Why the fee appeared
It isn't a price rise on a service you signed up for — it's a different company charging for what used to be bundled. SunPower filed Chapter 11 in 2024 and shut down all official support on September 20, 2024, taking the mySunPower app, the web portal, and the phone line with it. SunStrong Management took over the monitoring platform, primarily serving lease and PPA customers, and rebuilt the app as freemium.
The split lands where it hurts most: free gives you real-time power flow and system health, while Premium at about $9.99/mo ($99.99/yr) holds historical data, panel-level monitoring, and analytics.
Why that split is the annoying one
Real-time power tells you the system is on right now. It cannot tell you:
- whether this year is worse than last year — that needs history;
- whether one panel out of thirty has quietly failed — that needs panel-level data;
- whether the bill creeping up is your solar or your usage — that needs both.
Those are the questions people actually have. Owners also widely report that paying for access to data from equipment they own outright feels wrong, and some who prepaid annual monitoring report receiving no data after their subscription anniversary date. If you're irritated, you're not being unreasonable.
What you can do instead
Pay Enphase to replace the gateway
Enphase will send a technician to swap the SunPower gateway for an Enphase one, which moves you onto their platform. No monthly fee for monitoring afterwards — but it's hardware plus a service call, so it's a real up-front cost, and you need to be home for the visit. $999 as of August 2026 — confirm current pricing with Enphase. Not available for SunVault battery systems, which Enphase's monitoring-restoration service explicitly excludes.
Pay once, keep the gateway you own
A plug-in monitor reads your existing gateway on your own network — no technician, no appointment. With the WattHacker monitor, seeing your data is free forever: every panel live, no subscription, and no card on file. You pay once for the $50 monitor and nothing after. An optional premium plan at $6/mo (billed annually) adds history and alerts.
Like-for-like: SunStrong Premium is $9.99/mo indefinitely, and its free tier does not include per-panel data. Ours does, at $0.
And if you're technical, you can read the gateway yourself for free with open-source software, at the cost of setting it up and maintaining it.
Where WattHacker fits
The WattHacker monitor is a small box that plugs into your existing SunPower PVS6 gateway on your own home network and reads it directly. It doesn't rely on SunPower's or SunStrong's servers, because for owners like you those are either gone or behind a paywall. No technician, no electrician, no rewiring — you plug it in yourself.
- The monitor is $50 once, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Free to see your panel data, forever — every panel, live, no subscription, and no card on file.
- An optional premium plan at $6/mo (billed annually) adds the memory: full history kept for good, year-over-year comparison, and alerts told to you in dollars.
- Built by an electrification superfan who wants to help others use their solar smarter, lower their utility bills, and clean up the planet. Who's behind it.
Still have questions about your own system? I'll go through it with you — your panels, your bill, and what's worth doing about it.
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Common questions
Why does the SunPower app charge a monthly fee now?
SunPower went bankrupt in 2024 and shut down support on September 20, 2024. SunStrong Management took over the monitoring platform and rebuilt the app on a freemium basis: a free Basic tier with real-time power flow and system health, and a Premium tier at $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year for historical data, panel-level monitoring, and analytics.
What do I still get for free?
SunStrong's free Basic tier includes real-time power flow and a system-health view. What moved behind the paywall is history, panel-level monitoring, and analytics.
Do I have to pay to see my own solar data?
No. Your PVS6 gateway holds your production data locally on your own home network. It can be read without any subscription — with a plug-in monitor, or with free open-source software if you are technical.
Do you support the PVS5, or only the PVS6?
The monitor reads your gateway's local interface, and the PVS5 exposes the same one — so it was built to work with both. What we can't tell you yet is that it's confirmed, because we haven't had a PVS5 to test on. That testing is open now: if you have a PVS5 and want in, email tony@watthacker.com and you can be one of the units we verify it against.
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