Solar Display &
Kostal PIKO Solar Portal
Solar scoreboard for Kostal PIKO monitoring components
With Kostal PIKO, system operators and installers have access to the most important data of their photovoltaic system at any time. When it comes to analysing measured values or visualising yields, the PIKO series leaves almost nothing to be desired.
Solar displays can retrieve the data from the Kostal portal and are therefore compatible with all components.
For the use of a photovoltaic display to illustrate energy data, only an Internet connection is required on site. The system is thus compatible with any photovoltaic system with inverters or components from Kostal, the only requirement being an Internet connection via LAN or WLAN. This has the advantage that you do not need any direct cabling between the inverter or monitoring components and the large solar displays. This gives you maximum flexibility to select any location for the solar display installation.
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KOSTAL Solar Electric GmbH
Hanferstr. 6
79108 Freiburg i. Br. Germany
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Tel. +49 761 47744 - 100 Fax +49 761 47744 - 111 Mail: service-solar@kostal.com Web: www.kostal-solar-electric.com |
IMPORTANT NOTE ON THE AVAILABILITY OF THE INTERFACE
Sept. 2023 Update: The interface is currently not available due to a portal change at KOSTAL. (MORE)
Communication between Kostal PIKO Solar portal and Solarfox display
- The photovoltaic system generates direct current.
- The inverter converts the solar energy into alternating current (solar power).
- The yielded information is transferred directly from the inverter or monitoring component to the Internet.
- After a Solarfox online account has been created, the Solarfox® web server accesses the data in the Kostal PIKO Solar Portal and generates a slideshow which you can configure individually via web browser.
- The Solarfox® display retrieves the data from the web server via the Internet and displays the data in an attractive visual slideshow. For this purpose, the Solarfox display only needs to retrieve data via the Internet through port 80.
The following Kostal products are compatible
All Kostal inverters are visualised via the PIKO Solar Portal:
- All Kostal inverters and communication products
The following data can be displayed if the data is available in the PIKO Solar Portal :
- Visualisation of power and power yield
- Further data on request
IMPORTANT NOTE ON THE AVAILABILITY OF THE KOSTAL INTERFACE
Official Statement from Kostal:
Adaptation of the KOSTAL Solar Portal interface / API
Soledos GmbH currently uses the KOSTAL Solar Portal API interface to visualise customer systems in their Solarfox displays. Kostal is now planning to adapt the KOSTAL Solar Portal data interface. Due to the changeover, it will not be possible to activate new customers or additional end devices for access to the KOSTAL Solar Portal API for a certain period of time.
An alternative connection option has been developed for the transition period. In this case, the inverters transfer the data directly to Solarfox via the Internet or FTP interface. This option is available for all devices of the Plenticore plus G2 and the announced G3 series and allows you to bypass the waiting time for the API update.
Completion of the new API is expected by mid-2024.
Solarfox displays can thus continue to be connected to Kostal systems of the Plenticore Plus G2 model series. If you do not have your own FTP web server available, an FTP account can be easily purchased in the Solarfox webshop for a one-off set-up fee. This FTP data can then be stored directly in the SETUP menu of the KOSTAL PLENTICORE PLUS G2 inverter. Further information on the connection, such as access data for the connection via FTP, can be obtained directly from Soledos GmbH.“
As of: September 2023
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Latest Update: Access to the Kostal API is temporarily no longer available until the development of the API is complete. Completion date is unknown, for more information, please contact Kostal support.
As of: July 2023
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In 2020, Kostal performed a conversion of the Kostal PIKO portal. During the process, users of the existing portal were successively migrated to the new Kostal Portal. In the course of this migration, however,
the API-interfaces previously used by SolarFox® could no longer be used after a certain time period.
There is currently no modern interface for the new Kostal Solar Portal that can be used by SolarFox® for data retrieval. The development for a working API-interface that can be used by us was already in motion at the start of 2021.
Unfortunately, this development work has not yet been completed by Kostal.
Transitional arrangement:
In order to display data from the Kostal Solar Portal onto a SolarFox display, your Kostal Portal's account must be manually handled by Kostal.
To this end, an e-mail must be sent to Kostal stating your username (e-mail). Kostal has informed us that the activation of such requests will only take place at two-week intervals. You will need to wait up to three weeks until Kostal will process your request.
We apologise for the current circumstances and have already informed Kostal, that the situation is non-ideal.
Please send an email with your activation request first to our ticket system via email to: support@solar-fox.de , so that we at SolarFox® can handle your issue in any way possible.
Upon request, we can also provide you with a contact person from Kostal. You may, of course, also contact any representative from Kostal's Sales department regarding this issue.
As of: March 2023
Visualisation via Kostal PIKO solar portal and combination with other systems and inverters
A Solarfox display is not only compatible with the Kostal PIKO Solar Portal, but also with numerous other solar monitoring systems and can visualise several systems simultaneously on a single display from different manufacturers.
