which defeated the purpose. Now I've bumped it up and can actually see seasonal trends across the cabin setup.

Also worth noting the Victron integration is dead straightforward via Modbus if anyone's thinking of setting it up. The learning curve on Grafana itself is basically nothing if you've got basic dashboard sense.

@DucatoDream what're you using as your data source? CCGX direct or something else?

Been running Grafana off a battered old Lenovo laptop for three years now and it's basically become my therapist—nothing says "I've got too much time on my hands" like obsessing over battery voltage graphs at 2am. The real trick is getting your data into it cleanly; I'm pulling from a Victron SmartShunt via Modbus and honestly the first six months were me just staring at flat lines wondering if I'd bricked something.

@Rob1963's spot on about pattern spotting—caught a dodgy cell in my Fogstar lithium bank before it went properly tits up, saved myself a fortune. Dashboard design matters too; started with 47 graphs because I could, now I've got five that actually tell me something useful.

If you're just starting out, Home Assistant + Grafana is the path of least resistance. And for the love of all things off-grid, document your InfluxDB queries—future you will be grateful when you inevitably break everything during an update.

Has anyone got experience pulling data from a Renogy setup via Grafana? I'm halfway through a van conversion and trying to work out if it's worth the effort setting it up from the start versus bolting it on later.

The narrowboat lot seem to have nailed this, but I'm wondering if the Renogy kit even speaks the right language to Grafana, or if you'd need some middleman device doing the translation. @Rob1963 you mention the CCGX—is that essentially what sits between the panels and Grafana doing the heavy lifting?

Also curious about the Pi approach. Mine would be living in the van full-time so it'd need to tolerate some vibration and the occasional damp spell. Are we talking a standard Pi in a case or have you lot done something more robust?

Trying to avoid the situation where I've got good data going nowhere because I didn't think it through properly at the install stage.

Grafana's brilliant until you realise you've spent more time staring at pretty graphs than actually maintaining the batteries they're monitoring—speaking from experience, that's a costly mistake.

@EwanChapman the Renogy integration works fine if you've got their WiFi dongle, though I found the data lag frustrating enough to just script pulling from their API directly into InfluxDB. Bit more faff upfront but worth it.

Real talk though: Grafana shines when you're tracking SOC trends across seasons. I've got mine set up to alert if my Victron BMS patterns go weird, catches voltage balance issues before they turn into dead cells. The narrowboat crowd (@DucatoDream) has it right—visibility is everything when you can't just ring up an engineer.

Just don't do what @ROW_OffGrid did and let it become a substitute for checking your actual kit. A laptop with perfect graphs won't keep the batteries warm in February.

Been meaning to get proper monitoring sorted on my garden office setup. Currently just eyeballing the Victron display every few days which is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

@EwanChapman — are you planning to pull data directly from the Renogy via Modbus, or going the MQTT route? I've heard the Renogy integration can be a bit temperamental depending on your controller model.

The thing that's put me off so far is the initial setup faff. What's the learning curve actually like if you've not done much with databases before? I'm reasonably comfortable with tech but Grafana feels like it might eat a weekend I don't have spare.

Also — and maybe this is obvious — but do you lot find it actually changes how you use the system, or is it mainly satisfying to watch? @MarineClare's got a point about vanity metrics, though I reckon understanding your battery behaviour over seasons could be genuinely useful for the van conversion down the line.

Running Grafana on the motorhome here and it's absolutely transformed how I manage the batteries. Started with just logging Victron data via Modbus, but now I've got historical trends that actually tell me something useful about consumption patterns.

@EwanChapman — Renogy's a bit trickier since they don't expose data as cleanly, but if you've got their BMS you can often pull via USB logging into something like Home Assistant first, then ship it to Grafana. Worth the extra step.

The trick I've found is not overthinking it. Started with twenty different metrics, culled it down to what actually matters: SOC, voltage, current in/out, and daily generation. The temptation to graph everything is real, but @MarineClare's got a point about getting distracted.

If you're using Victron kit, InfluxDB + Telegraf makes it dead straightforward. Pulls directly from the GX device. Dashboard took me an afternoon to set up properly, saves me hours on troubleshooting now.

One thing — make sure your Raspberry Pi's got decent storage if you're

The rabbit hole with Grafana is real, @MarineClare – though I'd argue the time spent is worth it if you're actually acting on the data rather than just admiring the dashboards.

What I've found critical is setting up proper alerting thresholds rather than relying on visual monitoring. I run mine on a Raspberry Pi 4 in the cabin pulling data from a Victron GX device via Modbus, and the moment I configured alerts for battery voltage dropping below 48V or charge controller temps spiking, I caught a dodgy cell that would've otherwise degraded silently.

@FormerMariner – if you're eyeballing the display, you're missing patterns. A month's worth of graphed data showed me my solar orientation was worse than expected in December; I'd never have caught that glancing at instantaneous readings. Even basic logging (VRM data into InfluxDB) takes twenty minutes to set up.

The key is filtering noise. Don't log every five-minute interval – I'm sampling at 15-minute granularity for historical trends and keeping five-minute resolution only for the current 48

The real trick is getting the data out of your Victron kit without it turning into a weekend-long adventure with MQTT and Python scripts that haunt you at 3am.

@FormerMariner—once you stop eyeballing that display, you'll wonder how you ever managed. The beauty is Grafana doesn't judge you for having three months of "battery dropped to 40% because I forgot the fridge was on" data.

What actually matters is dashboarding the stuff that changes your decisions—charge rate trends, seasonal patterns, that one appliance mysteriously draining you at night. I've got mine wired to flag when my AGM starts behaving oddly; caught a failing cell before it got expensive.

Fair warning though: it's like eating crisps. You start with one graph and suddenly you're building alerts for your alerts. Worth every second if you're serious about efficiency, absolutely pointless if you're just after pretty graphs.

What's your data source looking like—Victron USB, Shelly devices, or are you going full IoT?

Spot on about the Victron extraction hassle, @OldSailor. I've had better luck using a Raspberry Pi with VRM API polling than wrestling with MQTT—cuts through the protocol faffing entirely. The dashboards themselves are straightforward once you've got clean data flowing in. What's your current data source setup? Curious if you're hitting any latency issues on the narrowboat.