Hi everyone, 

I have a slightly embarrassing first post.

I had an issue with getting to use PV rather than battery as the inverter power source. During the first couple of hours of the day the panels would charge the batteries and supply power to the load as expected. But once the batteries are full, the inverter disconnects the panels and only sucks from the batteries. 

I searched around for GW firmware and flashed the 3000TL with the first thing I found... Now I have a dead inverter. Screen off, ac/inv led lit, chg and fault LEDs slow blinking. I can still connect via PV Keeper. It shows the batteries providing power and I can populate the empty settings fields. 

I'm hoping that if I flash the inverter with the proper firmware for the 3000TL that it might start up again. 

Can someone point me to where I might be able to get firmware for my inverter? 

Thanks

Sad to hear about your loss, your inverter was functioning the way it was supposed to. The Growatt SPF XXXX TL inverters switches off the PV when your battery is full, uses the battery till it gets to about 94% and then switch back to PV. It will keep alternating between battery use and PV, every time your batteries are full. No firmware to fix that and according to Growatt support, that is how the inverter has been designed to work. If your inverter is still new, warranty claim might be your best solution. 

11 hours ago, hoohloc said:

Sad to hear about your loss, your inverter was functioning the way it was supposed to. The Growatt SPF XXXX TL inverters switches off the PV when your battery is full, uses the battery till it gets to about 94% and then switch back to PV. It will keep alternating between battery use and PV, every time your batteries are full. No firmware to fix that and according to Growatt support, that is how the inverter has been designed to work. 

Thanks hoohloc. It would have been nice if this behavior was noted in the manual somewhere hey. It would have saved me hours of wasted time and heartbreak. Hopefully this thread will save others from the same fate.  

Does the 94% refer to something in the setup or is it just some arb voltage Growatt decided will suit all?

I would still like to try and flash the inverter again but with firmware confirmed for use with the SFP3000TL HVM-24. If anyone can let me know where to find it I'd be forever thankful.

Contact these guys and ask them to send you the Firmware, they have always managed to come through for me. [email protected] , [email protected], [email protected]

7 hours ago, MaxUmis said:

Thanks hoohloc. It would have been nice if this behavior was noted in the manual somewhere hey. It would have saved me hours of wasted time and heartbreak. Hopefully this thread will save others from the same fate.  

Does the 94% refer to something in the setup or is it just some arb voltage Growatt decided will suit all?

I would still like to try and flash the inverter again but with firmware confirmed for use with the SFP3000TL HVM-24. If anyone can let me know where to find it I'd be forever thankful.

There is a couple of threads with this info on this forum, even though they are mainly about the SPF5000TL, but the basic operation of the two inverters is the same 

41 minutes ago, hoohloc said:

Contact these guys and ask them to send you the Firmware, they have always managed to come through for me. [email protected] , [email protected], [email protected]

Thanks H, I'll shoot them an email. Fingers crossed. 🤞

Good news. Xing (Amos) came through with the correct firmware.
I flashed the inverter and it's back up and running 🙌

I did note that this firmware is named F28035_GW503.08_[Date] and the stuff that broke the inverter started with F2809. So if you are planning to flash a SPF3000TL HVM-24 the correct firmware will likely start with F28035. And a note to "past me": Get firmware from the supplier (Growatt support)!

Big thanks to @hoohloc for helping me out.

So the issue that landed me in this mess was the fact that the inverter would switch off my panels once the batteries are fully charged. I thought that must be a mistake and obviously updated the firmware. (I used the wrong firmware which made the inverter unresponsive. Then got the proper firmware from Growatt which fixed the unresponsive inverter.)

As mentioned by hoohloc, it turns out this is just the way these SPF XXXX TL HVM inverters operate. So I Googled and Googled to get more info about how the inverter decides when to power up the panels again. All I could find were mentions of SOL and SBU for option 1 and 95% of State of Charge. But experimenting with those settings didn't convince me that they're particularly relevant.

For my first experiment this morning I waited for the PV panels to top up the batteries. Then I hooked up my laptop and screen (140W) as a "base" load. Then I added my 1.7kw heat gun and started running it for 2 or 3mins at a time. Watching the voltage drop as I go. At this point my Option 13 was set to 26.5V. After a couple of runs with the heat gun the voltage dropped below 26.5V, but would recover back to 26.8V once I turned the gun off. I even got the voltage to drop down to 26.1V while running the heat gun, but again, after switching it off the batteries recovered to 26.6V... So I got fed up playing with the heat gun and fetched our dehumidifier. I plugged in the dehumidifier with laptop load. The battery voltage dropped to 26.5V and viola! The panels powered up.

