Tinuva

@Andre grobler I know you have already spent a lot of time going the voltronics route, but really, do yourself a favour and look again at the Sunsynk with a lot more attention. You can not go wrong with it even over Victron in my opinion. There are just too many positives and I think a select few negatives. It beats most of the competition with value for money. The features are best for the price and there are no compromises, except that it is a single unit vs separate units such as the Victron. Otherwise, if you stay with the voltronics then at least go with the pylontech batteries.

How is the inverter suppose to know what the difference between load and export is without the meter?

Uh what? If you don't have it, then there is a huge problem with your install. It comes for free with the inverter. I would blame your installer for doing it wrong. Not goodwe's fault. Go check, your issue is when you generate more than 4.6kW from PV. Correctly installed that will not happen. This is what mine looks like on the newer version of the inverter:

Pretty sure he needs to get his meter tested. Looks like it failed and that is the cause of his issues.

Funny story, but something funny happened with my inverter too today. Only difference is, I don't produce as much PV as you, so I doubt mine will restart. Here is the graph. You can look around today between 1 and 2pm. Look how the PV dropped, the load somehow spiked (except it didnt because no one was turning anything on/off). But look at the diagnostic code in the moment (in home assistant): Inverter sommer went off-grid mode for no reason but my non-essentials didnt go off. That error (meter connection reversed) is worrying and I wonder if it is an early sign that mine is going to fail soon. Usually when grid go off such as loadshedding, the V and F drops to 0. So it was able to read those meaning grid was there. Meter error is the only clue it seems.

I am looking at this again. Is your meter broken? It reads 0kW the whole time. So now what happen is, instead of the inverter showing you are exporting, its reading the export as part of the house load. So what happen is, when your PV generate more than 4.6kW AC the inverter can do, it trips. It looks like a reboot, but you actually tripping it. You need to fix that meter that sits in front the the non-essentials on the grid into your house. As a temporary work-around, try to disable the grid export function.

Interesting. When my goodwe reboot, the power to the house is not cut at all, unless there is no grid available. With grid, when inverter reboot, grid is passed-through to the backup side. Without grid...haven't tested but I suspect on reboot the backup side will lo0se power like you explain. Something else must be going on at that time. I would say you need the diagnostic state logged. I know with me, home assistant does it. There is a thread here with a windows app that can maybe do it for you. I know the pass-through happen, because I have automations in place, that if my inverter's working mode is changed, needs a reboot and I had to get the developer to properly implement it in the home-assistant integration. So my inverter gets rebooted when the work mode is changed and this happens often enough that I know exactly how a reboot affects the system. What is the firmware version on your inverter?

I think the GoodWe EzConverter is helping with that situation in some way or another. Makes me think he has an older GoodWe which needs this to be able to work with Pylontech batteries.

How do you know the inverter is rebooting? Asking, because those graphs look like the inverter has connection issues to SEMS instead of rebooting. Also those graphs look strange.

Is this a light on the input side or the grid led on the inverter? If the LED, it means the inverter is not happy with the frequency/voltage of the grid. What is the pv master app reporting here? This could be as simple as 1 of 2 things. 1. You need to set your inverter to the correct country, eg. South Africa 2. If on older firmware, South Africa setting was bad and you had to use custom. If you update to the latest firmware then this is fixed when using South Africa. Since your original post you mentioned they wanted you to do a firmware upgrade, I recommend you do this. If you don't run the latest firmware, I don't see why Goodwe would agree to you dropping of the inverter at Segen. You absolutely must test the latest firmware first. Seeing as you have solar, your installer probably put your inverter into General mode. So not charging from the grid is 100% expected. This inverter will only charge from the grid if set to Backup mode or Eco Charge mode. While I am using backup mode myself, the correct way probably is to use eco charge, bit more complex to set up. Not sure what you mean here. So the battery is not used for providing backup power when there is loadshedding? If this is the case, its another setting not done correctly on your inverter. In pv master, in advanced settings, there is a setting "Backup supply" which MUST be turned on, if you want the inverter to supply power during power outages. Who is your installer? Sounds like the installer didn't configure your inverter correctly. You can do this if you want using pv master. Are you willing to try? I wonder if goodwe themselves even looked at the settings, they can see it remotely if your inverter is connected but they will probably leave it up to the installer to configure. I am lucky, my installer is a huge fan of goodwe and use the same inverter at his house, so he knew exactly how to configure mine and I suspect that is why mine works flawless.

