tetrasection

You can't connect 2000Amps to a 700w inverter. There is definitely a current limit. And if that current is beyond it's overcurrent protection range it will blow or blow a fuse.
Like I said, the UPS I have will take a single battery but not 2 batteries in parallel. Luckily that was still in the range where it could still beep and turn off. If I had connected 16 batteries in parallel it would have been toast.

I'm guessing it's got to do with inrush current?
 

You can't connect 2000Amps to a 700w inverter. There is definitely a current limit. And if that current is beyond it's overcurrent protection range it will blow or blow a fuse.
Like I said, the UPS I have will take a single battery but not 2 batteries in parallel. Luckily that was still in the range where it could still beep and turn off. If I had connected 16 batteries in parallel it would have been toast.

Please post any good deals you see.
Here's one, 35x 455W panels for R45,785.-, works out to R2.875 per watt ($0.15/W).
https://www.solarwaysuppliers.co.za/product/canadian-solar-455w-panel-pallet-bf/

Unless your car is an electric vehicle, the starting current is of the order of 200 A. A smallish gel battery isn't going to be able to provide that sort of current. It might have enough energy (if nearly full) to put a surface charge on the car's 12 V battery. But if the car's battery is damaged or very low in charge, that won't work.
I really don't like the idea of the gel battery and/or 18650 cells; just get yourself a proper car battery charger. Just a ≈6A one should be fine, though again it might take some time (say half an hour) to put enough charge into the car battery that it will be able to start.

Taking highly flammable batteries (Li-Ion) without protection and then connecting them to anything is reckless.
That said, there is channel where a guy brilliantly tests a bunch of jump starter packs.  What I've learned from that is, Lithium batteries far out perform lead acid in starting applications.  The small little jump starter packs were easily able to provide far more amps than the equivalent lead acid intended for the application.
 

What @Coulomb said. With the currents involved here, you could easily reverse the polarity of the 18650 cells in series with another battery, which would lead to a very dangerous situation. It is best to jump your car from another car or car battery that is charged.
On a related note - jumpers are usually designed to have a relatively high impedance. That is to say you won't start a car without a battery with jumpers bought at a store. That is intentional - it is a safety feature because a high percentage of people get the polarity wrong, and also you actually only want to boost the car battery. If your battery is sufficiently flat, you won't be able to jump it, unless you have a set of jumpers made from 16mm² or better cables.

@PowerUser In your opening post you ask battery (singular) to inverter, but then later posts pictures with batteries is parallel. Surely you can see have that could've led to people misunderstanding your question.
In the scenario of a single battery and inverter, the positive and negative cables can be of different lengths. The longer the length of the cable (Pos and Neg cables summed), the higher the resistance and the higher the voltage drop will fall over the cable (it doesn't matter whether this is on the Pos or Neg cable). As the Pos cable, battery and Neg cable form a closed, serial circuit the current will flow through all the components, equally.
Voltage (V) = Current (I) x Resistance (R)
 

 
If you are using 35sqr welding cable, the voltage drop over the cable will be ~0.8 milli-Volt per Amp per metre.
Example 1 - Equal cable:
Voltage drop over Pos will be = 0.8mV x 50 x 2 = 80mV = 0.08V
Voltage drop over Neg will be = 0.8mV x 50 x 2 = 80mV = 0.08V
Therefore, the Battery will "see" 50V - 0.08 - 0.08 = 49.84V
 
Example 2 - Unequal cable:
Voltage drop over Pos will be = 0.8mV x 50 x 1 = 40mV = 0.04V
Voltage drop over Neg will be = 0.8mV x 50 x 3 = 120mV = 0.12V
Therefore, the Battery will "see" 50V - 0.04 - 0.12 = 49.84V
 
So, both scenarios are the same (electrically) from battery and inverter point of view.
 
Side note:
However, the both cables should be kept as short as possible to reduce lost energy which is dissipated as heat by the cables. The power (W) lost can be calculated as P = V x I.
The higher the loss over the cable, the higher the temperature due to heat dissipation. The thinner the cable, the higher the voltage drop over the cable = more loss = higher heat, which in a worst case can lead to burning if underspec'd.
 
 
 
 

I have had a couple sunny days where charge light stopped blinking and remained solid but it never says 100% it always says 99%.
According to the manual a solid charge light means fully charged.

I'm pretty sure I read that you use the CAN bus and then use protocol 52

So we got a decent amount of sun yesterday. Panel charging power dropped to 500w at 96%, then shortly after reaching 99% it dropped to 300w, then 150w, 60w, 30w and eventually 15w of charging power.
That's when I disconnected the battery because I wanted to install the trunking to make it all look nice.
So it looks like it is working as it should, it isn't "overcharging" like it seemed to be doing on it's first cycle, since the charging power now drops to virtually zero.
So even though it never get's past 99% it is essentially 100% charged.
Who knows, maybe in a few days it will say 100% but either way it's not an issue.
Thanks to everyone on here for all the helpful info and advice!

