Hi,

Hoping someone here can assist me. I have a Growatt SPF 5000es Inverter with 5.12kw Li Battery + 8 x 450w Panels. I have Setting 1 set on SUb as I would like my system to utilise Solar -> Utility -> Battery. It uses mostly solar until battery is charged to 100% and then prioritizes Utility and only uses 22w from Solar. Does anyone have a solution?

I am not sure if I am using the latest/correct firmware. Please help...
 

 

Hi can I ask what issues you are having when running it in SBU(battery first)?

Edited February 4, 20224 yr by Buyeye

11 hours ago, Buyeye said:

Hi can I ask what issues you are having when running it in SBU(battery first)?

HI Buyeye,
 

When set to SBU, it works as it should, takes power from Solar and if load exceeds, it pulls from the battery. My issue is when on SUB (which I want), it takes from Solar but once the battery is 100% it takes from Grid and about 22w from Solar.

What you describe is normal behavior in SUB.

Since you have enough panels to power your loads and charge the battery in SBU I'm not sure what you are trying to do?

I mostly use SUB on overcast days to preserve battery for if the utility goes away for any reason.

I also often have to charge the batteries from the grid on those days. You have to remember to discharge the batteries overnight or you will start the day with a full battery and the solar will have nowhere to go. I did that once.

On sunny days it's SBU all the way.

 

Edited February 4, 20224 yr by Buyeye

It is doing what it is supposed to do, but it doesn't make sense for most of us, the assumption is that SUB means only solar then only utility then only Battery, what mind fucks everyone is that solar and battery work together, SUB switches over to grid once solar has fully charged your battery, because battery is last. Running solar requires battery to account for the shortfall If there is a cloud or a dip or shading or whatever. So once the battery has reached its full charge, it says no more battery use. This is because the spf5000es cannot blend solar and grid together, to power your load - in an ideal world this would be great. What you and I are wanting is an invertor that can make up the shortfall with grid power for the solar when it dips, and then use the battery for only load shedding. I only have experience with the 5000es so I don't know if there is an invertor that can do that

my non growatt inverter sub mode is solar and battery work together while there's pv voltage/wattage, then reverts to grid when it drops to zero.

it stops the battery usage/cycling at night.   

Edited February 5, 20224 yr by Nitrious

4 hours ago, roadkill said:

It is doing what it is supposed to do, but it doesn't make sense for most of us, the assumption is that SUB means only solar then only utility then only Battery, what mind fucks everyone is that solar and battery work together, SUB switches over to grid once solar has fully charged your battery, because battery is last. Running solar requires battery to account for the shortfall If there is a cloud or a dip or shading or whatever. So once the battery has reached its full charge, it says no more battery use. This is because the spf5000es cannot blend solar and grid together, to power your load - in an ideal world this would be great. What you and I are wanting is an invertor that can make up the shortfall with grid power for the solar when it dips, and then use the battery for only load shedding. I only have experience with the 5000es so I don't know if there is an invertor that can do that

Yes that's exactly it. It's frustration on steroids!

"What you and I are wanting is an invertor that can make up the shortfall with grid power for the solar when it dips, and then use the battery for only load shedding."

You are spot on, this is exactly what I am trying to achieve. I am moving to the Deye 5kw next week, there are few settings that will allow you to manage your Grid charging. I will give you feedback once it's installed... Wish me luck 🤞

2 hours ago, Nitrious said:

my non growatt inverter sub mode is solar and battery work together while there's pv voltage/wattage, then reverts to grid when it drops to zero.

it stops the battery usage/cycling at night.   

Hi,

What Inverter are you using? My main aim is to keep my battery full as a back-up for load shedding. I'm hoping my new purchases (Deye 5kw) will help.

Currently using an Axpert VMII 5Kw (I know I know) but it just works and I can't fault it, may upgrade to 2x 5kw Sunsynks one of these days, put the Axpert out to pasture.

However my main reason for posting is consider adding another tool (which supports Deye) to your arsenal if the Deye modes don't behave as you want.

This gives you mode time control, you decide the mode and the time it engages, maybe its something to consider.

I don't use the feature as you can see, trying off grid out atm. They're starting to steal substations now during load shedding, so want to make sure we can handle, and do any fine tuning now before it comes to that. 

