Power Analytics chart
What this widget is for
The Power Analytics chart plots site-wide power over time — generation, consumption, and storage — as smooth lines on a time axis. Pick a date, choose which streams to plot, and read the day's behaviour at a glance: when the solar came on, when the load peaked, how the battery moved with them, how much came from or went to the grid.
It is the right widget for power questions across a day or a range (in kW or kVA). For energy totals (kWh per hour / day / month) use the Energy Production & Consumption chart; for individual device history use the Device Historical Analytics chart; for "what's happening right now" use the Real-Time Aggregated Power chart.
Companion guides
- Dashboard overview — how to add, move, resize, and remove widgets.
- Energy Production & Consumption chart — the totals (kWh) view; this chart is the power (kW) view.
- Device Historical Analytics chart — when you need which device drove a peak, not just the plant-wide total.
- Real-Time Aggregated Power chart — the live-streaming sibling of this chart.
Where to find it
Open the Dashboard, click the pencil icon to enter edit mode, then click Add New Widget. Search the picker for Power Analytics and click Add Widget.
The chart at a glance
A row of small icons at the top of the chart:
- Date picker — pick the day to plot. The base chart shows one day at a time.
- Magnifier — switch into zoom mode so you can drag horizontally to zoom into a window.
- Open hand — switch into "select a range to total" mode (see Selecting a region to total below).
- Download — export the plotted data as CSV.
- Gear — open the settings dialog.
Below the toolbar is the chart area itself, with one or two y-axes (depending on what you've plotted) and a legend along the bottom.
Choosing what to plot
Open the gear icon. The settings dialog gives you:
- Title — the header text.
- Data Interval — how finely to bucket the data (see Picking a data interval below).
- Align Y Axis Zero — when ticked, keeps the zero point of the left and right axes aligned, so a value of zero sits at the same horizontal line on both sides. Useful when comparing series with different units side-by-side.
- Series toggles — eleven streams you can show or hide:
- Grid W / Grid VA — grid power (real / apparent).
- Gen W / Gen VA — generator power.
- Load W / Load VA — site load.
- PV W / PV VA — solar production.
- Storage W / Storage VA — battery power.
- Storage % — battery state of charge, plotted on a 0–100 % axis.
Tick the ones you want; the chart redraws as soon as you change a switch.
For a clean "power story for today", tick PV W, Load W, Grid W, and Storage % and leave the others off. You'll see production, consumption, the grid balance, and how the battery moved — all on one chart.
Picking a data interval
The Data Interval dropdown controls how the raw samples are summarised before plotting:
- 0.5 min — the finest setting; raw shape, every spike visible.
- 2 min — gentle smoothing; closer-to-raw with less noise.
- 5 min — the default; balanced for a full day's view.
- 10 min — heaviest smoothing; useful when the chart looks "busy" or when you want to ignore short transients.
Behind the scenes, the chart averages every sample inside a bucket of the chosen size and plots one point per bucket. This is a faithful summary — a brief spike attenuates into a higher bucket average but doesn't vanish — so coarser intervals give a true picture of finer ones.
If you see a flat-looking chart at 10 min and a clear spike at 0.5 min, the data hasn't changed — that's what averaging does. Use the finer interval when you're hunting transients, the coarser one when you want the overall shape.
Reading the chart
- Hover anywhere along the chart to see a tooltip listing every series at the hovered time.
- Click the chart to pin the tooltip. Click again to unpin.
- Two y-axes appear when you plot streams with different units. Power streams (W / VA) share an axis on the left; Storage % gets its own axis on the right (because it ranges 0–100 %).
- The line can have gaps. A gap means there is no data for that window — sensor offline, gateway down, etc. The chart deliberately leaves a gap instead of drawing a line through nothing, so missing data doesn't look like "true zero".
Zooming into detail
Click the magnifier to enter zoom mode. Drag horizontally on the chart to zoom into that time window; the percent of the original range left visible appears in the top-right corner. Click the close (✕) icon to return to the full range.
Selecting a region to total
Click the open hand icon to enter select mode, then drag horizontally across the chart and release to mark a window. The widget computes a sum / total for the selected window — handy for answering "how much energy was drawn from the grid between 10 and 12" without doing the maths by hand. Click the close (✕) icon (the open hand turned into a ✕) to leave select mode.
Downloading the data
Click the download icon to export the plotted series as CSV — one row per timestamp, one column per series currently on the chart. The export reflects what you can see: same date, same series, same interval.
Who can do what
- Any signed-in user can add the chart, choose series, pick dates, change the data interval, zoom, total a region, and download the CSV. The chart is read-only — it never sends a command back to a device.
Common issues
- "No Data For Time Period" — there are no readings for the chosen date for the chosen series. Common causes: a date before the device started reporting, a meter offline that day, or all selected series are unavailable. Pick a different date or different series.
- The chart looks empty even though a series is enabled. That series may not be reporting on this site (e.g. no generator hardware) — switch it off so the chart isn't carrying dead series.
- The legend is full but the lines are crammed. Hide some series in the legend (click them) or open the gear and turn off the ones you don't actually need. Charts with three or four lines are easier to read than charts with eleven.
- Storage % goes flat at 100 or 0. Battery is fully charged or fully discharged for the period. The data is correct — the battery just hit a limit.
Tips and gotchas
- Pair with the Energy Production & Consumption chart. This chart shows power (kW) over a day; that chart shows energy (kWh) totals across hours, days, or months. Together they answer "when did things happen" and "how much in total".
- Wide ranges + many series = slow first load. Each enabled series fetches data for every day in the range. Start with one day and few series; widen once you know what you're looking for.
- Use Align Y Axis Zero when mixing W and %. Without it the two axes can drift visually — zero on the power axis ends up halfway up the chart on the percentage axis. The toggle keeps them lined up so the shapes are honest.
- The chart refreshes with the dashboard. When Auto Update is on in your View Settings, this chart re-fetches its data on every refresh — so a chart left open quietly picks up the newest readings.