Hello friends,

 

I have a REVO III 8kw.

This inverter is connected with a battery (I use my existing working house battery as test), grid and 2x PV input (total of 5Kw solar power)

Each PV input has around 243 Vdc.    Battery is full loaded.

The problem is that the inverter keeps taking lots of power from the grid, and never disconnects from the grid. On the screenshot, you can see that on 843Watts, it only take

523Watts from PV, the rest from grid.  I measured with a clamp meter, and it is correct.

When I manually disconnect the grid, the load will continue to work but the battery is discharging. (now it takes the 300+ watts from the battery in stat of the grid)

I am sure that there is more than enough solar power for the complete load.  at a small load, e.g. 100 watts, it is taking nothing from the PV.

Sorotec already sent me a replacement controller board, but the same issue with this new board.

No matter I put SBU, Solar and utility, I configure NO battery, battery:user,  factory reset and reconfigure all, etc...  it all makes no difference.

 

**btw, this is a brand new inverter. (it is very very difficult to send it back to China, many discussions... I guess you know how it goes ...)

 

Someone have a clue ? thanks a lot!

 

I'll just note that this appears to be an Axpert MAX work-alike.

Perhaps they put all their effort into pretty graphs rather than testing their firmware.

Hi Coulomb,

you are right, most of these clones just come with crappy firmware

BTW, the graphs above are from www.dessmonitor.com.   Once you register an account through Smartess (and setup WIFI), you can using the same account and login to that site. Some information for the members here that are struggling with SmartEss (don't ask me how I know ) It is much easier to register your account at www.dessmonitor.com and only setup the wifi part using smartEss. It works like a charm.  The same account works on both.

This site is very helpful because it has a debug mode and can send the HEX strings to read and set settings remotely.

 it also has a firmware update section where you just dump the .hex file (but, yeah... firmware upgrade through the internet or local wifi... hmmm)

Have a look to the inside (attachment), the DSP is 320F2809PZA, I have a spare controller board anyway, so I don't care I brick it, which firmware would be the best possible one to try for upgrading?

Thanks for your reply 

8 hours ago, geert said:

I have a spare controller board anyway, so I don't care I brick it, which firmware would be the best possible one to try for upgrading?

I think that they likely changed something in the firmware such that original Voltronic firmware likely won't work. But since you have nothing to lose, I would consider Axpert MAX 1 8kW firmware version 90.06. Note that 90.07 is a year older than 90.06. 90.14 is possibly newer, but another reader described it as inferior. Check this forum for patched firmware based on 90.06 (for once, not patched my myself or Weber). It fixes some problems that force low panel voltage and hence power in some conditions.

So hard to get good firmware these days.

Thanks for your advice ! I will give it a try and feedback.

FYI

The current firmware is 72.40.

I tried to upgrade the firmware, no matter what I try, every time it fails to upgrade. (it just times out)