SunPower launches home solar and storage monitoring app

The SunPower solar monitoring app draws inspiration for its user interface from non-energy sources such as Spider-Man.

February 3, 2021 Tim Sylvia

Image: SunPower

SunPower has launched its new mySunPower app, a way for homeowners to review and manage their energy generation, consumption, and battery storage settings from their mobile devices.

The app will be available for download for SunPower Equinox customers starting Feb. 16th on the Apple App Store and Google Play store. It also will be available to all of SunPower’s 285,000 monitoring customers sometime in the second quarter.

The app allows customers to track how much solar their system is generating on an hourly, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, or by time parameters that the customer can set themselves. The app also allows customers to track how much grid-supplied energy they are consuming and the current state of their battery’s charge.

Along with checking their battery’s charge, customers can also operate their battery in one of three modes–Reserve, Cost Savings, Self Supply. The setting depends on if they’re prioritizing saving energy in the event of an outage, minimizing their bill by charging their battery and selling excess generation at the most opportune times, or maximizing the amount of renewable energy that their home uses.

The app builds on what Vice President of Software Product & Engineering at SunPower, Jacob Wachman, calls a digital experience from the ground up.

What Wachman is referring to is the different software tools that SunPower provides to make the entire solar system purchase and installation process a digital possibility. This begins with the company’s Instant Design tool, which allows potential customers to digitally build a system to fit their needs. Customers can then buy the system and monitor installation through the mySunPower portal. The new app, the last step of the fully digital process, is intended to flow seamlessly with the other two services, fully acclimating the customer to the platform.

The user interface is something that the company prioritized throughout the app’s development, aiming to bring a new, accessible experience to customers who may not be technically experienced with their home’s energy needs.

“We wanted to make it as easy to use as possible,” said Wachman.

He also said that the development team looked outside of the solar industry to develop the user interface. For example, developers took inspiration from nontraditional non-energy sources, such as the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

The app also allows customers to get a sense of the environmental attributes that their system is achieving. It does this by taking the amount of emissions prevented by the system, the equivalent of trees planted those emission reductions equate to, and their emission reductions in terms of equivalent miles driven or gallons of gas used.

Plans call for the app to include a warning system to alert homeowners of impending blackouts, whether a planned outage like Pacific Gas & Electric’s weather-related rolling blackouts in California, or a natural disaster. That enhancement is set to release later in the year.

That means the release coming later this month is not the app’s final form. Wachman said that it was designed to easily integrate new features as they are developed.

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