Leslie

When I asked about this they said I should not attach a generator to it. I'm guessing the same way grid power enters the Alpha is how the generator pwoer should enter it. I would assume the grid/generator goes into Alpha and from there to DB and then to appliances. Hopefully someone more informed can comment on this.

.. hah, and now it turns off and on from overheating. Thought this smaller heatsink's gonna be a problem when my previous inverter went and they send me this updated model. It is 36*C outside and I got a fan on it... hope it can hold out... shrug...

This is what they told me in a reply when I asked about this problem... Dear customer, Thank you for contacting! Please know that our inverter is not allowed to use at totally off grid mode. Inverter do has UPS mode that can support load when grid down, but it's not OK without grid absolutely because this is not a pure off-grid inverter. So that's why aorund sunrise or sun down, when the PV voltage fluctuates, the inverter will start self-checking caused output not stable. Normally, the mains grid supply should stabilize the output at this time, but this inverter do not have that access. Best Regards,

So today it is raining near the end of the day. Normally the power dipping lasts for only a minute and some while the Inverter decides whether the sun is gone or not but today it has been going at it for half an hour already since sun down will only be in another hour and the cloud cover seems to be confusing it. This can not be normal! I've submitted a complaint with Alpha and will see if there is a solution. In meanwhile I've found that turning off the PV switch resolves the issue so that I do not sit here with dimming lights and a computer screen turning off and on for the next hour or so while I have work to get done.

I made another discovery. The Inverter can't start an Air Fryer rated for 1300W without the power tripping 1st. Funny thing is, I leave the fryer on and right after power comes back on it runs fine. With the fryer and my commonly on stuff, like computer, there is a total load of 1500W according to monitoring software. This Inverter is rated for 5000W.

No, I am off-grid.

So my Inverter started causing a major problem in that it would not charge or draw from batteries. It could not even give me a proper load from the solar panels and I could only run the lights (LED), router en computer. Switching on the fridge would restart the inverter (that in full day light in middle of Karoo). Anyway, finally after a month of back and forth over email they organised for a swop out which cost me almost R2k in delivery costs and now I have that same flickering lights problem, which was mentioned before in this thread, with new Inverter. It lasts for a minute or so and the lights visibly dips every second. Sometimes the power dips are so severe that my computer turns off, other times I hardly notice the lights flicker. It happens at sundown just as the last rays are going and in the early morning when solar panels seem to start kicking in. No idea what the problem really is or how it can be resolved but I am so over Alpha ESS. Never buying a product of theirs again and as soon as I can afford it I am replacing this inverter with an off-grid-only one that works with these batteries.

@NicoH If you want to use it off-grid then no, do some research or talk to a supplier to find best solutions. If however you wanted to use this in combination with a grid, you still get electricity from a power utility too and this will be a backup or used to reduce your bills, and you are not the kind of person who want to fiddle with and tweak the settings after, then yea, it is a clean looking system and easy to install.

@jykenmynie I finally got the aircon hooked up and it is working fine. It is this unit if you want to have a look at the specs. Will be running it through the week to see what power consumption is like. Although, I live in a converted shipping container (tiny house) so the area to keep cool is much smaller than in a typical houses.

Yes, it is single string and it has been quite cold since a cold front is comming over. I live in the Karoo in open area with cold winds. I guess that explains it then, thanks !

Started getting this problem today. Power goes out and the inverter displays "PV Volt Fault". It seems to happen as soon as the batteries are done charging. I've been using this system for about 3 months with no such problem and have not made any recent changes to it. The batteries also indicates "Cell Overvoltage", or that is what I think they are indicating on the LED from what I can gather in manual. It is Alpha-ESS Smile5 Inverter, 2x Alpha-ESS Smile5 Battery 5.7kWh, and 12x Sharp 330W Poly Solar Panels. Anyone know what could be causing this? For now I disconnected the PV and it is working fine off batteries.

An annoying thing started happening. The power will go off and on twice in quick succession. It will then stay on for a while and then do same again...... until I unplug the Inverter from my network! This happened some time last week and again today. The Internet LED is blinking (it is normally solid on) so that is why I suspected it is related to something with the Internet connection and disconnected the Inverter. This seems to work since the power has not gone off again. When it happened last week I did the same and unplugged it. Later that day I plugged it in again but the LED was still blinking and not long after the power went out again. So I unplugged from network and put it back on the next day and it was fine till today. Not sure what is happening but it could be that it is trying to do an update o, which would be very strange, reset cause it is struggling to connect to a cloud server. My Internet works fine and I was actually browsing the web when this happened. There was not any high loads with just my computer, fridge and a light on - same as every morning. The batteries were above 50% and it was nice and sunny with the PV charging it. Of course now none of the stats are recorded since this thing needs to be connected to the Internet to get access to the monitoring site. I suppose if I was on-grid with it then this would not be an issue. Basically, if you want to go off-grid, stay away from Smile5.