For the second experiment I recognised that my Option 13 was set to 26.5V so I changed that to 26.7V and waited for the batteries to charge back up. Once full I switched the dehumidifier back on to have about 470W load and waited for the battery voltage to drop again. Low and behold, at 26.7V the PV panels started to charge the batteries.

I also tried setting option 13 to 27V, but the panels came on at 26.7V.

So my theory about how the SPF 3000 TL HVM 24 decides when to use PV panels is:

• Use Option 13 if it's less than 95% SoC (26.7V) else use 26.7V
• Consider Load % from some kind of lookup table. Like the one used to display battery capacity remaining.

 

 

I'm a little disappointed that this behavior isn't documented somewhere official. Had I known I would have looked further than what seemed like the obvious choice for an "off grid solar inverter". I think that calling this thing an inverter is a little misleading. Maybe calling it a "multi-source battery charger with built in inverter" is more accurate.

Edited September 25, 20214 yr by MaxUmis

When you say it would turn off your panels, do you literally mean it would turn off the controller and the panel icon on your display would disappear? Then it would use the battery to provide power to the loads until the battery reached a certain voltage at which point it would turn the controller back on, the panel icon then shows on your display?

What happens at that point? Solar charges the battery and provides power to the loads at the same time?

@Coulombyou might be able to help here. These off grid inverters are based on axperts and they work really well if you have a large battery bank and a pv array to charge them. 

The large battery is what ensures you can survive a few days of bad weather. But batteries are very expensive so most people my self included buy this cheap inverter with as much panels and batteries as we can afford. Since panels are cheaper now we get enough panels but not enough batteries. 

For example I have the max panels installed but only 10kw of batteries. To be offgrid and survive bad weather I need 30kw of batteries but I have no budget for that.

This is why hybrid inverters are much more popular as you can start with much smaller pv array and batteries. 

@JoeyhZA yeah, more or less. Once the batteries are full the unit disconnects the panels. The PV icon is still lit, but the line going to "charger" icon is out. When the PV panels kick in again, the line going to the "charger" icon lights up and the panels contribute to load and charge the batteries.

@Coulomb it's not the end of the world. It just makes me twitch to know that I'm drawing saved power from batteries with a limited number of charge cycles when there is glorious sunshine beating down on my panels outside.

The 3000TL is paired with 2x 12V 200A lifepo4 batteries. They sit in a cart with wheels so I can move the system around. The cart is fitted with a couple of 220V outlets, an inlet (for charging via generator) and some 12V and USB outlets. PV comes from 4x 370W Longi's. But I'm only testing with 2. This setup will help me build our cabin on our small farm. When the cabin is complete this system will stay there to provide power when we head up there over weekends. 

I have the SPF5000TL HVM and it behaves differently than yours. My configuration set to SOL and OSO happily runs the load off PV with the batteries fully charged. The only time the battery is used is during dawn hours when the sun is rising and the wattage on solar is too low to carry the load and dusk when the sun is setting and the wattage has dropped. 

If load during the day is more than PV(which never happens due to load management discipline) then it draws the difference from the batteries. 

I thought the 3000TL was essentially based on the same working principle.

 

Only issue I'm having which I can't get around is the damn Shinewifi dongle horrible-ness.

16 hours ago, Buyeye said:

@Coulombyou might be able to help here.

I don't have time to compare the Growatt and Axpert firmwares, unfortunately. So I don't have a feel for how similar the firmwares are. But a lot of your problems, like this one, sound very familiar.

I take it that the new firmware didn't fix the problem.

I'm hoping to demonstrate it on the Axpert King that is now installed at Weber's house, and hopefully track it down from there.

IF we find the problem in the Axpert, and IF I find that the relevant part of the firmware is similar enough, it MIGHT be possible to patch the Growatt firmware to fix it. No promises.

Though it sounds like it's fixed in the 5000TL HVM firmware. It would be interesting if you can get Growatt to fix it for their 3000TLs, making their product better than the Axperts it was presumably copied from.

It sounds like the firmwares that are not using the solar power properly are using the solar power exclusively for battery charging. It's like firmware with a Solar Balance setting that is permanently off (or possibly intermittently off). Regardless of whether there is a menu setting and/or command to change that setting. The Axpert command for changing the "solar balance" setting is PSPB. So you could try sending a PSPB1 command (with appropriate CRC characters and carriage return, of course) to see if that helps for a while (until the value gets overwritten again, perhaps).

Edit: I've gone off the Solar Power Balance setting theory.

See this post.

The value used by PSPB in the latest Axpert King firmware still gets passed to the Solar Charge Controller (a separate processor on 145 V max models). I don't see it used in the 450-500 V max PV voltage models. Does this ring true for Growatt models?

Edit: please continue to use the @Coulomb mention facility in replies, as I tend to ignore posts with "Growatt" in the title otherwise.

