Steve87

Todays technology can always be reviewed in a few years much like the Sunsynk has in the above posts. Solis is the latest flavour. At the same time as the Sunsynk Honeymoon was the Woolworths (because of price) FreedomWon Honeymoon at the same time. How time & brands change. 5 years of good service from any of these brands is doing good. Tech changes quickly & so does the utility supplier. Given you on a farm id not even bother with a hybrid that is bi directional. The costs of the transformer pole doesn't make sense. 2 X 6kW off grid deyes are the sweetest honey in terms of price & redundancy. Get a small 6kW Genset with the savings. I love the quality of the 16kW deye but you could buy all the items I've mentioned in this paragraph & have change to spare. At R7k a pop it doesn't get better than that. The Deye MAX is somewhere north of R40k. Too much in my opinion for the romance.

Yes, you will need the Rs232 cable first. And because they share the same port, it's a choice one or the other. Physically impossible to have both in at the same time.

The 50kW Sunsynk/ Deye the port is side on.

Yes that port is on the side. Your inverter must be able to accept a logger. This plugs into the Logger port.

See pics attached...

From memory there is another way via the RS232 port from where the Logger connects. It's a DB9 looking printer port. Look on SA if they sell it. The Sunsynks kept on changing firmware & all sorts of stupid things. One thing for sure the RS232 always works.

The PLC will no doubt be using 24V. Not a hazardous voltage at all. Having seen enough VFD installations I'm going to say yes rather separate them. Safer rather than sorry. Probably not that many DC cables anyways...

Some one once told me its like the worst restaurant you have ever been to. The service is slow, the food is cold and the the food of very poor quality. So you have a bad experience & you keep going back and pricing keeps going up. For many that have the choice we never go back but for many they stop noticing and actually just put up with it. In the end I think for many they just become irrelevant. But people don't realise their biggest customers are farmers & that's our food security & based on that fact I guess they will have to keep being a going concern one way or another even if it's by hand outs by the state.

Hi Corne, not really a unique situation. The modern Commercial sites have this type of Micro Grid topology mostly if there are Grid ties involved with a Hybrid BESS system that's are AC coupled on the Load side. The advantage of AC coupling on the load side is the Grid tie gets Voltage ref from the Load side and will produce power all the time. If on the Grid side it will island if Grid power is lost. I used to know the Victron architecture well but I certainly am not current on it at all. The Victron does feature Frequency shifting, however, it's only possible when there is no Grid power involved because it can shift the frequency & the Grid tie will ramp. When there is Grid power that's not an option. If costs were no issue I'd DC couple with a Victron MPPT because the extra power goes to the Battery and the Mppt will self regulate as it's a Victron product. But price is an issue and the Solis is cheaper. I wouldn't worry about losses at this power level of AC coupling Vs DC coupling I think it's going to be negligible. There is a another way depending on how handy you can be with HA and Venus OS. Modern Grid tied inverters don't rely solely on frequency shifting to limit power. They also support RS485/ serial Comms & use Modbus. The Solis will definitely feature Power dispatching. Basically you tell Mr. Solis: hey I need 2kW from you & he will produce 2kW. So in HA you will have your instance looking at battery SoC from your Victron & tell the Sols to limit to Load when the battery is above 95%. I actively work in this field with much larger megawatt plants & a controller that can arbitrage and dispatch power as required to service the plant as a micro grid. However, this is small residential project & all said & done probably the best & bulletproof option is the Mppt from Victron. The Grid tie option is affordable but adding an EMS (Energy management system) doesn't really make financial sense. If you however, you have the time and patience it's doable, there is a Solis integration available on HACS as well as a Venus OS integration. Blend the 2 together and write some automation rules and you in business. Doesn't even have to be complicated, can even program something simple like Above 98% SoC Shutdown the Solis and startup again below 95%. Keep it simple...

I think the main issues the Chinese battery makers are having is the cells can deliver that energy at 1C but the BMS cannot. The only BMS I'm aware of that can go big is the JDB300A BMS & that said I have not seen anything that is close to that. Maybe 230A at best. Of course if you stack them then this unlocks that energy but I always ask the question: if I have a Sunsynk MAX or Deye 16kW Inverter and I demand 16kW of power I would like to know I can draw 16kW instantaneous from the battery. Even the Deye SF16 is limited and that's probably a PACE BMS. No insult to the Knyee product but the above 12kWh Chinese batteries all seem to not be true 1C. The only one I know of is from FreedomWon & they not using a Chinese BMS at all. The only ones I know need to be stacked in 5kWh modules or 10kWh modules and my calculated guess tells me it's the BMS tech that struggles to regulate that power through a printed PCB. On the other hand a JBD uses a physical DC Contactor rather than a the mosfet arrangement. Food for thought. All the HV inverters and Batteries also deploy DC Contactors as do EVs.

Very happy to report that my invasive balancing and getting my 10/8 back into a positive direction has bore some fruits...Was a bad case of not reaching 100% and giving the poor battery a chance to top balance and level things out. She is now producing what I expect and I'm happy that it wasn't anything worse than I thought. Sometimes there is a good ending...the delta to Lowest and highest cell been reducing for a few days and cycles.

