Lux Monitoring is provided free with every Lux unit. Each box contains a wi-fi dongle to allow the Lux controllers to be paired to the internet. Wi-fi therefore needs to be present at the point of the installation for the monitoring dongle to be paired to the customer’s router.
Where the signal is not strong enough, or there is no internet available then we have a 4G Sim dongle (which works on 4G). These are special order units and are not provided with standard systems. A sim card is provided with the 4G dongle which will provide 12 months of data. Thereafter a standard sim can be purchased and installed.
In circumstances where the customer may prefer a fixed connection we also have a LAN dongle, which is a hardwired unit working from a hardwired connection to the router. Again these are sperate order products.
Lux monitoring is the backbone of the Luxpower systems and allows customers to monitor their existing solar system, the battery storage system and set up many charging and discharging features.
The free monitoring takes a snapshot of the system every 5 minutes, and will also refresh quicker if you refresh button is used.
The Lux monitoring is very extensive and has many graphs to show a wide arrange of data. There is only one page on the monitoring where actual settings can be adjusted. As long as these are correctly changed if needed then there will be no problems.
Fully Automatic
The Luxpower units work fully automatically. They will always prioritise supplying the house with any power from solar panels first, secondly they will send any residual solar to the batteries, and lastly and only if there is no other options they will allow it to go back to the grid.
Where the Luxpower system detects power being imported from the grid then power will be discharged to negate any purchasing happening.
Cause and affect
All systems work on cause and affect. So a load in the house needs to be present for that load to be able to respond. Equally any excess solar needs to be generated for the system to detect it and start to harvest that energy to the batteries. There is always reaction time required to any events, although the Luxpower will track and react extremely quickly.
Charge/discharge settings
It is simple to set charge periods (up to 3) where your system will be in charge. This is particularly useful where cheap electricity is available. The same can be done for discharging the batteries should there be a requirement.
App Based and Server based
The Luxpower monitoring is available either through the App, which allows viewing using Mobile phones, tablets etc. Alternatively the monitoring can be monitored through the Luxpower server which actually gives more additional detail. The username and password to access either of these platforms is the same. The server can be accessed through server.luxpowertek.com
Octopus Agile Auto Charge
The Octopus Agile tariffs allow some very cheap off-peak charging to occur. As those who us it know the prices vary every 30 mins, and every day is different. Therefore in order to make working with Agile more simple, we have developed our own package to assist Luxpower customers. In simple terms the customer can select a number (for example 4), and the monitoring will automatically find the 4 cheapest 30 mins pricing every night and put the system into charge during those 4 x 30 mins slots.
Weather Compensation
Charging batteries overnight makes complete sense, however even at cheap prices our customers would rather fill batteries with any free solar than pre-filling them with cheap solar. Therefore we have developed a programme that will identify weather at a specific postcode and formulate it into 8 recognisable predicted weathers for the following day, starting with Bright sunshine down to heavy rain. The customer can then select an overnight percentage level they want the batteries to be charged based on the weather the next day. Simple and free we require a luxpower serial number and your postcode to activate this.