Same thing AFAIK.
 
You put your relay switch on the positive wire between your non-essential loads and the inverter's AC output and connect the Aux dry contact to the signal input.

 
 
I'm not saying the Sunsynk won't work, I'm saying if you want to get the most out of your money you should go with the Growatt and lithium.
Sunsynk with Royal batteries is like buying a petrol Hilux and using diesel fuel lol. Rather get the petrol Corolla and use petrol fuel.
 

Received the replacement battery yesterday, fully charged the old batteries and the new battery separately. Let them sit connected to each other for a while to balance out and put it back into service.
Seems to have resolved the problem. They are discharging evenly and even when 1 goes slightly our of balance, the BMS kicks in and draws more from the other packs so that they can become balanced again.
System is working perfectly so far.
Batteries all most carried us the whole night as well

I am taking my battery in tomorrow to update firmware if everything goes according to plan. I will keep you guys updated how everything goes.🤞

That is already a consideration if we decide to scale up bigger than the current plan

Solar production has been low, I had to use SUB mode.

Thankfully no such issues. Connected to the CAN port. 
The bms is working as intended, I'm not making this up and I can take pictures next time it happens.
The battery reported low voltage at night when I had a 4kw load on and the inverter started charging the battery at 80 amps which is a preset setting that I cannot change so my growatt sff5000es was pulling 8kw from the grid, 4kw going into the battery and 4kw powering the load. 

Growatt SPF5000ES + 2.4kwh lithium is the better option BY FAR!
Please don't get the Sunsynk + Royal batteries... Please... 😅

Honestly with lithium batteries being as cheap as they are I wouldn't even think about going with Gel batteries unless it's for DC application like a gate or outdoor sensor-lighting or a water feature or something like that.
The thing with Gel batteries is that even if they last years, the capacity drops a lot. So your 200Ah (which as I explain below, you will never get) batteries turn to 100Ah batteries rather quickly.
Beyond that, Gel batteries have a substantial voltage drop especially when they are running a bit low so even though you might have x kWh left in your batteries, enough to power your lights and tv and fridge or whatever for the night, as soon as a water pump or something load heavy get switched on it will drop the voltage and trip your low voltage protection. In other words, the lower your batteries are, the lower your load has to be, so you can never make use of the capacity that's on the box. Lithium doesn't do that. Voltage drop is very low.
Another thing is charging. The only time you are making full use of your panels is during bulk charge stage. After that, it uses less and less of what you are producing to charge the battery. Time becomes more important than panel power.
Package inserts for Gel batteries will tell you that in order to properly charge the batteries, they're supposed to be charged at absorb voltage until the current drops to less than 10mA/Ah, after which they should be switched to float voltage for no less than 24 hours. Even a full day of sun in summer can't do that, it's simply not possible with solar.
Lithium batteries can absorb power much quicker and more efficiently and do not need a float charge at all. They simply stop charging completely once they are full, so if you only have a few hours of sunshine it's no problem.
 
In summary, lithium batteries are far more suited to solar application than LA or Gel batteries, and over their lifespan you will actually be saving money while avoiding the hassles and headaches associated with traditional battery system maintenance and use.

Makes sense why little interest on AGM or Gel batteries.
not all lead acid batteries need maintenance, the above mentioned are sealed, no need top up.
whilst lithium is super impressive, there is still a case for sealed lead acid batteries if only using backup power for load shedding etc. if going off grid, yes, makes sense to go all the way. 
I think one might just be surprised that there are still a lot of peeps on Gel Batteries still.

Lithium is the flash drive/SSD to the cd of yesterday.
 
Remember those nice cd collections we all had next to the Hifi system?
 
It's just a better technology that's all. There are people on YouTube still using Tomas Edison batteries(NiFe). They look after them like their pets. Some people don't have time for pets and just need a battery that can look after itself.

Could be a broken diode. Either way, moving the chimney is probably the best solution.

Update your firmware, that should fix it.

Wow.
Reading this it seems pretty clear to me that it is the installers who where trying to gip you. Suppliers don't just send out pallets of unknown Chinese crap panels by mistake. Most wouldn't even stock them.
Even if it was a mistake by the supplier, as an installer first thing you would do is send the pallet back. You wouldn't go install this at someone's house and never even mention it to anyone.
Anyways, great to see you got your system up and running as it should!