Some Sunsynk 12Kw 3Ph inverter information.

[Delta9]

Well I spent my Easter reading power forum up and down and left and right. This forum has by far the most traffic to do with Sunsynk Inverters.

I thought I would jot down in one place some information I have come across on the forum to do with Sunsynk inverters in general and the 12Kw 3Ph in particular - it may save someone else who is looking for some info on this inverter spending days reading the forum to try to ferret this information out.

In no particular order;

* - Sunsynk is manufactured by Deye, who also makes Fusion, Inge and SolArk (in the U.S.).

* - Sunsynk and Deye are the SAME inverter - just different firmware on each respective branded inverter. A number of installers prefer the Sunsynk firmware/interface. Sunsynk have an Englishman behind the brand (actually the inventor of these inverters that Deye bought the IP for) so support is in English rather then engrish. May or may not be a big deal to you (unless you are fluent in Cantonese). Someone reported in the forums that Sunsynk will soon have its own proprietary monitoring and control system - if anyone knows about that can they add here ?

* - the 12Kw 3 Ph can only work with a 3 Phase genset. A single phase Genset cannot be connected to this inverter to try to get power into 1 Ph so that you can use that 1 Ph.

* - the 12Kw 3 Ph can only output a total of 12Kw overall (ie across 3 Phases) but CAN output 6Kw per phase (on grid) - but only up to a total of 12Kw. So for example one could draw 6Kw on the red phase and 4Kw on the blue phase and it would work OK. (however I seem to remember reading somewhere that the phase imbalance can  only be for 50% of the total output - if someone knows more about this perhaps they could chime in) **** See this video - Keith says that *OFF GRID* that each phase can draw 6kW for a total of 18kW and that *ON Grid* you can have a peak power demand of 12kW from any given phase as the inverter will draw from battery and grid to support that peak demand.

 

* - Each MPPT is half of the total Max DC input power - so in the case of the 12Kw 3 Ph it would be 7800W per MPPT to make the combined total of 15600W

* - the sweet spot of the 12Kw 3 Ph MPPT is 550v with the range for the MPPT being 200V - 650V

* - Keith mentions in his understanding MPPT Youtube video that the most important figure is VOLTAGE - the 12Kw 3 Ph inverter has an 800V max PV input Voltage - however dont go anywhere near 800V max with a string of panels in series as on cold mornings you could go over the 800V if you are close to 800V in your configured string of panels. The total number of Watts (KWp) in a string of panels on the MPPT is not that important, or less so anyway. Ie, one can over panel in wattage and be OK. The advantage of over panelling is that there is more energy production earlier in the day and later in the day. At peak production (midday?) the MPPT will just clip the extra power being produced. Over panelling will help on overcast days. He says there may not be an economical advantage to this but if money is not the issue then this can work (environments with less sun hours per day? in the rainy season when many overcast days are the norm?)

* - The aux port draws its power from the battery or grid - NOT the solar panels. If the grid is down then the aux port supplies its load from batteries. But only up to 50% max rating of the inverter.

* - Further, forum user JpPaulKruger reports this about the Aux port when using the Aux port as the Generator input port to the system .........................

........................"nice thing about the AUX port is that you have different charge settings for when GRID is the input and different settings for when GEN is the input.  And the SunSynk connects the GEN load slowly.  And not all at once, making the HZ more stable on the gen output".............

 

 

 

* - This video on you tube explains things very clearly and is a great place to start in understanding this system and its setup

 

  

 

Probably more but that's it for now. I will keep adding to this as I come across more. Keith puts out lots of You tube videos so lots of info there if you have the time to watch them all.

Edited April 23, 2022 by Delta9
adding info

[Delta9]

Like many others I am finding the setup of the Sunsynk a bit confusing.

 

This post by system32 explains his settings for his Sunsynk 8K on the Battery Setup and System Mode screens and is easy to follow;

 

On 2021/12/05 at 10:33 PM, system32 said:

 

 

Used the rain & load shedding to confirm some of the settings in the manual:

Regardless of work mode - you need to enable "Grid Charge" if you ever want to change from Grid.
The 40A above is at 48V (kind of obvious as it's on the Battery Panel)
40A * 48V = 1.92kW

I had rain/overcast most of the day with two load shedding.
I have 4xAM2 batteries ~20kWh capacity and my whole load is on the critical side.
Still need to move some of the big appliances to the Grid side.