 

 

Edited February 5, 20224 yr by Nitrious

1 hour ago, Nitrious said:

Currently using an Axpert VMII 5Kw (I know I know) but it just works and I can't fault it, may upgrade to 2x 5kw Sunsynks one of these days, put the Axpert out to pasture.

However my main reason for posting is consider adding another tool (which supports Deye) to your arsenal if the Deye modes don't behave as you want.

This gives you mode time control, you decide the mode and the time it engages, maybe its something to consider.

I don't use the feature as you can see, trying off grid out atm. They're starting to steal substations now during load shedding, so want to make sure we can handle, and do any fine tuning now before it comes to that. 

 

 

Hi,

Thanks for this, will definitely keep it in mind. One of the features of the Deye seems similar to this, I will post the video to this message.

Seems like you are managing your system well, well done! Sunsynk's are highly rated, I believe the Deye is quite similar, maybe check it out, the Deye is also a lot cheaper.

Sorry to hear about the substations, hope you never get affected by it. Soon they will steal the "Sun" then we F#$@*&.
 

 

They stole a/the kempton park substation a few suburbs away, came with bakkies and took as much as they could.

this just as kempton park had power failure for a week or so, at the end it was no power, no water, cell towers were off, wifi/internet gone. traffic was a nightmare, and food availability dropped badly (and how do you store it). had to bring family members over during the last period, looks like its going that way again.   

also looks like its becoming a thing though, substation theft during load shedding.

 

 

Edited February 5, 20224 yr by Nitrious

On 2022/02/05 at 6:40 AM, roadkill said:

So once the battery has reached its full charge, it says no more battery use. This is because the spf5000es cannot blend solar and grid together, to power your load - in an ideal world this would be great.

Hi, first message here. I've had the SPF5000ES with 8x465w panels and without batteries since april 2021, running in SUB mode most of the time and mixing solar + grid when solar wasn't able to power the loads.

 

Last weekend I've added 1xUS3000C and tried SUB mode expecting the loads to be powered exclusively with solar and with solar + grid at the same time when solar wasn't sufficient as I was used to (and described on manual's page 16). That didn't happen. The solar generation stopped (battery were at 100%) and the grid started to power all the loads exclusively.

So I've changed the mode to SOL and I'm happy with it. Solar as first option, solar + batteries when needed (almost never), and when PV voltage drops under 120v OR battery drops under 50% (configured on P12), it uses the grid. My battery is configured to charge only with solar and I retain 50% of its capacity as backup.

I have had similar issues and for the life of me cannot make sense of it. the graphs show one thing but the generation report says another. graphs show that solar used to power loads with minimal input from grid while generation report does not reflect this. the other issue i have in the SUB setting is the self discharging of the battery from the system, this does not feed into the the load and in essence a waste. This inverter definitely not the sharpest tool in the box. I'm now also considering changing 

 

On 2022/02/11 at 7:23 AM, MSR said:

the other issue i have in the SUB setting is the self discharging of the battery from the system, this does not feed into the the load and in essence a waste.

That's something else I noticed. My US3000C loses ~12% in 10h (from 8pm to 6am) in SOL mode while the loads are supposed to be powered exclusively by the grid.

 

Edited February 12, 20224 yr by Ole

I also have a Growatt SPF5000es installed and am new to the forum and solar stuffs. Am i right in saying that the following is expected behavior for the Growatt inverter:

• Inverter set to SUB
• Batteries fully charged
• As daylight approach, the solar panels starts to see the light
• When home load increases and there is not enough solar, the batteries are used first
• Once the batteries are depleted to threshold, the grid kicks in and supports the load until enough PV is available
• Once the excess load requirement from the household has been catered for, the batteries are recharged using grid and PV combination

If so this is not what I expected. As stated previously, I would like the batteries just to sit there until the grid is offline and there is not enough Solar to cater for the household requirement. It seems that the inverter is actually always running as SBU. My batteries are currently discharged at least twice a day. They will thus not last long.

If anybody has the latest firmware available, please could I ask for an email of said firmware. I attach pics of the current firmware on the machine.

 

2 hours ago, Andre155 said:

I also have a Growatt SPF5000es installed and am new to the forum and solar stuffs. Am i right in saying that the following is expected behavior for the Growatt inverter:

• Inverter set to SUB
• Batteries fully charged
• As daylight approach, the solar panels starts to see the light
• When home load increases and there is not enough solar, the batteries are used first
• Once the batteries are depleted to threshold, the grid kicks in and supports the load until enough PV is available
• Once the excess load requirement from the household has been catered for, the batteries are recharged using grid and PV combination

If so this is not what I expected. As stated previously, I would like the batteries just to sit there until the grid is offline and there is not enough Solar to cater for the household requirement. It seems that the inverter is actually always running as SBU. My batteries are currently discharged at least twice a day. They will thus not last long.

