razzor13bt

https://thesunpays.co.za/manuals/Inverter Settings AGM-Gel Batteries.pdf
I used this as my guide with the Axpert King 5kv inverter.
charge voltage i set a bit higher at 57.6v for my agm batteries
 

check the inverter manual if you have one.
It differs from brand to brand but most have a screw/bolt on the panel where the wiring is connected. 
 

check the inverter manual if you have one.
It differs from brand to brand but most have a screw/bolt on the panel where the wiring is connected. 
 

Yeah, the fact that the battery voltage is 54.3 probably means the inverter is outputting 55V, so it is limiting the voltage.

Talking battery cables reminds me a story:
Years ago a bought from Game a set of nice thick automotive battery jumper cables, guaranteed 200A. When it came to the emergency application they failed to start my engine. They only provided some charging current to my battery so I could after a while start the engine from my battery. I got suspicious and opened up one of the clamp handles. What I found was outrageous. The nice thick cables consisted of 99% insulation and just 1.4mm² copper. That copper was not even crimped to the clamp but only squeezed between the clamp and the insulation. I brought it back to customer service and got refunded. By the way, Midas sold the same product.
I then bought 6m of 16mm² welding cable and soldered 3m each to the clamps. I could start with them a 2l diesel engine from a 50Ah battery.

When cleaning up tabs I spotted this datasheet which could give you an idea just how tricky it is to (legally) use wire for off-label purposes:

When used as 'welding cable' the 50mm² cable meets the legal requirements to be rated for 280A. Exactly the same cable, when used for power supply or panel wiring, can only be legally rated at 196A.

Themba, No you can not use a 24v battery on a 12v inverter.
you will get the magic smoke if you do.

What @Spysis saying is all correct but some installers are not always interpreting all the parameters correctly. The Sunsynk inverters can accommodate the slight over current and wattage. The 6 x 550w panels will be slightly overclocking the inverter mppt1 max by 50w that would not be a problem. The Voc would be well below max so can't see any reason not to go for 6 x 550w panels on 1 string. In some of my Sunsynk installs i have overclocked the max power input by 1.25 and never had any comebacks just ensure for a better yield during winter and overcast days and in summer peak the inverter will clip the excess wattage but have earlier startup and later pv shutdown.

Batteries. A rather important and crucial part of a residential solar system, especially here in South Africa.
I was originally going to go the DIY route and even purchased some 184ah Svolt cells with the BMS and all other accessories necessary although something came up which lead me to sell the cells, skip the DIY batteries for now and look at purchasing already built batteries – this is where the Svolt 106AH batteries come in.
When I found out Svolt had an office open up in South Africa and they were selling batteries locally, my interest was naturally piqued as I already had some of their 184ah cells. Svolt is also a rather large company and they make cells for the EV market as well and Svolt will be supplying BMW with cells for their EVs in the future, along with CATL & Eve Energy.
 
Before I continue I want to state that I do not have any affiliation with Svolt. I do not work for them, I paid for all of my batteries, I do not get any kickbacks from them – nothing. I am just a client of theirs.
 
After reaching out to them and getting more info, I was invited to their Johannesburg office to view their batteries and other products (inverters). I had a brief chat to the guys and decided to purchase one of the 16 cells 106AH batteries to try out and see how it performs.
Taking it out the box, the battery looks really nice, the wall mount is simple yet effective, it comes with a nice set of cables and the crimps seem to be done well (as expected), the power connector which is used for the battery is very convenient and easy to connect / disconnect the cable from the battery.
Unfortunately I did not take pictures and mine are already connected, I do not really feel like disconnecting everything to take pictures but if you guys would like some pictures then let me know and I will make a plan to take some.
The battery has a nice button to turn it on/off and a screen to display some info from the BMS and once can easily navigate through the menu with the buttons.












Here is the Svolt catalogue which has the specifications for the batteries:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/69c9wnxrklmhc4xg9nn6c/Svolt-Battery-and-Inverter-Catalogue-20230803.pdf?rlkey=z8q9we55gzzs31e9wh3tw5ahp&dl=0 
 
I believe all the batteries make use of a Pace BMS. The Pace BMS is very popular with pre-built batteries and are used in many different brands of batteries. Andy from Off Grid Garage did a review one of the Pace BMS’s and you can watch it here:
 
