Read Growatt Solar inverter data with ESPHome
Add Solar data to my Home Assistant dashboard without the use of a cloud solution offered by the manufacturer of the inverter.
That was actually very simple. The Growatt inverters use an USB dongle to send the data to the internet, I replaced the USB dongle with my own. My own USB dongle is an UART combined with an ESP-01 board.
Because they fit nicely together it was an easy choice.
ESPHome is the easiest way to create a Home Assistant compatible agent. Check the ESPHome.io website for how to program the ESP-01, the needed yaml file is in this repository. Make sure you add the wifi details and an API key to the yaml, personally I use a secrets.yaml for my wifi and api details so that the integration scripts are clean.
After programming the ESP-01 add the dongle in the USB port of the inverter find the allocated IP in your wifi router.
Use the Home Assistant ESPHome integration to add the dongle. When you check the Sensors you will see something like this:
I found the yaml somewhere on a forum and altered it for my usecase, not sure who the original author is.