If anybody has the latest firmware available, please could I ask for an email of said firmware. I attach pics of the current firmware on the machine.

 

SUB means solar 1ST. During no solar util is used while battery is kept full awaiting LS. Only when no grid does it go to battery as indicated by SUB.

What you were describing is in fact the SBU setting.

Thanks Scopr007. Although inverter is set to SUB, it acts like SBU. That is what i do not understand.

@Andre155 On setting SUB it uses solar first, if solar not enough to power your load it will merge a bit of utility to make up for the load.

At least this is my my system behaves see dashboard.

One can clearly see the grid in yellow making up for the short fall. 

So I cannot understand how your setup works differently.

 

 

 

Edited April 7, 20224 yr by Antonio de Sa

The problem is the firmware, they had this unit on the market for two years before I got mine , and spent hours online with the factory to make them understand the unit does not work once the battery get to 100% , I chased them off to R&D to test it for themselves, and yes they see the problem, they gave me a beta firmware to try while they reworked the firmware, the beta did solve the issue, however there has been a further 3 or 4 updates after that the latest is 040.05 - 041.05 

On 2022/02/03 at 2:39 PM, FJ25 said:

Hi,

Hoping someone here can assist me. I have a Growatt SPF 5000es Inverter with 5.12kw Li Battery + 8 x 450w Panels. I have Setting 1 set on SUb as I would like my system to utilise Solar -> Utility -> Battery. It uses mostly solar until battery is charged to 100% and then prioritizes Utility and only uses 22w from Solar. Does anyone have a solution?

I am not sure if I am using the latest/correct firmware. Please help...
 

 

Looking at your inverter it seems they tried to update the firmware but forgot to do the other *.bin file they done one 041.05 but the top number should also be 040.05 I have the latest firmware and it does work SUB mode will work, I may be too late but have seen another post from you way back in June 2021, so not sure if you sorted?

On 2022/04/06 at 1:56 PM, Andre155 said:

I also have a Growatt SPF5000es installed and am new to the forum and solar stuffs. Am i right in saying that the following is expected behavior for the Growatt inverter:

• Inverter set to SUB
• Batteries fully charged
• As daylight approach, the solar panels starts to see the light
• When home load increases and there is not enough solar, the batteries are used first
• Once the batteries are depleted to threshold, the grid kicks in and supports the load until enough PV is available
• Once the excess load requirement from the household has been catered for, the batteries are recharged using grid and PV combination

If so this is not what I expected. As stated previously, I would like the batteries just to sit there until the grid is offline and there is not enough Solar to cater for the household requirement. It seems that the inverter is actually always running as SBU. My batteries are currently discharged at least twice a day. They will thus not last long.

If anybody has the latest firmware available, please could I ask for an email of said firmware. I attach pics of the current firmware on the machine.

 

And as for your inverter not working in SUB mode? the firmware you have does work in SUB mode, maybe they forgot to do the factory reset after the update?

If you still having issues : When the inverter is restarted,  press button UP+DOWN buttons together and input password 305 to reset 
the inverter parameters. After you input the password 305, you will enter the setting option 
34, press enter twice, the system will execute reset operation for several seconds, then you 
can use the inverter , hope this helps

On 2022/02/03 at 2:39 PM, FJ25 said:

Hi,

Hoping someone here can assist me. I have a Growatt SPF 5000es Inverter with 5.12kw Li Battery + 8 x 450w Panels. I have Setting 1 set on SUb as I would like my system to utilise Solar -> Utility -> Battery. It uses mostly solar until battery is charged to 100% and then prioritizes Utility and only uses 22w from Solar. Does anyone have a solution?

I am not sure if I am using the latest/correct firmware. Please help...
 

 

Another thing, is when you do the firmware update, turn off the panels and  the main supply to the inverter it must only be powered by the battery, and its a double process to update you do the one bin file eg: F030_SK041.05_20210619_A.bin and then you go through the process a second time selecting the other bin file eg: F2809_SK040.05_20210619_A.bin , when that is done you do the factory reset as in the above post and you done.