Edited September 26, 20214 yr by Coulomb

4 hours ago, JoeyhZA said:

I have the SPF5000TL HVM and it behaves differently than yours. My configuration set to SOL and OSO happily runs the load off PV with the batteries fully charged. The only time the battery is used is during dawn hours when the sun is rising and the wattage on solar is too low to carry the load and dusk when the sun is setting and the wattage has dropped. 

If load during the day is more than PV(which never happens due to load management discipline) then it draws the difference from the batteries. 

I thought the 3000TL was essentially based on the same working principle.

 

Only issue I'm having which I can't get around is the damn Shinewifi dongle horrible-ness.

Not According to Growatt support and to be honest, you are the first person that has growatt SPF5000TL inverter that doesn't switch off PV when batteries are full. I have tried SOL and OSO options and both my inverters switch off every time batteries reach 100% SoC. Are you using Lithium batteries and BMS connected?

Hi Wilhelm，

when pv solar start to charge battery，battery SOC will go up to 100% finally，at this point，battery will send an order to PV charger to shut down，stop charging battery and stop supplying power to your house load at the same time，avoid charging battery too much and damage battery，battery will take over to supply your house load if it's SBU mode in program 01 setting，

after a while，if battery SOC drop below 95%，PV panels will start working automatically again to supply power to the load and charge battery until it's charged 100% fully again，you can add more load to have a test，PV panels will start immediately if there are much more load that battery can't hold it，

in this way，battery will always keep almost full if there is main grid outage suddenly，

 

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44 minutes ago, hoohloc said:

Not According to Growatt support and to be honest, you are the first person that has growatt SPF5000TL inverter that doesn't switch off PV when batteries are full. I have tried SOL and OSO options and both my inverters switch off every time batteries reach 100% SoC. Are you using Lithium batteries and BMS connected?

 

 

You may have hit on something.

I'm not using Lithium on the Growatt for now. Using AGM with the default AGM settings.

Might be isolated to Lithiums and what the BMS is autonomously doing (?)

 

Are you using USE for the battery out of interest? If this is an inherent issue on Lithium connected batteries with no fix in sight, I'm going to rather scrap my plan to move to Lithium on this inverter

For context: My previous config was an Axpert type 3Kva paired with a Pylontech UP2500 set on USE and statically defined voltage settings for bulk charge, float etc and it worked exactly the same. Solar provided to load when SOC was 100.

Edited September 25, 20214 yr by JoeyhZA

10 hours ago, Coulomb said:

It sounds like the firmwares that are not using the solar power properly are using the solar power exclusively for battery charging. It's like firmware with a Solar Balance setting that is permanently off (or possibly intermittently off).

Actually, on reading the documentation again, I no longer hold this theory. With the solar balance setting off, the PV output current should be limited to the value of the total charge current setting. Suppose that's 60 A; that means that you should be able to use up to 60 A of PV charge current (at the 50 V end, so around 3 kW) to support the loads. That's clearly not happening.

What I now suspect is happening is what @hoohloc reported; the BMS is sending a "don't charge, don't discharge" command to the BMS, and it's obeying it. Mu suspicion is that the Pylontech BMS is using too high a maximum charge voltage, and that's allowing the battery voltage to exceed 54.0 V, which is the panic level. But I don't understand how the battery voltage is supposed to fall if it's not being discharged.

In summary: it looks like the BMS is the root cause. Whether the inverter firmware should be slavishly following the BMS commands is another question.

14 hours ago, JoeyhZA said:

You may have hit on something.

I'm not using Lithium on the Growatt for now. Using AGM with the default AGM settings.

Might be isolated to Lithiums and what the BMS is autonomously doing (?)

 

Are you using USE for the battery out of interest? If this is an inherent issue on Lithium connected batteries with no fix in sight, I'm going to rather scrap my plan to move to Lithium on this inverter

For context: My previous config was an Axpert type 3Kva paired with a Pylontech UP2500 set on USE and statically defined voltage settings for bulk charge, float etc and it worked exactly the same. Solar provided to load when SOC was 100.

Nope,I use LI because with Lithium batteries it is recommended to use BMS. The issue is not a big deal if you can get your hands on more batteries so that your storage is big enough and only gets to 100% SOC at the end of the day, just before sunset 😂

Maxumis 

I am looking an spf-3000tl-hvm-24 with 2 x 12v 200ah lithium batteries as below.

 https://www.sustainable.co.za/products/growatt-spf-3000tl-hvm-24-3kva-3kw-24v-hybrid-inverter-with-wifi

2 x https://www.geewiz.co.za/lithium-ion-batteries/187470-hubble-s-200-256kwh-12v-200ah-lithium-ion-lifepo4-battery.html

This is pretty much what you have. Are you still happy a year down the line?