As far as I am aware, the Kodak OSG5.6 is an Off-Grid inverter so will switch the house between Eskom/Inverter and cannot blend power between them.  It can't run as a grid tie and has to have a battery attached.

IMO if you want to run as a grid-tie the Sunsynk's would be the better choice as it can run in Grid-Tie mode and will switch to Islanding mode when you get a battery for it. 

Rather get a 5kw Sunsynk, works out at an extra R10k but it really is the heart of your solar plant and better to spend a bit extra and get something which is a lot more flexible

3 hours ago, Don said:

I am not sure what happens when power is lost to the CBI and the power comes back on. I have an inverter, so the power never goes off. A person need to take into account that if the Eskom goes down and you are running on batteries, the Geyser Schedule will be running and might switch on the Geyser during that time. My Geysers are on the inverter side (essential) and not on the non-essential side where the power will be down during an outage, as I only heat up my Geysers with solar power.  

There is a device restart status. Can be set to restart when the power is restored. 

17 hours ago, Chris Louw said:

That is correct I use Tuya and Sonoff and could not get CBI to pair with them. I then used CBI to pair the CBI Astute. 

CBI's can pair in SmartLifeHome app,their steps for indicating "ready" and "reset" to pair is fiddly though and doesn't match the usual lighting sequences in the app

*Doublepost*

Edited September 15, 20223 yr by PsyWulf

Test completed. All works as it should. I must have been mistaken on either it wasn't the geyser on or the CBI was still on. thanks everyone.

 

1 hour ago, Sc00bs said:

As far as I am aware, the Kodak OSG5.6 is an Off-Grid inverter so will switch the house between Eskom/Inverter and cannot blend power between them.  It can't run as a grid tie and has to have a battery attached.

IMO if you want to run as a grid-tie the Sunsynk's would be the better choice as it can run in Grid-Tie mode and will switch to Islanding mode when you get a battery for it. 

The Kodak OSG5.6 is an off-grid hybrid that blends power between Eskom and inverter. But does not require a battery, where the Sunsynk does need a battery. So the problem I have is that the Sunsynk isn't flexible enough for me.

4 hours ago, MKRandburg said:

The Kodak OSG5.6 is an off-grid hybrid that blends power between Eskom and inverter. But does not require a battery, where the Sunsynk does need a battery. So the problem I have is that the Sunsynk isn't flexible enough for me.

Hi @MKRandburg Firstly, as far as I am aware, there is no Kodak OSG5.6 Inverter (I can't find anything on the internet referring to this model at least), I am assuming that you are talking about the OGS 5.6, is that correct? 

If so, the OGS 5.6 is an Off-Grid inverter (it says so in the description on the Kodak Website), it does not have a grid-tied mode and is not capable of running without a battery.  Here is a link to the manual for the OGS 5.6, there is no mention of any blending/grid-tie/batteryless operation. All the modes are with batteries.   

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1776/7837/files/Kodak-Axpert_MKS_IV_manual-20210628_OGS5.6.pdf?v=1633264505 

There is no mention of "blending" of power in the manual. The inverter switches between running the house from the inverter, when there is enough power from the panels & battery to do so,  to running from grid power when the power requirement is exceeded. 

Whilst the Kodak may be sufficient for a lot of people use, it is not a Hybrid inverter. 

The Sunsynk is WAY more flexible than the Kodak and a much better inverter in my opinion.

It can run without a battery in a "grid-tied mode" where it will blend the power it produces feeding as much as it can into your household and then pulling the rest from the grid  without the need for a battery. If grid power is however removed you will loose power to your house. 

My suggestion would be to purchase a small battery, maybe a 2nd hand Pylontech or something along those lines to that the inverter can switch to an "Islanding mode" when there is  load shedding and itwill carry on running as it will then generate its own grid frequency. As far as I am aware it is not possible to run an inverter in Island mode purely from panels with no storage as solar power is not consistent enough and you will have your inverter tripping out everytime a cloud crosses over your panels and your production drops lower than your consumption. 

