Johan-Henry

Thanks @Steve87, this is great information, appreciate your insight and explanation.

I am also interested in this subject, particularly for areas in Cape Town that is supplied by Eskom. @Praemon I assume you are located in an area supplied by the Cape Town municipality? If so, as far as I understand what the installers are saying to you is correct, you have to have an inverter on the list regardless of wether you are feeding back to the grid or not. The part I am getting mixed signals for is for when you are in an Eskom supplied area within Cape Town - I assume (and hope) then what @WannabeSolarSparky and @Steve87 is saying is correct? Blue region on Boundary map: https://resource.capetown.gov.za/documentcentre/Documents/Maps and statistics/Electricity Distribution Licence and Area Boundaries.pdf

There has been allot of arguments back and forth about "floating" LiFePO4 batteries on this forum, the facts are as follows: You need to charge your batteries to a high voltage (as per the cell configuration) to get the pack to balance, then as soon as the balancing is within acceptable levels, the charge current to the battery needs to stop - now some do that by dropping the "charge" voltage so that the batteries are not forced to absorb or dissipate energy as heat anymore, but a properly designed system will be instructed to cut charging to the battery by the BMS. I have learned the hard way that if you keep your lithium batteries at a high cell voltage, they will not last.

I have the 5000TL and if you are referring to setting 14 being in SNU, as far as I know the these inverters do not allow the charging of batteries from utility if they are in battery mode (supplying load from batteries). There is a note in the manual in the setting 14 block - "If this off grid solar inverter is working in Battery mode or Power saving mode, only solar energy can charge battery. ". Therefore to charge the batteries from utility, you have to be in bypass mode. If you set program 1 to Utl, it should charge batteries from utility and switch to bypass mode when utility is available (i.e. gen started) and back to battery mode when utility is not available (gen not started).

I am moving and have 6 x 255W used panels that I am willing to sell, VOC 37.5. Need to sell all 6 unfortunately, not just one. Cape Town area. Message me if you are interested.

@hoohloc Hi. I installed the latest firmware 3 firmware files that I could find on Powerforum for the main board, comms board and BMS. On the app it shows 500.09/002.03. I also have 3 fairly new Pylontech US3000C batteries, maybe their firmware also has something to do with the max charging setting working well over BMS. As mentioned, the max charging value changes based on SOC, but I see it regularly hitting 111A.

F2809_GW500.09_20201029_A.bin = main firmware F030_SK022_07_ 20200714.bin = bms firmware STM32F030CC_SK036.01m.bin = comms bord firmware They are provided in the various google drive links in the forum. Its a bit confusing unfortunately. This is only applicable to the Growatt SPF5000TL.

I can confirm that the issue is fixed with the latest comms board firmware. I struggled a few days with this particular upgrade. Since running all three available firmware upgrades (main firmware, BMS firmware and comms board firmware) the inverter is performing very well and communicating reliably over BMS with my Pylontechs. Data comms over the wifi dongle to the Growatt server has also been working well. I shared my experiences with the comms board upgrade here: https://powerforum.co.za/topic/6430-growatt-firmware-updates/?tab=comments#comment-98625

FYI program 36 only becomes visible if you change the program 05 to Li, so change 05 to something else and then back to Li, then immediately after you can select protocol 04 as program 36 shows up then. The default protocol is 02 if I remember correctly.

@hoohloc I am not sure what inverter you are using, but my Growatt 5000tl did the same with my Pylontech bank of 3 batteries on Li setting using BMS with the L02 protocol selected. It severely limited charge current. After contacting Growatt, they advised that I should use L04 for the protocol selection (option 36). This increased the max charge current to 111 A for my bank of 3 Pylontech US3000C batteries. This max charge current tapers off to lower values as the SOC reaches full level.

Hi @Neil27 I found the reset instructions with the firmware from a post by Fatboy here: There is a video on how to do it as well as a tips.txt file: 1£¬connect battery well£¬disconnect grid utility£¬ 2£¬press the second and the third bottom at the same time£¬ 3£¬password 305 4£¬up or down to page 34 5£¬press enter bottom to get into rst setting 6£¬press enter bottom to reset£¬wait for a while£¬it will finish resetting Basically it resets the device to factory defaults. I found this step is essential when upgrading firmware, before upgrading and after. The screen going blank after a fw update also happened to me, luckily there is a recovery procedure at the end of one of the update instruction files: NOTE: Sometimes updating may fail, you may close the inverter by disconnect battery break and close ISP tool and disconnect USB line. Confirm the inverter is not power by battery or PV or utility. Then you connect USB line again, and open ISP tool do the same step as above, after you press Flash button, you let the inverter power on. Wait for several minutes the update will go on.

Hi all. I had this exact same problem with the comms board upgrade on my spf 5000 tl. It was stuck at Send Start. Eventually I got it to flash by following these steps: Switch off all source (PV and AC) input and remove all load. Inverter must only be connected to batteries Reset the inverter using the button procedure as described in the fw update procedure docs (pressing 2nd and 3rd button together and entering the password) Exit the reset menu and power down the inverter. Power down the batteries as well. Disconnect the batteries and remove bms cable if present as well as the wifi dongle. Connect the USB cable to your PC and connect the batteries again. Power up the batteries and the inverter. Flash the firmware file now - mine worked at this stage (finally!) Power down everything again, connect bms, wifi dongle, etc. and power up again. I guess you can reset to factory settings again with the button procedure as recommended by the flash instructions if need be. Configure all settings - now it should work as intended. After the comms board update my wifi dongle works again on the 500.9 firmware with BMS active (Li setting 02)

Hi all. Thanks for the firmware provided in this thread, I have successfully updated my 5000TL using it to 500.09 in preparation for my new Pylontech batteries arriving. Problem is that program 24 is now gone and my grounding box does no longer work correctly after the update. Anybody had the same problem? Thanks

Never mind, looks like I made a mistake taking the inverter main input feed through the earth leakage protection.

Hi All. I have installed a grounding box I made myself, basically a 220VAC power relay that is able to handle 60A, to be actuated by the dry contacts of my Growatt spf 5000 to connect neutral and earth when running in island (battery) mode. I have enabled setting 24 and everything seems to work as it should, however the power relay is a tad slower than the internal switchover relay - causing the earth leakage feeding the inverter from Eskom's side to trip when going back to grid as the neutral and earth is still connected at the inverter for a milisecond or 2 longer. Can anyone provide some advice? Is there perhaps a setting to adjust the timing of the dry contacts relative to the internal switchover? Or am I doing something horribly wrong? I have started with this whole grounding box addon because when in battery mode, the neutral and earth are no longer connected and I see "earth not connected" fault warnings on my test plugs. Thanks