Good morning everyone,

Looking for some assistance on my current setup.

I have a Goodwe GW5048-ES with 2 strings of 6 panels and a 100Ah lithium battery.

System was working 100%, until a few months ago where my Earth Leakage in the house would trip randomly.

The EL at the inverter would not trip, but only in the house. The Inverter is installed in my garage and gets power from the garage DB.

I have disconnected all outside lights and plugs connected to the garage in various stages to trace the fault and had my electrician test for any faults without success.

Switching off the CB that feeds the garage solves the issue, but then I get no feed from the solar to power the house and the battery keeps discharging.

I have disconnected the earth from the panels to test, removed the fuses between the panels and the Inverter, switched the DC breaker off between the panels and Inverter without success.

Also replaced the EL to eliminate that.

When the power is restored in the house the inverter is now sometimes not switching back to show the grid as connected and active until you reset it via the SolarGo App.

Any ideas where to start looking would be much appreciated.

Thank you,

Edited April 29, 20251 yr by Badhabit

16 minutes ago, Badhabit said:

Good morning everyone,

Looking for some assistance on my current setup.

I have a Goodwe GW5048-ES with 2 strings of 6 panels and a 100Ah lithium battery.

System was working 100%, until a few months ago where my Earth Leakage in the house would trip randomly.

The EL at the inverter would not trip, but only in the house. The Inverter is installed in my garage and gets power from the garage DB.

I have disconnected all outside lights and plugs connected to the garage in various stages to trace the fault and had my electrician test for any faults without success.

Switching off the CB that feeds the garage solves the issue, but then I get no feed from the solar to power the house and the battery keeps discharging.

I have disconnected the earth from the panels to test, removed the fuses between the panels and the Inverter, switched the DC breaker off between the panels and Inverter without success.

Also replaced the EL to eliminate that.

When the power is restored in the house the inverter is now sometimes not switching back to show the grid as connected and active until you reset it via the SolarGo App.

Any ideas where to start looking would be much appreciated.

Thank you,

I’m not sure if this will help, but do you have any surge-protection plugs? I had a similar problem two years back and found the EL randomly tripping. After a lot of research I discovered that surge-protection plugs can cause this. After removing all of them the problem stopped.

Another thing that could possibly cause this is having an EL before the inverter instead of after the inverter.

I’m not sure if this helps but, surge protection plugs could cause random tripping of EL.

Also if your EL is connected before the inverter instead of after the inverter, it could cause tripping.

There could be many different causes.

1 hour ago, Badhabit said:

I have a Goodwe GW5048-ES with 2 strings of 6 panels and a 100Ah lithium battery.

System was working 100%, until a few months ago where my Earth Leakage in the house would trip randomly.

Is the inverter chassis earthed? It should be. As you face the front panel of the inverter, the chassis earthing point is on the left hand side at the bottom. That should be connected to the Eskom earth.

Random earth leakage trips are a pain. Usually it is something with a flexible lead (EG kettle). So next time the EL trips, reset and if it trips immediately then turn off all the circuit breakers and turn them back on one by one (with a count of 5 in between breakers) until one trips the EL. Leave that breaker off and continue turning on. When all breakers that don't cause a trip are on, then the culprit is amongst whatever is now not working.

Edited April 29, 20251 yr by Bobster.
clarity

On 2025/04/29 at 10:26 AM, Badhabit said:

I have disconnected the earth from the panels to test, removed the fuses between the panels and the Inverter, switched the DC breaker off between the panels and Inverter without success.

Just a thought: Did you check the surge arrestors?

On 2025/04/29 at 10:26 AM, Badhabit said:

Good morning everyone,

Looking for some assistance on my current setup.

I have a Goodwe GW5048-ES with 2 strings of 6 panels and a 100Ah lithium battery.

System was working 100%, until a few months ago where my Earth Leakage in the house would trip randomly.

The EL at the inverter would not trip, but only in the house. The Inverter is installed in my garage and gets power from the garage DB.

I have disconnected all outside lights and plugs connected to the garage in various stages to trace the fault and had my electrician test for any faults without success.

Switching off the CB that feeds the garage solves the issue, but then I get no feed from the solar to power the house and the battery keeps discharging.

I have disconnected the earth from the panels to test, removed the fuses between the panels and the Inverter, switched the DC breaker off between the panels and Inverter without success.

Also replaced the EL to eliminate that.

When the power is restored in the house the inverter is now sometimes not switching back to show the grid as connected and active until you reset it via the SolarGo App.

Any ideas where to start looking would be much appreciated.

Thank you,

I had the same issue, sometimes it will not trip for a week or 2 and then suddenly keep tripping. After 2 different electricians could not pin point the problem ( i don't blame them) a friend who is a marine electrician suggested that i remove all the surge plugs ±12 and replace with normal plugs and install a Hagar CD264J EL - END OF PROBLEM ☺️

https://www.em.co.za/CD264J

Edited May 2, 20251 yr by Demo
SPELLING

Morning all,

Thank you for everyone's feedback.

@Bobster. - The surge arrestors show green. Is there a test I can do?

@Demo - I do not have any devices with surge plugs installed, only multi adaptors. I have purchased a Schneider EL that I will install this weekend.

https://www.se.com/za/en/product/A9R41263/acti9-iid-rccb-2-pole-63a-30ma-type-ac/

What I have found is that the EL that was installed with the initial installation was placed between the Eskom feed and the inverter.

I tried to bypass this with a direct Eskom feed, but then ran into issues of the EL not wanting to reset at all in the house and suddenly having a neutral with 220V. 😳

After a frustrating hour of fault finding, I traced it back to a faulty EL in the house that the electrician replaced as part of his fault finding the previous day.

Replaced that with a new one and the tripping improved to such a degree that I thought the issue was resolved.

Also added a Earth Rod with 25mm wire running directly to the panels and garage DB to ensure earthing.

Until this morning when the condensation of the cold night and early morning sun caused it to trip continuously again.

With the new EL installed, I will bypass the EL again and connect Eskom directly to the Inverter.

Any further ideas what could cause it or tests that I can run to maybe identify an earth issue on the panels?

Regards,

7 minutes ago, Badhabit said:

Morning all,

Thank you for everyone's feedback.

@Bobster. - The surge arrestors show green. Is there a test I can do?

I think we can assume that they are OK and not causing problems.

Have you checked SolarGo/PVMaster for any warnings? OK, Goodwe error messages are not that helpful, but some of them are dealt with in the troubleshooting guide that can be found on line. They might give you clues, especially if they correspond with the trips.

I don't want to get more specific because, as my signature says, I am not an electrician.