What exactly is your issue? Strange thing is, when I needed support it was actually pretty decent and quick. Sure it was through email/ticket but it was all I needed at the time. When I really had an issue, my installer was super quick to come out and look. Still, what is your issue with the inverter though? What is it doing or not doing?

That really is only important if your BMS is not working. On my inverter, if I tell it I have 1 or 2 or 3 pylontech batteries make no difference while the BMS connection to the inverter is working. When the BMS connection to the inverter is down, that setting is important failover I guess.

BMS monitor the voltage over the whole pack and then also have a tap wire to each cell individually. So it can monitor the cells for specific scenerios. As for knowing what the batteries want, I guess the correct wording is, the bms is programmed for what is best for the batteries and then it tell the inverter what the limits are at any given stage. For a deep dive, you can read a "How a BMS works" page. I like this reddit wiki: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/batteries#wiki_li-ion_bms https://www.orionbms.com/general/how-it-works/ https://www.synopsys.com/glossary/what-is-a-battery-management-system.html

You know what, I think maybe the key point is, if you do not have PV connected and is in backup mode, then the inverter trickle charge. That was the case for me, as I was awaiting the SSEG CoCT application, had inverter+batteries installed before the solar panels and it trickle charged. Since I have PV installed, the backup mode has always charged really fast. However, there is the setting I mentioned. The "Battery activated" setting in advanced/expert settings. I believe that also makes a difference to the charge rate.

Interesting. While I know about eco mode, when I change to backup mode on my goodwe I can easily charge them at 50A (I have 4x US3000). Just look at my screenshot further up, thats backup mode.

Standard 60A breaker and 63A EL. Pretty standard for single phase I think. The cable, don't know the exact # offhand, but installer went on how it was extra thick and expensive. Fairly certain it is to spec. The one geyser in this house was always a 4kW element, so this house pulled 20A+ @220v many times before I got solar.

60A main switch and 63A EL. Standard I believe on 1phase unless you somehow get 80A from utility. No idea about the cable, but I remember the installer talking about the price of the extra thick at the time of install as I had it running from Kitchen to other side of house, garage where inverter is installed. I am sure its fine, as this house had a 4kW element in a geyser for years without issues. Like I said, charging batteries at 100A will max pull 21A on grid side. Also, I have never seen the batteries charge at higher than 50A so I think its all well within spec.

Batteries charging at 52A from grid. Eta 1h as can be seen at bottom.

I think he just needs to add solar panels and the battery charging problem will go away. Thats what fixed it for me.

nvm. wrong info.

@Jaco Kotze I remember when I didn't have solar, my batteries only charged at ~300W too from the grid in backup mode. Now that I have solar, when I do put it into backup mode, it starts charging slowly and then goes up pretty damn quick. However I remember my installer also set another setting on my inverter. First thing you need to be 100% sure about, is that BMS of the batteries are communicating correctly with your inverter. As in, does pvmaster show you the health of your batteries (SOH)? If not, then that BMS connection is not working. That is how I know at least, my cable was changed by someone at 1 point and it stopped working. Was annoying. However I suspect it should be working if it cuts of instead of depleting the batteries. While pvmaster is horrible, it does work once you understand it uses udp and the updates are slow to the app, so patience is unfortunately required. What does the Charge and Discharge current limits show in your PV master app under Parameters tab? As for the default charge/discharge current, it gets set by the battery you chose in basic settings. Make sure you choose the battery parameter that closest match your installed batteries. So for a stack of 4x US3000 mine sets charge limit to 90A and discharge limit to 100A. The BMS then goes and override that to 100A charge limit and 125A discharge limit. Which is why its important to BMS connection works. Lastly, I think the setting the installer enabled, is the "Battery activated" setting, which is really only needed if you deplete your batteries, where the BMS turn them off. The inverter then has a method wake them up to get them charging again.

Er buddy I don't think you quite understand how this work. 60A at the battery side is not the same as 60A at the grid side. 1000w at battery side (which is 48v) will be ~20A. Pulling that 1000w from the grid (which is 220v or 230v but I calculate at 220v) will be ~4.5A. So by that calculation, you can set your batteries anything up to 100A it will only pull at 21A on the grid side. That is, if you have enough pylontechs in the stack to handle 100A.

Hi @Cef I have to admit, I haven't tried your software. Mostly because I do not own a windows pc. Only macs and then mini/tiny linux servers. Unfortunately I can't justify keeping a windows pc on hand for the app.

There are guys using the home assistant plugin with sub second intervals. Don't ask me how big their databases are but they crazy in my opinion.

I agree, with Home Assistant you can log everything and have it graphed in Grafana. Then you can pretty much give them all the info they want.