By the looks of these they are the low voltage MPPTs that accept+-120V Max DC input volts can you confirm? The Higher voltage MPPT machines were usually much more valuable. My OG7.2 just went Pop recently and I managed to acquire a used OG10. These Axperts are really solid if installed properly and taken care of. I have an MKS2 that is 8 yrs old & still chirping away. Good luck with the sale, I fear you might have to give them away because the market dropped a lot & you probably better off keep these for a rainy day. Great machines I hope they find a good home.

@robkowa they do exist but they are probably busy and hence you might not find them maybe waiting around. The market did take a slump so some of the independent sparkles honest went for more secure work or the really good ones moved into doing commercial work and smaller work like this is no longer paying their bills. No clue where you are but call Gideon if you in Gauteng: 082 905 0773.

I don't think you will get solis to display these details on the Solis. The Orion JR BMS also has these messages displayed in its CANbus. In fact the Orion can be configured to display any host of information as can be configured on the CANbus and you can make your own CANbus frames to configure with any inverter or EMS to read. But this is what you have to understand: when a battery OEM decides to support an inverter they have no control over what the inverter integration team will want. Generally the bare bone basics will be battery temps, Charge and discharge limits & SoC. This is almost an industry standard of sorts. However, you can't force Solis nor FW to make or build features that only you want. They can see it as a suggestion but that's about it. The points 1,2,3 &4 are all readily available on the BMS and on the Orion ready for broadcast if configured.

Just glad you managed to get a favourable outcome in the end. Politics aside it's important where you buy equipment and people forget that post sales support and lifecycle and probably the 2 most important aspects of any piece of technical equipment purchase. Living in a remote cross border location can complicate life for you even further.

Further to my posts really what I'm trying to say here and we have already seen it in the automobile market: Are the Chinese starting to gain respect and market share and how do we try to still support & protect the local market. We talking about local content and jobs. Shein and Temu case in point. FW & others the honeymoon is over unfortunately....I don't have all the answers and don't even have relevant questions to analyse something like this but it's fascinating to watch unfold almost in front of our eyes.

@Moffat the Etower is a Chinese import and has a PACE BMS so it's considered in my book as any normal Chinese import. I have never had to log a support call for one and I honestly try not to promote it because it's cheaper to buy the exact same product cheaper in the market that doesn't have the FW badge. I hope that they offer you support and that is swift enough and not 3 weeks worth.

@Bernardf your point is well noted & I don't disagree with you. I followed the same steps as you but unfortunately being off-grid I could not wait for 4 weeks and lose 10kWh of capacity. The same prospect arises for their HV batteries and the lightest one is +-400kg. So the concept of remove and take to service centre is not so straightforward for a logistics perspective. They usually visit the site with technicians and service and sort out on site. In the past there was no issue with requiring assistance like this and they offered it willingly to all locations countrywide. Lately there has been the combination of refuting the warranty and wanting to get the customer to pay for travel and logistics to their site location as well boarding and lodging charges added in a quotation for such repair and evaluation. I have also seen on occasions that replacement of the LV & HV Orion BMSs be quoted prior to on site evaluation between R60k all the way up to R250k. Some have not been my installations but one of them was and the customer paid the R250k up front replacement costs before an onsite inspection was carried out on the equipment. The Orion is great and all the bells and whistles but is this not becoming an Achilles heal for the end user. The Typical HV topology of BAU/ BCU / BMU doesn't cost R250k, this in the case of a Chinese production battery imported. In contrast it's along the lines of R35K maximum. It also does the same job & it's components are serviceable and repairable component wise. It's also adopted from the Chinese EV market. I'm was a massive FW supporter and still am to a much lesser degree but unfortunately the market is shifting and in my humble opinion FW and other local OEMs will find it very hard to stay relevant in these modern times with the production Chinese equipment imported from the Motherland.

The Orion is in a different class to any other BMS out there. I have worked on multiple other BMSs. That BMS is made in the USA and it's a very polished specimen in terms of hardware and software. It's even used in the HV batteries to power up the Toyota Prius EV. Btw I'm not sure it's an OEM of the Prius but I do see documentation to supports it's applied use. My battery got very ill due to my home being completely off-grid and not reaching 100% regularly to float. The first issue that I had was that Cell 1 had a massively weird difference in internal resistance to the others. Then when you charge it the Cell would peak crazily fast and during the discharge the opposite would happen. I logged a ticket and got some remote support but the particular service tech was adjusting software to fix what was very likely to me a physical hardware fault. You can fix hardware problems with software. You can maybe mask the problem but you can't fix it. I then left it for a week or so & FW basically tried to close the ticket saying it was fixed. I knew the only issue that can arise as these symptoms are a loose cell sensing cable and the cell was not in balance. The hardware of the 10/8 is on another planet quality wise. FW package this battery to a high level of quality. It's in a powder coated high gloss 3mm metal enclosure and the cells are very well protected inside a plastic types of rigid case with insulation covers. I wanted to remove the entire unit to get at the offensive cell. It's probably possible but given the welded topology and the fact they actually use 2 X 100ah cells laser welded with aluminium studs made that proposition almost impossible to deassemble the entire unit. So all I had to play with was the Harness or 16 cells and a slow charger... Sorry will add more info later...