1 hour ago, Sc00bs said:

Hi @MKRandburg Firstly, as far as I am aware, there is no Kodak OSG5.6 Inverter (I can't find anything on the internet referring to this model at least), I am assuming that you are talking about the OGS 5.6, is that correct? 

If so, the OGS 5.6 is an Off-Grid inverter (it says so in the description on the Kodak Website), it does not have a grid-tied mode and is not capable of running without a battery.  Here is a link to the manual for the OGS 5.6, there is no mention of any blending/grid-tie/batteryless operation. All the modes are with batteries.   

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1776/7837/files/Kodak-Axpert_MKS_IV_manual-20210628_OGS5.6.pdf?v=1633264505 

There is no mention of "blending" of power in the manual. The inverter switches between running the house from the inverter, when there is enough power from the panels & battery to do so,  to running from grid power when the power requirement is exceeded. 

Whilst the Kodak may be sufficient for a lot of people use, it is not a Hybrid inverter. 

The Sunsynk is WAY more flexible than the Kodak and a much better inverter in my opinion.

It can run without a battery in a "grid-tied mode" where it will blend the power it produces feeding as much as it can into your household and then pulling the rest from the grid  without the need for a battery. If grid power is however removed you will loose power to your house. 

My suggestion would be to purchase a small battery, maybe a 2nd hand Pylontech or something along those lines to that the inverter can switch to an "Islanding mode" when there is  load shedding and itwill carry on running as it will then generate its own grid frequency. As far as I am aware it is not possible to run an inverter in Island mode purely from panels with no storage as solar power is not consistent enough and you will have your inverter tripping out everytime a cloud crosses over your panels and your production drops lower than your consumption. 

You're right it's the OSG5.6 - it's this one: 

https://jcsolarpanels.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/5.6kw-Off-Grid-Kodak-Solar-Inverter-User-Manual.pdf

A couple of users have run it without a battery. How sure are you that it can't be done?

 

Edited September 15, 20223 yr by MKRandburg

1 hour ago, Sc00bs said:

It can run without a battery in a "grid-tied mode" where it will blend the power it produces feeding as much as it can into your household and then pulling the rest from the grid  without the need for a battery. If grid power is however removed you will loose power to your house. 

Yeah this is fine. I have a generator for loadshedding and will just switch over in that situation. 
A few people have said if there is enough sun, and I reduce my load during loadshedding, I might get away without having to switch over to the gennie. If not, it will trip the inverter and I'll just switch over to the gennie. Happy to do this until I have money for decent batteries for real back up.

 

1 minute ago, MKRandburg said:

You're right it's the OSG5.6 - it's this one: 

https://jcsolarpanels.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/5.6kw-Off-Grid-Kodak-Solar-Inverter-User-Manual.pdf

A couple of users have run it without a battery. How sure are you that it can't be done?

 

Look at the manual for it, there is no grid-tie mode.

You also need to be aware that an inverter working in grid-tie mode cannot work without a grid frequency to sync to either from the grid, another inverter or a generator.  If there is no frequency to sync to the inverter will not work. As such whenever there is load shedding you will have no power.

For an inverter to run in Islanding mode it needs to have a battery to draw power from. I don't know of any inverters that are able to run in Islanding mode purely from solar panels.  

3 minutes ago, MKRandburg said:

Yeah this is fine. I have a generator for loadshedding and will just switch over in that situation. 
A few people have said if there is enough sun, and I reduce my load during loadshedding, I might get away without having to switch over to the gennie. If not, it will trip the inverter and I'll just switch over to the gennie. Happy to do this until I have money for decent batteries for real back up.

 

Either the few people who said that are wrong or you maybe misunderstood them. You cannot run an inverter in island mode without a battery (I have never seen it done in any case) and don't think it is even possible. They are correct in that 90% of the time you will probably be making more power than you are using, assuming that you could find an inverter that would do it, it would switch off every time the load exceeds the power production. 