At first I had some issues getting the battery to talk to my Luxpower, however Svolt confirmed that their batteries do communicate with the Luxpower inverters as well as majority of other inverters (MUST, Conderenergy, Growatt, Sunsynk / Deye, Victron, Svolt, Luxpower and more). The BMS has different options which Svolt can change for you to ensure it works with your inverter. By default it is set to Pylon which works with majority of inverters.
After reaching out to the Svolt guys and speaking to one of their technician staff, they decided to come through to my house to take a look and try figure out what the issue was – pretty impressive from a customer support point of view. Turns out it was a very silly mistake from my side, the dip switch was not configured properly (I left them all down as per the manual, where dip switch 1 should be in the up position). As soon as we did that, the comms started working – I had to use the battery without comms for a few days before Svolt came to my house and it worked well like this too.
After getting the battery comms working I was finally able to use the battery as intended with communication to my inverter.
The battery is 1C rated, with the communication it sets the max charge / discharge limit to 95A which is technically not the full 1C rating limit but it is close enough for me to not be bothered by it.
95A x 51.2v = 4 864W so just short of a full 5KW but if you were to have a 5KW inverter how often would you be running it at its limits when there is no grid?
I was able to access the BMS info via PBMSTools and below is a screenshot of the parameters:

 
I ended up purchasing 2 additional batteries, so that is 3 batteries in parallel and to get them connected in parallel is super easy. Adjust the dip switches as per the manual, connect them with the network cable supplied in the box and it just works. The BMS and inverter speak to each other and my limit now changes from 95A to 285A (as the limit is per battery, obviously keep in mind that you need to ensure the cables you use can handle the max current and obviously your inverter(s) too).
 
Out of the box I did have the cells being imbalanced, however I am quite impressed that the BMS was able to balance the batteries. Since it does not make use of an active balancer it can take a bit of time but it did work and it did manage to get them balanced!
At first I was a bit concerned that the BMS would not be able to balance the battery and while it was balancing I was concerned it would not  charge to the correct voltage, when I reach out to Svolt they said if that does happen they will be able to assist me and if the battery was in such a bad state that it was not usable they would replace it with a new battery for me (once again, I feel this is really good from a customer care point of view). I have not had to have any batter replaced though.
 
Below you can see a screenshot of the cell imbalances:

 
Here is a screenshot after a week where the BMS has managed to get them balanced:

 
Here is a screenshot I took at the same time of my older battery, as you can see the cells were balanced rather well:

 
 
My oldest battery has a total of 44 cycles only, so still early days but so far so good and I would not hesitate to purchase more of these Svolt batteries.
Based on my experience with Svolt customer support I am not worried about a valid warranty claim being rejected. The technical staff are knowledgably and actually know what they are talking about as well.

Svolt are still new in South Africa, the pricing on these batteries have been exceptional however I am not sure whether the price will increase with time as they become more established, I suspect this might happen as I have seen this happen with other brands but time will tell.
 
I hope this helps those who are on the look out for batteries. If there is anything in specific you'd like to know which I have not included in this review, let me know!

[ Edit: See also Axpert King 1 main firmware version 72.05. ]
I  recently came across main (DSP, U1) firmware for the Axpert King 1 (5 kVA, 145 V max PV voltage), version 72.04. The differences I have noticed compared to firmware version 72.00:
* When a main firmware reflash is started, it shuts down more completely
* Solar charger output current in QPIGS is reported differently, using PV power / PV voltage and PV voltage, and the factor 100/90. Similarly, PV power uses the 100/90 factor. The PV power is measured by the Solar Charge Controller firmware, so it's possible that this firmware should be matched with a different SCC firmware, though that seems unlikely.
* There is different logic in the code that compares the transformed battery voltage (voltage at the high voltage end of the DC-DC converter) with the bus voltage.
*  There is new code in the task that protects the battery and DC bus, where the solar charger output current is compared with 1.7 A. If more than this, there is a factor of 1/0.93 used.
* Immediately after the above change, there is another change that adds the PFC current to the solar charger current.
* Does not support the QDOP command, and so cannot support SoC% for settings 12, 13, and 29.
So most of the changes seem to be to  do with solar charger current, and indeed I and others have noted weird, inconsistent behaviour with respect to solar charge current. Hopefully, these changes go a long way to fixing those issues.
The premature float bug is alive and well in 72.04, as it has been in every Voltronic main firmware I've looked at.
The dsp.hex file is dated 09/Jan/2024.
It will be some time before I can produce a 72.04 version of the fully patched  firmware, if I get around to it at all (I do hope to).
Do not use this firmware update file with any other model, and use at your own risk.
[ Edit April 2024: Do not confuse with the Axpert Max 8 kW firmware with the same version number. ]
Firmware upload instructions
The .rar file's password is 111:
AxpertKING_5KW_STANDARD_72.04 pw 111.rar
 
 
 
 

I purchased the Pace RS232 USB to RJ11 cable from SolarAssistant, Loaded BMS Tools HS2.03 (Any PBMS Tools software works)
The ethernet cable used for master and slave is a normal straight-through network cable.

