2026-05-01 — fix 5-minute spikes on AC-output power time-series

Symptom

On both inverters' apparent-power and active-power Influx series, a tall rectangular spike to exactly 6000 VA / 6000 W appeared every ~5 minutes. The spike was simultaneous on both units even though they are not paralleled on AC output (and on this rig the AC outputs aren't even tied to a common load), which ruled out any real-load mechanism.

90-min sample (idle unit 2, baseline ~47 VA / ~0 W):

metric	spike value	spike count	inter-spike gap
`VA`	6000 (only)	36 / 30 min	pairs ~3–5s, 298s between pairs
`W`	6000 (only)	12 / 30 min	same pattern

Unit 1 spiked at :37:12 / :42:15 / :47:17 / …, unit 2 at :37:44 / :42:46 / …. Each cycle is exactly 5 min; the two daemons sit ~32 s out of phase, so on charts binned > 1 min they look simultaneous.

Root cause

6000 is the LVX6048's nameplate apparent / active power. Two PI18 commands return that field:

GS (every 5 s): live measurement
PIRI (every 300 s): nameplate / configured rating

In powermon-patches/pi18.py both fields share the same description string ("AC Output Apparent Power", "AC Output Active Power"). Powermon's outputformats/hass.py slugifies description into the HA entity_id with no per-command namespace, so both publish to:

homeassistant/sensor/lvx6048_X_ac_output_apparent_power/state
homeassistant/sensor/lvx6048_X_ac_output_active_power/state

Every 300 s when PIRI fires, the entity is written with 6000 for one publish; the next GS (≤5 s later) restores the live value. HA's recorder captures both → Influx records a 6000-valued sample tagged to the live entity. Hence the periodic rectangular spike.

The same collision exists for several other PIRI fields whose descriptions duplicate live GS fields:

AC Input Voltage
AC Input Current (not in GS, but shadows the live current series via PIRI's nameplate input rating)
AC Output Voltage
AC Output Frequency
AC Output Current
Battery Voltage

Same artifact, just less visible because nameplate values for those are close to live values during steady-state operation.

Fix

Add excl_filter to the PIRI command block in both powermon configs (matches the existing pattern used on GS for dead/dummy fields). PIRI's job in this stack is to publish configured thresholds — bulk/float voltages, charging-current ceilings, source priorities, etc. The fields that duplicate GS measurements provide no value and only corrupt the recorder series.

  - command: PIRI
    trigger:
      every: 300
    outputs:
      - type: mqtt
        topic: powermon/lvx6048_X/PIRI
        format:
          type: hass
          discovery_prefix: homeassistant
          entity_id_prefix: lvx6048_X
          excl_filter: '^(ac_input_voltage|ac_input_current|ac_output_voltage|ac_output_frequency|ac_output_current|ac_output_apparent_power|ac_output_active_power|battery_voltage)$'

Applied to both config/powermon/powermon.yaml and …/powermon2.yaml, and mirrored to the live ~/.config/powermon/ deploys.

Net effect

Metric	Before	After
`VA` series spurious 6000 spikes / 5 min	2/inverter	0
`W` series spurious 6000 spikes / 5 min	2/inverter	0
PIRI fields published per inverter	26	18
PIRI fields kept (battery/charge/priority configs)	—	all retained

PIRI configuration entities (battery thresholds, MCHGC ceilings, output priority, etc.) are unchanged — they continue to update every 300 s on their own entity_ids.

Files touched

M  LVX6048/config/powermon/powermon.yaml      (excl_filter on PIRI)
M  LVX6048/config/powermon/powermon2.yaml     (same)
A  LVX6048/2026-05-01.md                      (this file)

How to verify

sudo systemctl restart powermon.service powermon2.service

# Watch one PIRI cycle (≤5 min) — apparent power should NOT publish a 6000:
mosquitto_sub -h 10.0.0.41 -u mqtt -P <pass> \
    -t 'homeassistant/sensor/lvx6048_+_ac_output_apparent_power/state' -W 360

# Or query Influx after one full cycle:
influx -host 10.0.0.41 -username homeassistant -password <pass> \
    -database homeassistant -execute "
SELECT count(\"value\") FROM \"VA\"
WHERE (\"entity_id\" = 'lvx6048_lvx6048_1_ac_output_apparent_power'
    OR \"entity_id\" = 'lvx6048_lvx6048_2_ac_output_apparent_power')
  AND \"value\" = 6000
  AND time > now() - 30m"
# Expect: count → 0 once the next two PIRI cycles have passed without spikes.

Rollback

git -C ~/solar checkout HEAD~1 -- LVX6048/config/powermon/
cp ~/solar/LVX6048/config/powermon/powermon{,2}.yaml ~/.config/powermon/
# (re-edit ~/.config/powermon/*.yaml to restore real MQTT_PASSWORD)
sudo systemctl restart powermon.service powermon2.service

Upstream-fix candidate

Cleaner (but invasive) alternative would patch outputformats/hass.py to namespace entity_ids by command (e.g., _settings_ infix for PIRI). Not worth the patch maintenance — the excl_filter is one line per command and survives powermon upgrades.

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