I normally have my Work Mode 1 set to 20% with Grid un-ticked and Shutdown at 10%.
This means that only excess Solar is used to change the batteries to 100%.
If I run out of battery (below 20%) then Grid is used, and the next day, Solar fills the batteries.

For load shedding and because of the rain, I decided to bump the SOC to 30% and enable Grid.

The "Use Timer" setting seem to be a prerequisite for things to work.

I had Eskom for the morning, but little Solar due to rain.
Before load shedding, because of the rain, the battery drained to 30% then used the Grid and the SOC stayed at 30%

During load shedding, the battery drained from 30% further to 22%
When Grid came back on, Eskom was used to charge the battery SOC to 30%.
Without the Grid Tick, the battery stayed at 22% and only charges from PV.

Now that rain + load shedding is over, I'll revert to 20% / No Grid Tick.
If it was just load shedding I would have been fine.

The manual is OK, but could do with some expanded definitions / clarity on some of the settings.

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Delta9
Clean Up's

[Zeo786]

On 2022/04/18 at 3:55 PM, Delta9 said:

Well I spent my Easter reading power forum up and down and left and right. This forum has by far the most traffic to do with Sunsynk Inverters.

I thought I would jot down in one place some information I have come across on the forum to do with Sunsynk inverters in general and the 12Kw 3Ph in particular - it may save someone else who is looking for some info on this inverter spending days reading the forum to try to ferret this information out.

In no particular order;

* - Sunsynk is manufactured by Deye, who also makes Fusion, Inge and SolArk (in the U.S.).

* - Sunsynk and Deye are the SAME inverter - just different firmware on each respective branded inverter. A number of installers prefer the Sunsynk firmware/interface. Sunsynk have an Englishman behind the brand (actually the inventor of these inverters that Deye bought the IP for) so support is in English rather then engrish. May or may not be a big deal to you (unless you are fluent in Cantonese). Someone reported in the forums that Sunsynk will soon have its own proprietary monitoring and control system - if anyone knows about that can they add here ?

* - the 12Kw 3 Ph can only work with a 3 Phase genset. A single phase Genset cannot be connected to this inverter to try to get power into 1 Ph so that you can use that 1 Ph.

* - the 12Kw 3 Ph can only output a total of 12Kw overall (ie across 3 Phases) but CAN output 6Kw per phase (on grid) - but only up to a total of 12Kw. So for example one could draw 6Kw on the red phase and 4Kw on the blue phase and it would work OK. (however I seem to remember reading somewhere that the phase imbalance can  only be for 50% of the total output - if someone knows more about this perhaps they could chime in) **** See this video - Keith says that *OFF GRID* that each phase can draw 6kW for a total of 18kW and that *ON Grid* you can have a peak power demand of 12kW from any given phase as the inverter will draw from battery and grid to support that peak demand.

 

* - Each MPPT is half of the total Max DC input power - so in the case of the 12Kw 3 Ph it would be 7800W per MPPT to make the combined total of 15600W

* - the sweet spot of the 12Kw 3 Ph MPPT is 550v with the range for the MPPT being 200V - 650V

* - Keith mentions in his understanding MPPT Youtube video that the most important figure is VOLTAGE - the 12Kw 3 Ph inverter has an 800V max PV input Voltage - however dont go anywhere near 800V max with a string of panels in series as on cold mornings you could go over the 800V if you are close to 800V in your configured string of panels. The total number of Watts (KWp) in a string of panels on the MPPT is not that important, or less so anyway. Ie, one can over panel in wattage and be OK. The advantage of over panelling is that there is more energy production earlier in the day and later in the day. At peak production (midday?) the MPPT will just clip the extra power being produced. Over panelling will help on overcast days. He says there may not be an economical advantage to this but if money is not the issue then this can work (environments with less sun hours per day? in the rainy season when many overcast days are the norm?)

* - The aux port draws its power from the battery or grid - NOT the solar panels. If the grid is down then the aux port supplies its load from batteries. But only up to 50% max rating of the inverter.

* - Further, forum user JpPaulKruger reports this about the Aux port when using the Aux port as the Generator input port to the system .........................

........................"nice thing about the AUX port is that you have different charge settings for when GRID is the input and different settings for when GEN is the input.  And the SunSynk connects the GEN load slowly.  And not all at once, making the HZ more stable on the gen output".............