My suggestion would be to pick up a 2nd hand Pylontech US2000 2.4kw/hr battery, you can find them for R10k on Facebook marketplace, you can then run the inverter in Island mode and hook up your autostart on your generator to start the genie if the battery starts getting too flat. Then you just add more batteries to the bank as and when you have the money available.  You will be limited on how much power the battery can produce as it is a 0.5c battery so will only be able to fill in a max of 1.2kw if the panels are short of power (maybe a bit more for a limited time) but it will enable the inverter to run in Island mode. 

2 minutes ago, Sc00bs said:

Either the few people who said that are wrong or you maybe misunderstood them. You cannot run an inverter in island mode without a battery (I have never seen it done in any case) and don't think it is even possible. They are correct in that 90% of the time you will probably be making more power than you are using, assuming that you could find an inverter that would do it, it would switch off every time the load exceeds the power production. 

My suggestion would be to pick up a 2nd hand Pylontech US2000 2.4kw/hr battery, you can find them for R10k on Facebook marketplace, you can then run the inverter in Island mode and hook up your autostart on your generator to start the genie if the battery starts getting too flat. Then you just add more batteries to the bank as and when you have the money available.  You will be limited on how much power the battery can produce as it is a 0.5c battery so will only be able to fill in a max of 1.2kw if the panels are short of power (maybe a bit more for a limited time) but it will enable the inverter to run in Island mode. 

Hmmm this is interesting. No autostart on the gennie, it requires elbow grease. My primary use case isn't backup. Although I was hoping not to use the gennie for day time loadshedding. 

11 minutes ago, Sc00bs said:

They are correct in that 90% of the time you will probably be making more power than you are using, assuming that you could find an inverter that would do it, it would switch off every time the load exceeds the power production. 

I get this. I have the same issue with the gennie, it's small and we have to switch loads off so it doesn't trip. 

4 minutes ago, MKRandburg said:

Hmmm this is interesting. No autostart on the gennie, it requires elbow grease. My primary use case isn't backup. Although I was hoping not to use the gennie for day time loadshedding. 

You will need a battery to be able to run the inverter in Island mode, I would suggest getting a Sunsynk/Deye 5kw instead of the Kodak, is a much better inverter. Even with a small battery you will probably be able to run most days without the generator, assuming you have enough solar panels that is. You however need to battery to fill in the holes when there is a shortfall in solar production, even if it is only for a few seconds. 

Hi 

There excist some confusion in this thread regarding the Kodak off-grid family of machines. I own an OG5. 48a which is a rebranded voltronic MKS3. Somewhere above there is also reference to the Kodak OGS5. 6 which again is a rebranded voltronic axpert MKS4, the latest generation. 

Both these models employ modern blending or energy mixing, seamlessly. Example in SBU mode the load power will be prioritised from solar pv. If the pv cannot supply enough, that balance is imported from the battery. If the battery cannot supply the entire balance, the new balance is imported from the grid. So it can happen that for a 2.4kw load demand, 1.1kw is supplied by solar,   1kw is discharged from battery and 0.3kw is imported from the grid.  And you can set the priority of the blending chain.

Yes, from the MKS3, upwards, you can run the inverter in battery independant mode. Carefull though, you at least need grid assist to blend with pv to fill the valleys that pv might experience due to clouds, shadows etc. So although you can still get output with pv only, the output will drop accordingly when the pv yield cannot match the load demand. 

My opinion of the Kodak : its in a class of its own, and worth every cent i have spent on it.  Very robust and reliable. Well supported  in SA. 

No its not grid tied, but gridtie cannot solve my needs.

Edited September 15, 20223 yr by BritishRacingGreen

8 hours ago, Sc00bs said:

As far as I am aware, the Kodak OSG5.6 is an Off-Grid inverter so will switch the house between Eskom/Inverter and cannot blend power between them.  It can't run as a grid tie and has to have a battery attached.

IMO if you want to run as a grid-tie the Sunsynk's would be the better choice as it can run in Grid-Tie mode and will switch to Islanding mode when you get a battery for it. 

