April 15, 20242 yr Morning Everyone, I need some advice regarding my Kodak inverter. I added 2 additional 550w solar panels last week bringing my total to 4240w (4x 2 panels per string, PV voltage hovers around 90v) The inverter has now on 2 occasions dropped all PV input during the day, I then either have to manually restart the inverter or wait until the next day for everything to resume as normal. Current firmware is 71.97 Could this problem be resolved by upgrading to a newer firmware?
April 15, 20242 yr 1 hour ago, WernerM said: Morning Everyone, I need some advice regarding my Kodak inverter. I added 2 additional 550w solar panels last week bringing my total to 4240w (4x 2 panels per string, PV voltage hovers around 90v) The inverter has now on 2 occasions dropped all PV input during the day, I then either have to manually restart the inverter or wait until the next day for everything to resume as normal. Current firmware is 71.97 Could this problem be resolved by upgrading to a newer firmware? Like @madness_zasaid the problem is the startup voltage of the mppt that is 150v the mppt range 120~450v. You need to re-arrange your solar array to achieve higer voltage your configuration seems to be 2S4P(2series4parallel) if your voltage is 90v. You need to have 4S2P for Voc of ~200v.
April 15, 20242 yr 9 minutes ago, TaliaB said: Like @madness_zasaid the problem is the startup voltage of the mppt that is 150v the mppt range 120~450v. You need to re-arrange your solar array to achieve higer voltage your configuration seems to be 2S4P(2series4parallel) if your voltage is 90v. You need to have 4S2P for Voc of ~200v. NOOOO! The Kodak OG5.48 Plus (Axpert King) is a 145V max inverter - putting 200V into it is a seriously bad idea. 90V is a perfectly normal operating voltage for the MPPT of these inverters. The issue is almost certainly firmware related - these inverters have more bugs than the average museum. Perhaps you should try @Coulomb's new patched version. I am not sure if it addresses this particular issue.
April 15, 20242 yr 1 hour ago, Calvin said: NOOOO! The Kodak OG5.48 Plus (Axpert King) is a 145V max inverter - putting 200V into it is a seriously bad idea. 90V is a perfectly normal operating voltage for the MPPT of these inverters. The issue is almost certainly firmware related - these inverters have more bugs than the average museum. Perhaps you should try @Coulomb's new patched version. I am not sure if it addresses this particular issue. Sorry then my mistake was under the impression you have the inverter below.
April 15, 20242 yr Author Thanks for the reply guys, Yes, the max volts for this inverter is problematically low, so thats why I have to use a weird sting layout to keep the voltage at a safe level. I attached a photo of the inverter specs, hopefully its readable. Let me try and get hold of Coulomb and see if he can advise me on a way forward.
April 15, 20242 yr 44 minutes ago, WernerM said: Thanks for the reply guys, Yes, the max volts for this inverter is problematically low, so thats why I have to use a weird sting layout to keep the voltage at a safe level. I attached a photo of the inverter specs, hopefully its readable. Let me try and get hold of Coulomb and see if he can advise me on a way forward. This inverter was designed for low PV voltage strings. If you wanted a high voltage the 5.48 without the plus is the high voltage version as per the picture placed earlier. It does seem strange with 4 parallel strings made up of 2 in series that the inverter does not use the PV. Are you using the Solar 1st option in the settings? Edited April 15, 20242 yr by Scorp007
April 15, 20242 yr Author Wish I got the one without the PLUS then, It uses the PV's perfectly most of the time, its just randomly every now and then when they are kicked out. The inverter would be charging the batteries one day and running at 3400+ watts from the panels, then all of a sudden it just drops to 0 watts from the panels and stays like that until the inverter is restarted. Then after that it does not happen for a few days. This does not happen every day so thats why I was wondering if its firmware, or perhaps a spike of some sorts with the volts or amps that triggers a safety limit on the inverter. Attached you can see a graph from Saturday when this happened. Edited April 15, 20242 yr by WernerM
April 15, 20242 yr Do you have a graph that shows the load with the pv? As mentioned these inverters are buggy. I had one and it was under recording the pv altogether, which in turn lead to over charging of the battery.. Long story short, I've changed to a Solis.. The old saying, you get what you pay for is very true. The Solis is more expensive, but it works and does everything as it should. The Kodak isn't a bad inverter but it's a cheaper option and therefore has some issues. (from personal experience)... Try push the issue with the installer/supplier/importer.. Doesn't seem right, many of the cheaper inverters are OK if you don't monitor them with a third party system.. As then you are none the wiser.
April 16, 20242 yr Author In the image below you can see what the load did while the PV input bombed out. My 2kw geyser was running at the time so you can see that the PV was sufficient for the entire load, then the PV (green) dropped, battery (blue) took over until it ran low, then it switched to grid (red) and that continued for the rest of the day.
April 16, 20242 yr Double check is blue not your load? If so there is an interesting load spike just after the pv drops.. It maybe a case of the inverter going into bypass mode as the load was to high of pv/invert.. I can't remember what the max pv use is on the Kodak og plus but I recall it's less than the 5kw the invert can deal with. Should have reset asftrr the peak in any case so there is still and issue, even if this theory is correct. All the above is just guess work..
April 16, 20242 yr Double check is blue not your load? If so there is an interesting load spike just after the pv drops.. It maybe a case of the inverter going into bypass mode as the load was to high of pv/invert.. I can't remember what the max pv use is on the Kodak og plus but I recall it's less than the 5kw the invert can deal with. Should have reset asftrr the peak in any case so there is still and issue, even if this theory is correct. All the above is just guess work..
April 17, 20242 yr Author Morning Sam, Thanks for the reply. I attached a screenshot with more details from that day (selected in blue), here we can see the 'Load Max' was 3.95kw and the 'Max PV' was 3.62kw. This seems to still be well within the rated specs of the inverter which are 4kw max PV input and 5kw max AC output. In my understanding should the load spike to say 4.5kw, the PV's should be able to supply 4kw max and the remaining 500w should be supplied from the grid. Is there perhaps a setting on the inverter that I can check which should initiate the reset you mentioned?
April 17, 20242 yr Author Thanks Coulomb, I'm just trying to source the right cable then I will proceed with the firmware upgrade. Is it necessary to upgrade the display as well?
April 19, 20242 yr On 2024/04/17 at 8:24 PM, WernerM said: Is it necessary to upgrade the display as well? Probably not for this issue.
October 7, 20241 yr Hi, can anyone help me find a WiFi dongle for the Kodak Plus 5.48? I want to connect the inverter to the internet for monitoring. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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