Thanks for this info. I purchased 2 cheap SunMagic 150Ah batteries to test out, and apparently, they are also manufactured by FiveStar.
Though the booklet that came with is exactly the same as the Felicity Solar battery, it actually has a Pace bms in.
After much battling using the Felicity BMS wiring, I wired up using the Pace, and voila.....all good. 

Fivestar 48170 uses Pace P16S120A-31057-1.00 BMS 
Can be accessed with Pbmstools software Password 123456
https://powerforum.co.za/files/file/160-pbmstools-v25/
Cable needed are a USB to rs232 and a RS232/sub DB9 to rj11 
 Link to the bigger BMS.
Cable pinout schematic at the bottom of page.
 
DB9 to RJ11.pdf

Success! After plenty of fiddling.
Fivestar FS-G01-48200 (Pace 16s150a BMS)
RS232 is hit or miss. Have to try multiple times with breaks in between before getting a successful connection using
PBMstools HS1.0.8
Inverter protocol is not set, after setting to pylontech I now have BMS coms to my Kodak OGS5.6.
The pinouts in the manual are incorrect. BMS coms are on pins 1+2, 7+8. Switch 1 must be on.
Hopefully this will help someone else.

Hi Oros.
Its the Fivestar FS-G01-48200 and yes it has prismatic cells. The BMS resembles the Pace 16s200a, not 150a.
I will open again soon and take more pictures. I want to fiddle with the comms on the board as it seems odd to not even have rs232 communication.
According to the supplier the bms only communicates with Deye inverters on RS485.
I can't get comms on solar assistant with correct cable or on pc.

Well I cannot find anything, except inverters. To be fair, there are more sunsynk issues on here than fivestar.
People tend to only post negatives to get support, never positives unless asked for. Ergo this thread.

This is unfortunately what happens when prices crash. The same with panels now selling at half price compared to a year ago. 

If you are combining two wires a much cleaner method is to use a 2 wire ferrule like the one below. But it only recommended if both wires are the same size.


 

Over the years i have read many articles and have seen videos on youtube and have had it mentioned to me by some installers
Its fairly common to oversize the pv panels anything from 10-30%.
This way it covers the shortfall in panel production due to most panels producing a fair bit less than the panels stated spec.
A very common practice in Australia.
In all these articles etc. the main thing that is always stated as important is that the system voltage is the criteria that MUST be followed and to not exceed the system recommended voltage range and not the max open circuit voltage.
ie on the 5kv King : 60-115v  voltage range. not the 145v max open circuit voltage.
This would cause the magic smoke and certain unit failure.
https://www.gardelelectrical.com.au/blog/what-is-inverter-oversizing
I would be cautious though and double check specs of your inverter and if the manual suggests otherwise.

Okay to summarize:
FS-1007, Sunmagic, Sunpro8048
 
With comms port in RJ45 format, connecting wifi via wifi dongle with R232 (DB9) connector.
 
See attached picture indicating which RJ45 wire goes to which R232 connection.
I added the +vcc (Thanks Modina - superstar), to the pic as that was what caused me grey hairs.
End result, datalogger works perfectly!
Last pic, neatly found a home.

Morning peoples
Yesterday i did some digging and found out that Voltronic (the manufacturers of rebranded inverters like Mecer, Kodak, RCT and more) released an upgrade to WatchPower/SolarPower named Energy-Mate. Voltronic Power News. Available on Google Store. It is still buggy (spelling errors etc.), but it is MUCH better with usable graphs. It uses the same login details as WatchPower so your whole history is retained.
You don't have intelligent DB control, but you can manage inverter settings and have decent feedback

Thanks very much for everyone's comments and input.

I raised all this with the company, and they agreed that the marketing was misleading but assured me that it was not intentional, but rather a matter of tech people writing the marketing material. Their site has been updated and they've committed to replacing my inverter with a 6 Kw (AC load) model.

This video will show you the dangers first hand as to why they specify metal conduit. This is the High voltage Solar PV inverters, so that would include all of the modern machines. (Sunsynk, Deye, Kodak, Infinisolar) The new Infinisolar has dual MPPTs that can handle 1kV strings as I think does the Sunsynk 16kW if I am not mistaken. That level of PV energy is very dynamic. 
Don't skimp on the DC combiners, Surge protectors, Cabling as well as switch gear. If you do it's not very forgiving like AC connections. 
 

Please ensure that all the battery cables are the same length. Fuse should disconnect the Positive and Negative. 25mm cable from batt to fuse/busbar is fine. From there I would use 50mm to the Inverter. 

Or the other way....
Each battery with their own battery disconnect fuse unit onto + and - busbars, and then to inverter with the correct size battery cables.