Unfortunately, you are wrong in this statement. It can work batteryless. I know the Sunsynk is your inverter of choice. The use of the word Hybrid is a very loosely thrown around term. To some it means able to Blend sources. To some it means blend sources & able to grid feed. 

It's not a myth, the OGS5.6 cannot Grid feed its labeled as Off grid so it will never be able to do that. It can however, blend between sources of power. The 3 sources are Grid, Solar & battery. It has 3 modes of operation. USB, SUB & SBU. It needs at least 1 of these to work. So yes with just Solar & no grid & no battery with a large enough Array, this inverter will work. 

All of the High Voltage Solar Charge controller models can work batteryless. But the only limitation is it can do this as stand alone. So means in parallel, it's advised not to. 

Edited September 15, 20223 yr by Steve87

Thanks @Steve87, that does make sense. 

So I was partially right :-), it still won't work without the grid in batteryless mode 🙂 

I doesn't seem to have a grid-tie mode in it's manual though so I am assuming it would pull the power to run the inverter from the grid when the panels can't provide enough power. This would mean a slight loss in efficiency as no inverter is 100% efficient when converting power. In the specs it talks about a "peak efficiency" value of 90% not sure if that would be the power loss conversion rate for power from the grid to inverter power.

From what I can see it has an "Appliance mode" 20ms transfer and "UPS mode" with 10ms transfer.  Any idea what the difference is, it sounds like it is switches the load between the inverter and the grid in both modes? 

What happens if you pull more than the inverter max? Does it switch the full load to the grid? 

2 hours ago, Steve87 said:

Unfortunately, you are wrong in this statement. It can work batteryless. I know the Sunsynk is your inverter of choice. The use of the word Hybrid is a very loosely thrown around term. To some it means able to Blend sources. To some it means blend sources & able to grid feed. 

It's not a myth, the OGS5.6 cannot Grid feed its labeled as Off grid so it will never be able to do that. It can however, blend between sources of power. The 3 sources are Grid, Solar & battery. It has 3 modes of operation. USB, SUB & SBU. It needs at least 1 of these to work. So yes with just Solar & no grid & no battery with a large enough Array, this inverter will work. 

All of the High Voltage Solar Charge controller models can work batteryless. But the only limitation is it can do this as stand alone. So means in parallel, it's advised not to. 

Would like to see it working in practice just of a solar array. On a steady load I could see it working, I think the issue would be when a large load gets turned on and the array has to switch from producing say 2kw to 4kw. Obviously any clouds/shadows hitting the array could cause a dip in power production and the whole thing tripping out. 

10 minutes ago, Sc00bs said:

I was partially right :-), it still won't work without the grid in batteryless mode

Yes it will work without the Grid present & power loads directly from the Solar PV. It is not a Grid tied architecture like the Sunsynk/ Deye. It will output AC power directly from PV to the loads. If you exceed the loads, she will just power trip. But, the joy of this is that most essentials like a fridge etc are low powered so is you have a decent sized Array & just need some essentials like the fridge, WiFi, TV & some odds & ends you have some good free energy & without Eskom being involved. 

3 minutes ago, Sc00bs said:

Would like to see it working in practice just of a solar array. On a steady load I could see it working, I think the issue would be when a large load gets turned on and the array has to switch from producing say 2kw to 4kw. Obviously any clouds/shadows hitting the array could cause a dip in power production and the whole thing tripping out. 

Will definitely make a video of my MAX 8kW doing this. This feature is present in all the High Voltage Solar Charge controller models. The model lists that boast this from Kodak: OGS3.24/ OGS5.6/ OG7.2/ OG10.0 just to name a few. The Voltronics equivalent models list is longer: MKS2/ MKS3/ MKS4/ MAX 7.2/MAX 8/ MAX2 8/10.

Now, I love the quality the Sunsynk & the Deye have brought to the market. However, if a product doesn't meet you needs then you have the wrong product. @MKRandburghas a very specific requirement with what she wants to achieve. The Sunsynk I'm afraid does not meet that requirement. 

