Operational Heatmap chart

What this widget is for

The Operational Heatmap turns a long stretch of energy data into a coloured grid you can read at a glance. Time of day across one axis, days (or devices, or MPPTs) on the other; the colour of each cell shows the energy total for that slice. Sunny mornings light up; quiet weekends fade; a failing solar string shows up as a darker stripe among bright ones.

It's the right widget for spotting patterns across time rather than reading specific values — daily rhythms, seasonal shifts, devices that are out of step with their peers. For exact numbers use a chart with an axis; for live values use a live status icon.

Companion guides

• Dashboard overview — how to add, move, resize, and remove widgets.
• PV MPPT widgets — when you've spotted a dim row in the PV Manager (by mppt) heatmap and want to investigate one MPPT in detail.
• Energy Production & Consumption chart — the bar-chart sibling for the same totals over time.

Where to find it

Open the Dashboard, click the pencil icon to enter edit mode, then click Add New Widget. Search the picker for Operational Heatmap and click Add Widget.

The chart at a glance

A grid of cells:

• One axis is time — hours of the day, or days within the chosen period.
• The other axis is whatever you're grouping by — days of the period (so each row is one day), or PV devices, or MPPTs, or inputs.
• Cell colour shows the magnitude — bright for high energy, dark for low.
• Hover a cell to see its exact value and the time slice it represents.

The chart's title is prefixed with the active period — Daily, Monthly, Yearly — and a date picker chooses the specific period to summarise.

Choosing what to plot

Open the gear icon. The settings dialog has:

• Title — the header text.
• Data Series — pick which stream the heatmap visualises:
  • Grid W import — energy drawn from the grid.
  • Grid W export — energy sent back to the grid.
  • Load W — total site consumption.
  • PV W — solar production.
  • PV Manager (by device) — PV production, one row per PV device.
  • PV Manager (by mppt) — PV production, one row per MPPT channel.
  • PV Manager (by input) — PV production, one row per input.
• Group By — how the time axis is bucketed: Hour or Day. Hour buckets give a finer grid (24 columns); Day buckets give one column per day.

The chart redraws when you change either.

Picking a period

Use the date picker to choose what the heatmap covers. The available periods are Daily, Monthly, and Yearly; pick the one that matches how far back you want to look.

• Daily — a single day's heatmap (mostly useful when grouped by hour with rows being devices / MPPTs / inputs).
• Monthly — a month of data: days × hours, or days × days (if you really want).
• Yearly — a year of data: each row a day across the year, columns the hours or days you've grouped by.

The chart redraws as soon as you change the date.

Reading the heatmap

• Brighter cells mean more energy in that slice; darker means less. The colour scale auto-adjusts to the range present so the chart always has contrast.
• Look for stripes, blocks, and gaps. A bright vertical band suggests a recurring time-of-day event (load step, scheduled task). A horizontal band suggests an unusual day (cloud cover, holiday). A dark cell where its neighbours are bright is a dropout (gateway offline, sensor fault, or genuinely zero).
• Hover any cell for the exact value and label.

Special row-grouping modes (PV Manager)

When the Data Series is one of the PV Manager options, the heatmap rearranges rows to be per device, per MPPT, or per input instead of per day:

• By device — one row per PV device. Use this for sites with several PV controllers.
• By mppt — one row per MPPT channel across all PV devices. The fastest way to spot one MPPT lagging the others.
• By input — one row per input within an MPPT (where applicable).

In these modes, the time axis is still split by hour or day — but every row is the same span across different devices / channels, so colour differences mean that channel performed differently than this one.

Who can do what

• Any signed-in user can add the chart, pick a data series and grouping, change dates, and read the heatmap. The chart is read-only — it never sends a command back to a device.

Common issues

• The whole chart is dark. Either the chosen series has no data for the chosen period, or the period is too wide and any single cell is small compared to the maximum. Try a shorter period or a different series.
• A row or column is entirely dark. That row's row-group (device, MPPT, day) had no reportable data for the period. For a one-off day this is usually a connectivity issue; for an MPPT it can indicate the channel is offline — cross-check with the PV MPPT widgets.
• The colour scale shifts when changing periods. Expected. The scale auto-fits the data range so each heatmap reads with the same level of contrast. The cell value is what matters, not the absolute colour.
• PV Manager modes show nothing. The site doesn't have a PV Manager device (model 30) — the row-grouping modes only work where there are PV Manager records to group.

Tips and gotchas

• The chart rewards a bit of width. Resize it 4 or 5 columns wide rather than the default 3 — the cells get bigger and patterns jump out more.
• Compare two periods using two heatmaps. Drop two Operational Heatmap charts on the same View, set them to consecutive months. Side by side, the colour patterns make the comparison obvious without staring at numbers.
• Hour groupings hide weekends. When grouped by hour, weekend rows just look quieter — but you can't tell which day of the week. Add a Load W heatmap grouped by day for the weekly cadence.
• The chart refreshes with the dashboard. When Auto Update is on in your View Settings, the chart re-fetches its data on every refresh.