 

 

 

* - This video on you tube explains things very clearly and is a great place to start in understanding this system and its setup

 

  

 

Probably more but that's it for now. I will keep adding to this as I come across more. Keith puts out lots of You tube videos so lots of info there if you have the time to watch them all.

Does anyone have a Fusion invertor? Any advice or feedback on these? How's  the interface ?

[phidz]

On 2022/04/18 at 3:55 PM, Delta9 said:

- The aux port draws its power from the battery or grid - NOT the solar panels. If the grid is down then the aux port supplies its load from batteries.

On my 5kw inverter, this is not true. I can power the aux port whilst charging the batteries from Solar.

[Delta9]

4 hours ago, phidz said:

On my 5kw inverter, this is not true. I can power the aux port whilst charging the batteries from Solar.

Please clarify what you mean. Are you saying that you can power something through the aux port from your solar panels ?

The information I posted was taken from a You Tube video made by Keith. He clearly stated that the Aux port does not get power form panels. Maybe he meant something else - his videos have a ....certain rambling style to them.

[phidz]

2 hours ago, Delta9 said:

Please clarify what you mean. Are you saying that you can power something through the aux port from your solar panels ?

The information I posted was taken from a You Tube video made by Keith. He clearly stated that the Aux port does not get power form panels. Maybe he meant something else - his videos have a ....certain rambling style to them.

Correct, have a look at this image. It's also charging the battery from the solar.

Edited April 30, 2022 by phidz

[Delta9]

interesting. in his vid he very clearly said no solar through the aux port but here you doing it. 

 

dont know what to think of the info out there on these inverters

[phidz]

I agree, some of his videos are not very clear, at least to me

[bushgnome]

Hi Delta 9 . Thanks most informative.  I have a 12kwa 3 phase sunsynk inverter. I have 13 ja 540w ja panel on one mppt facing north and 2 540w ja panel and 5 545w ja panel on the other 3 facing north 4 facing east . Want to add another 8 545w ja panels. Was thinking of doing the following the 13 east stay as they are. Putting 8 545 facing east and 2 and 5 545w facing west.  Was thinking of running the 8 east facing in 4 in parallel with 4 . To keep the voltage down. Is this possible or even feasible?

[suds7162]

On 2022/04/30 at 5:43 PM, Delta9 said:

interesting. in his vid he very clearly said no solar through the aux port but here you doing it. 

I recently saw that video and I was also quite confused by it. I think we need to keep in mind that he is in the UK, and the typical use case there is quite different than in SA. I think most in the UK use the inverter to shift costs, i.e. charge batteries when power is cheap at night, then use during the day when it's expensive. Top up with solar if it's available. He might have meant his comment in that context.

If you look at the inverter block diagram it's clear that it's possible to provide power to the aux port from solar. The MPPTs and batteries are connected to a single DC bus that feeds the inverter. So the inverter cannot know/determine where the electrons are coming from. If you have 100 electrons coming from solar, and you have a load on the inverter requesting 50 electrons, then the rest will go to the batteries. If your load is 150 electrons, then 100 will come from solar, and 50 from the batteries. etc etc etc.

 

In the video Keith explains it saying you are drawing from the batteries, while the MPPTs are charging the batteries at the same time. This comes down to the same thing. If your load exceeds your charge rate, then the batteries will discharge. If the load is less than the charge rate, the batteries will charge, albeit slower probably. 

Secondly, in the manual they have the following screenshot, for the configuration of the GEN/AUX port:

They don't explain this checkbox in the manual, but my interpretation is that "when the grid is on, the Aux port will ALWAYS be on". Meaning The aux port will be treated in the same way as the normal load/output port when the grid is available. If you reference the above block diagram you'll see this option makes sense and is possible, as all that's required is to switch on the relays going to the GEN/AUX port when the gird is on.

It's important to realize that the AC side is electrically a single circuit, the input, output and the AUX/GEN port. The inverter makes use of relays to control which port is on/off based on several rules. It is for this reason that I'm excited about Sunsynk's upcoming smart switch product. As it basically allows you to create an AUX output anywhere in your house, without needing to lay special cabling connected to the aux port of the inverter.

I have no idea what that "AC couple on grid/load side" checkboxes mean. I am unable to find any information on this online, and some of the videos I've seen online do not even have these checkboxes on the inverter. My own Sunsynk is not installed yet, so I cannot check and confirm myself.