Further to the point, having played around In both the residential & commercial solar markets I can safely say that the Grid Tied architecture of the Sunsynk or Deye makes sense for the Commercial world & for one reason only. High constant loads. Makro & other large commercial institutions, the grid tied arrangement makes sense. They want to pay as little to Eskom as possible. The have a massive PV arrays on the car parks/ Car ports & these Grid tied Solar Edge inverters push as much energy as possible from the PV against the Grid so they pay as less as possible. 

When it loadsheds, the PV inverters turn off. It's a legal requirement. These machines are Grid interactive. The Sunsynk does the same, however, with a difference. It as they say a "True Hybrid" it can also have backup power via the battery. However, you only backup the Essential loads. Correct me if I am wrong @Sc00bsin this scenario, you cannot feed PV power to the non-essentials like the geyser???

At night with no PV you cannot serve the non-essentials with power from the battery but only from the GRID. In essence it loadsheds & you stuck with the essential loads on that battery. 

 

Power blending of the OGS5.6 in action. 

 

Edited September 15, 20223 yr by Steve87

That high load from 12:00 until 13:30 was a 3.3kW geyser. The OGS5.6 grabbed 2kW from Solar & grabbed the other 1.3kW from the Lithium Battery. Then thereafter, charged the battery with the Solar. This is running independently with or without the Grid. In this scenario, without the battery & without Grid power during loadshedding this inverter would have tripped at 12:00. However, what is clear is that look at the red line the AC out watts load. It's small for much of the day. Only fridges, WiFi, TV etc running. The solar PV would be waiting to power only these loads. So the PV would have been waisted but remember it's only waisted as there is no battery to charge. 

9 hours ago, Sc00bs said:

Thanks @Steve87, that does make sense. 

So I was partially right :-), it still won't work without the grid in batteryless mode 🙂 

I doesn't seem to have a grid-tie mode in it's manual though so I am assuming it would pull the power to run the inverter from the grid when the panels can't provide enough power. This would mean a slight loss in efficiency as no inverter is 100% efficient when converting power. In the specs it talks about a "peak efficiency" value of 90% not sure if that would be the power loss conversion rate for power from the grid to inverter power.

From what I can see it has an "Appliance mode" 20ms transfer and "UPS mode" with 10ms transfer.  Any idea what the difference is, it sounds like it is switches the load between the inverter and the grid in both modes? 

What happens if you pull more than the inverter max? Does it switch the full load to the grid? 

@Sc00bs hi, if i understand it correctly, and @Coulombcan correct me if i am wrong, the MKS3 upwards employs both DC coupled and AC coupled (gridtie) techniques to affect seamless blending. The pv and battery are mixed at the DC stage, and when inverted from dc to ac, its ac coupled with the grid input for further blending.  So although gridtie technique is used, this is internal to the machine, outside of it there will be no export of grid like in true gridtie. 

EDIT:  about a year ago there was some members that report inadvertant exporting of their axperts, this was probably a firmware bug of sorts at the time. 

 

Also I think the axpert uses the same gridtieing ac coupled transfer function to entertain current sharing in parrallel mode configuration. I stand to be corrected here, but is only logic option. 

Edited September 16, 20223 yr by BritishRacingGreen
Extra info

8 hours ago, Steve87 said:

That high load from 12:00 until 13:30 was a 3.3kW geyser. The OGS5.6 grabbed 2kW from Solar & grabbed the other 1.3kW from the Lithium Battery. Then thereafter, charged the battery with the Solar. This is running independently with or without the Grid. In this scenario, without the battery & without Grid power during loadshedding this inverter would have tripped at 12:00. However, what is clear is that look at the red line the AC out watts load. It's small for much of the day. Only fridges, WiFi, TV etc running. The solar PV would be waiting to power only these loads. So the PV would have been waisted but remember it's only waisted as there is no battery to charge. 

That pretty neat example, thank you.