Some pics attached as I needed to balance a cell that was quite far off the others...

Good day guys, I haven't posted something for a while and really haven't had the time. A very interesting problem arose on my FreedomWon 10/8 & due to the sheer frustration of trying to get support I made a decision to get intrusive with the unit & I voided the warranty. More on the warranty a little later and in general I hope that this thread opens up a very worthwhile conversation on warranties and what are they really worth. Even more interesting is the South Africa Battery assemblers as I call them. Let's face it, the raw Lithium is processed in China and made into prismatic cells and then shipped away to our shores as either an assembled battery unit or finds itself on the assembly line here in SA via FreedomWon factory or other well known SA battery manufacturers. The Local guys here then have a factory to a build those prismatic cells into a production unit & pair it with a BMS and then sell this finished product. Now here is starts to get interesting: How long will these businesses stay relevant because it's a very tough market. The Chinese have the technology to process lithium, they also have the R & D to produce BMS controllers and let's face it their manufacturing costs are a fraction of what can be done here in SA. We now start to see Lithium batteries starting to reach Lead Acid pricing for the first time and sales on the market in general have dried up. I have evaluated and deployed locally built as well as Chinese LV & HV batteries is mass. I myself used to build batteries. I'm sorry to say the undercut and the affordability of buying a production Chinese imported battery makes this a no brainer. I hope there are more people out there that can add more perspective to this starting thread. Will add more details on the problem I had, the support that was offered and the steps I took to take matters into my own hands to salvage my battery and get it healthy again.

@Aartappel your problem is quite a generic one and I have seen a few different solutions that the farming community is deploying...Direct Solar panels on VFDs, some farmers creating micro Grids large in size and then installing their own MV transmission lines and then disconnecting the various Eskom incomer points. I have at least 3 users completed these projects & have done it in a staged approach but the savings and the benefits are there to witness. Those unreliable expensive Eskom points are worth shutting down & pocketing the ongoing costs into your own infrastructure. I have been involved with especially ATESS and more recently over the last 2 yrs Megarevo Transformer based Hybrids and AC coupled Grid ties and DC coupled ATESS topology. The largest plant at 1.5MW carrying a base load of 700kW is in a factory with massive HVAC and high inductive loads. The Atess equipment is really robust and honestly can take a heavy punch with large motors starting and stopping... Its just my personal opinion that the High frequency non transformer based inverters won't last long for the irrigation environment or SAs farming environment because we have harsh conditions and we require equipment that will last the next decade that is serviceable in the field. If you need basic advice and user cases please PM me. I can definitely point you in the right direction as well as share plants with you that have proven themselves in the field. The farming community are ripe to reap the rewards of solar power & with Diesel pricing very volatile id imagine it's going to accelerate...

Honestly it doesn't get better than this. Anything else will be a new product from the Factory. Lowest cell at 3.47 is very close to a full cell. This type of top float balancing can even be done once a week. In the high end Commercial installations these batteries carry out 2 Cycles a day due to 2 peaks (morning and evening) and once a week keeps them in good shape.

Must say that pack is pretty well balanced. I regard the Felicity battery quite highly. I have only seen good things in the examples I have seen in the field. The situation is exaggerated as @TaliaB has noted. LFP stretches it's legs at the top and the bottom of the charge curve. An active balancer as fitted to Orion's on the FW keeps pack in synch and you don't see this level of delta. But the passive (ghandi) balancer takes time and strategy in keeping it floating slowly towards 100% SoC. Still effective but every OEM has a different strategy. So it takes time to learn what the OEM wants and then to practice it at least once a week to keep things healthy.

Very long story about the 5kWh Pace BMS FreedomWon E tower and the rest of the lite family. The E tower is exclusively made and assembled in China. The Lite family is assembled and made under FW factory here in SA. All Lites and Lite 2 have Orion BMS Jr for LV and Orion & Orion 2 for the HV units. The Orion has massive pedigree and is made in the USA. It's a delight to work with because it's in good English and for a skilled operator can allow some pretty radical stuff. There is a password protecting the nitty gritty for good reason. In the wrong hands can cause some harm. Of particular interest the Orion HV is an adaptation from the EV market in the US and hence the price if you are looking to source one can be north of R100k. It's a BMS that can harness individually to all +200s cells and features Active balancing. So pretty special one big monster unit. The Chinese EV market adaptation is slightly different topology. They have a Modular way of BMS control. A BAU in some cases , BCU and BMU. Modular making it significantly cheaper if anything fails. Each can be around R30k to R5k depending on the module. Some useless info but must say very intriguing to be exposed to both topologies and to each their own. I see good benefits on both sides of the fence.