Solar Panel Monitoring UK: Apps, Tools and How to Track Your Output

Getting solar panels installed is only the beginning. To make the most of your system — and catch problems before they silently drain your returns — you need to know what your panels are actually generating, how much you're using yourself, and how much you're exporting to the grid. The good news is that most modern inverters come with free monitoring apps, and a handful of free third-party tools let you go even deeper. This guide walks through everything a UK homeowner needs to know about solar panel monitoring, from brand apps to smart meter tricks.

Why monitoring matters

A poorly performing system can quietly cost you for months. Inverter faults, shading from a newly grown tree, or a single failing panel can reduce your annual output by 10–20% without triggering any obvious alarm. The only way to catch these issues early is to check your generation data regularly and compare it against what your system should be producing for your location and time of year.

Monitoring also helps you understand your self-consumption — the proportion of solar generation you use directly in the home rather than exporting. Self-consumed electricity saves you the full import rate (around 24–25p per kWh on a standard tariff in 2026), whereas exported electricity earns the Smart Export Guarantee rate, which is typically 12–15p per kWh. The higher your self-consumption, the better your returns.

Inverter-native monitoring apps

The simplest starting point is whichever app came with your inverter. All major inverter brands sold in the UK now offer a free app and web portal. They require your installer to register the system during commissioning, after which you create an owner account.

SolarEdge — mySolarEdge

SolarEdge is one of the most widely installed inverter brands in the UK. The free mySolarEdge app shows panel-level output in real time — a key advantage if you have any shading risk — as well as daily, monthly and lifetime generation totals, self-consumption, and battery state of charge if you have storage. The web portal at monitoring.solaredge.com offers more detailed historical charts.

GivEnergy

GivEnergy is a popular UK brand whose app shows full system view: solar generation, battery charge and discharge, grid import and export, and home consumption all on one screen. The cloud portal refreshes every five minutes; if your system has local monitoring enabled, you can also view near-real-time data on your home network. GivEnergy systems are common in all-in-one installs that include battery storage, so the app is particularly strong at showing how the battery is shifting your self-consumption across the day.

Growatt — ShinePhone

Growatt's ShinePhone app covers generation, consumption and export and is free to use. It is functional for everyday checking but the historical analysis tools are less detailed than SolarEdge or GivEnergy. Growatt inverters are common in budget-conscious installs and perform reliably at the basic monitoring level.

Solis — SolisCloud

Solis (made by Ginlong) use the SolisCloud platform, which offers plant-level analytics, historical data download, and automated fault alerts. It is well regarded for its clean interface and is available both as an app and a web portal.

Third-party monitoring tools

If you want richer data or to benchmark against other UK systems, a third-party tool is worth adding alongside your inverter app.

PVOutput

PVOutput (pvoutput.org) is a free, community-run platform where owners log and share their solar generation data. You can compare your daily and monthly output against other similar systems in your area, which is an excellent sanity check when your inverter app gives a figure that seems unexpectedly low or high. Many inverters can push data to PVOutput automatically via a “push” API integration — check your brand's support pages for setup instructions. PVOutput is particularly popular among the DIY monitoring community and integrates well with Home Assistant for advanced automation and logging.

Solar Analytics

Solar Analytics is a subscription monitoring platform that uses local hardware connected to your inverter to capture granular performance data. Its algorithms compare your actual output against what your specific system — based on your roof pitch, orientation and local weather — should be producing each day. If it detects a sustained shortfall it sends you an alert. It is more expensive than free brand apps but is aimed at owners who want professional-grade fault detection without waiting for their annual installer review.

Octopus Energy dashboard

If you are on an Octopus energy tariff (including Outgoing Octopus or Octopus Flux), the Octopus app shows your import and export data in near-real time, and the Octopus Flux dashboard in particular is useful for understanding how your battery, solar and grid use interact across each half-hour slot. This is more of an energy management dashboard than a pure solar monitoring tool, but it is a natural complement to your inverter app if Octopus is your supplier.

Smart meters and the Glow / Bright apps

A SMETS2 smart meter unlocks a free layer of import and export data that your inverter app may not provide. The Bright app by Hildebrand (free on iOS and Android) connects to your smart meter via the DCC network and displays your half-hourly import and export figures, updated with roughly a 30-minute delay in the standard (free) version. This is particularly useful for cross-checking how much you are actually exporting versus what your inverter reports.

For near-real-time consumption data, Hildebrand also sells the Glow IHD/CAD hardware device (a small plug-in display), which connects directly to your smart meter via Zigbee and can deliver live readings every few seconds. This level of granularity is most useful for DIY energy automation projects. If you'd like to explore further, our Home Assistant solar integration guide covers how to pull Glow data into a home automation dashboard.

What to monitor — the four key figures

Focus on these four data points in your monitoring app:

• Generation (kWh): total electricity your panels produced today, this month, this year.
• Self-consumption (%): what proportion you used directly in the home.
• Export (kWh): what went to the grid (and therefore earns your SEG rate).
• Import (kWh): what you still had to buy from the grid despite your panels generating.

Most inverter apps display all four. If yours only shows generation, use your smart meter data to fill in the import/export picture.

Spotting underperformance: compare against PVGIS

The most reliable way to tell whether your system is underperforming is to compare your actual annual output against the figure from PVGIS. PVGIS is the European Commission's free online solar calculator, which uses satellite irradiance data to estimate how much electricity a given system — at your exact postcode, roof pitch and orientation — should produce in a typical year. Your installer should have provided a PVGIS or similar estimate in your handover documents; if not, you can run your own calculation at the JRC PVGIS tool (re.jrc.ec.europa.eu).

If your actual annual output is 10% or more below the PVGIS estimate and the weather has been broadly normal, it is worth investigating further before assuming the shortfall is just a cloudy year. Common causes include:

• Shading — a tree or neighbouring extension that has grown since installation.
• Inverter fault — inverter issues account for a significant share of PV system failures; error codes on your inverter's display or in the app are the clearest signal.
• Soiling — a heavy build-up of bird droppings or moss in an area without much rain.
• Panel degradation — gradual, within manufacturer warranty bounds; typically 0.5–0.7% per year.

When to clean vs when to call your installer

Cleaning is rarely the first priority. On a typical pitched UK roof, rainfall keeps panels at 93–97% of peak output for most of the year, according to the Energy Saving Trust. A professional clean every 18–24 months is sensible maintenance, but do not assume dirty panels are the cause of a significant output drop without ruling out inverter and wiring faults first.

Call your installer (or another MCS-certified solar firm) if:

• Your inverter app shows an active error or fault code.
• Output is consistently 10% or more below your PVGIS estimate over a full month of normal weather.
• You notice physical damage — cracked glass, discolouration, or visible burn marks — on any panel.
• The system has stopped generating entirely and rebooting the inverter has not resolved it.

For post-install maintenance and solar panel cleaning advice, including how to tell when cleaning is actually needed, see our dedicated guide.