Little update on the issue I had with panels not being used. They can supposedly push an update that would resolve this but since I am not on a grid the update can not be applied. @Pelican it would probably be best to ask your supplier to get in touch with the people at AlphaESS with your questions, or at least make a new topic with your question so it is not buried in my thread where someone with an answer might not see it.

I have an LG Smart Inverter air-con. Got this type of unit since I read it would consume less energy and is hoping it will not have a big startup draw like I assume normal aircons have. Still have to get it hooked up but not really a priority during winter so I will see come summer.

Wow, did not think it could reach that high. I understand now why it would reset the Inverter. Luckily I do not need the compressor often and was more a convenience for doing some spray painting or cleaning out a computer.

I used www.solar-shop.co.za to purchase my solar setup. I can not remember how long my main system took to deliver but the additional battery I purchased a few weeks ago took a week. I do not live near any major city so that is to be expected. They are very fast to reply to support questions via email and on the website so no problems there. I've used www.sustainable.co.za for my 12VDC pressure pump with a panel and battery, and a gas water heater. No problems with delivery here either.

This will be my little review or thoughts I want to share after having used this system for about half a month. I hope this can help someone researching and deciding to buy this system or somehting else. I live totally off-grid, no Eskom line to my home. The system I installed includes the Alpha-ESS Smile5 Inverter, 2x Alpha-ESS Smile5 Battery 5.7kWh, and 12x Sharp 330W Poly Solar Panels. I mainly went for this system, which is more expensive (at least on the Inverter side) than something that would not have grid-tie capabilities because it looked simple to install and nice, clean and modular. I actually started off with just one battery but soon decided to add another as I did not want to have power problems if it happens to be very cloudy. I am a freelance video game programmer so my days are spent behind a computer. I mainly run my computer, fridge and some LED lights on it through the day. I can toast some bread, boil the kettle or run the electric pressure cooker, microwave oven, and washing machine just fine. My power tools like the grinder and circular saw works just fine too. I do use these quite a bit since I am still setting up my home, building a chicken coop, etc. That was before I got the additional battery too. I mainly use gas for cooking and boiling water and also for hot water during a shower. My pressure pump and borehole pumps are on separate gel battery and panels so they are not drawing from my main setup. Overall it has been providing me with enough power and I was even surprised to find the panels giving 500W, and later over 1kW, of power to charge the batteries during a cloudy morning. This is the first time I dealt with anything solar so I am still learning. I've had load shedding one morning after a cold front came over. It seems to have happened just as the batteries was about to start charging and power was out till around the afternoon when the batteries warmed up enough. They went into a protection mode because it was so cold and the system is installed in the garage area. I've since build an insulated box around it with vents and door I can control to prevent this kind of problem in the future. Now for some negatives, Something that really disappointed me is that this Inverter has not been able to start my 1800W air compressor even though my neighbour's 5kW Kodak is able to start and run the compressor. My Inverter simply resets when I try to start the compressor on it. I talked to a representative from ESS and they say that the in-rush current might be too high during start up. I'll have to do a test next time I am near a grid to see just how much this current really is. The Dashboard requires an Internet connection to function. There is no way to check the status without going through www.alphaess.com to do so, except of course for using the LCD to check the SOC, and so on there; but no graphs. For some reason this setup totally ignores all the power my panels can generate and keeps drawing from the batteries after they are fully charged. So for example, while I am typing this I am on 90% battery since they were fully charged just before 12 this afternoon and the system stopped drawing from the panels and have not touched them once since then. It has been a clear sunny day the whole day. Why has it not been drawing from the panels and kept the battery for when the panels can't generate enough power? I hardly needed anything with the average through the afternoon being around 0.15kW. It might be that the system ignores the panels when the draw is not high enough because I do see in the graphs that it would draw from the panels when I used the washing machine or microwave during the day and then the batteries even got a little and went up in charge for that duration. Very strange one this but I know too little to know whether this is normal for this system or whether something is not set up correctly. Certainly nothing related to this in the settings I have access to. I've attached an image to show just how ridiculous this is. The spike you see in late afternoon is when I was using the microwave. Hope this info is useful to someone considering this system. I'm guessing if you were to use it on-grid as a backup and is looking for a nice looking system then most of the negatives are moot. But if I were to buy again I would not go with this Inverter as an off-grid solution.