Hi All,

Any insight to an issue my Friends having as per below ?

I have 2 x 5kw Kodak (Axpert) inverters in parallel, connected to 3 x UP5000 batteries.

Master inverter has 9 Canadian solar 330w solar panels (3 strings of 3) and Slave has 6 Jinko 445w panels ( 2strings of 3).

The issue I have is the one inverter doesn’t use solar since connecting SA to both units and batteries.

As per the graph below, both inverters ran on solar unit Thursday night when I connected SA in its current state which is monitoring each inverter off the RS232 port and the Pylontech’s via the Pylontech cable.

Prior to this, I was monitoring only the master and having the inverter running battery type Pylontech with the cable from the batteries to the inverter.

My question is, is there any setting that can force the inverters to both use solar. If I power them off and just power the one it runs fine, it’s only when they in parallel this happens.

From the forums, they mention allowing PV to exceed charge, but I can’t find a setting to change this on inverter or SA.

As mentioned, it worked fine until I tried monitoring each device on its own.

Even if I put everything back to what it was, it still only runs solar on the one inverter.

 

Hope the above makes sense and you could point me in the right direction?

Maybe check your parallel cables? maybe they got disturbed and hence the problem?

Also check your axpert settings for charging the batteries?

Maybe one is on mains and solar and the other one is on mains only or solar only? (charging mode and related settings)

Am not familiar with SA so it's possible it may have changed them on the inverter(s)?

The axpert inverters when working in parallel will sort of share the PV input load, depending on state of charge and how large the household load is at the time.

Once the batteries are full, it will only make a bit more PV than what you need between the two. So one may idle while the other one does a bit of work generating pv?

1 hour ago, Arandoza said:

Maybe check your parallel cables? maybe they got disturbed and hence the problem?

Also check your axpert settings for charging the batteries?

Maybe one is on mains and solar and the other one is on mains only or solar only? (charging mode and related settings)

Am not familiar with SA so it's possible it may have changed them on the inverter(s)?

The axpert inverters when working in parallel will sort of share the PV input load, depending on state of charge and how large the household load is at the time.

Once the batteries are full, it will only make a bit more PV than what you need between the two. So one may idle while the other one does a bit of work generating pv?

Thanks for the response.

Checked and settings are identical, both in SA and on the LCD. Only difference being for battery type, that the one is set to Pylon BMS the other user.

This behavior is experienced while the batteries are charging and fully charged, if I increase the load, in excess of the PV, it utilises battery.

Regarding the parallel cables, they have been unplugged and re-plugged. Switching off the Master, the Slave takes over and making adjustments on the master, the slave soon changes it's settings, so "assumption" is they are talking to each other?

If there's nothing glaring in the setup, I guess the next option it to break the cluster, making the "faulty" unit stand alone and then adding it back as a slave.

It's almost as though the one unit has gone into a mode where it doesn't use solar for anything, charging or load. If I set it up as SBU it utilises battery for it's "share" of the load, if I use USB it switches to line mode for the load.

Just to add, if I measure PV voltage before fuse they are all in the same range, hopefully this eliminates panel fault.

Cheers

I would turn ECO mode (power Saving) off on both if it's enabled, I expect it could also create a few challenges :) especially if the load is low.

Also as you no longer have the pylontechs talking directly to the inverter you may have to set both units to user defined ? As the pylontechs are all talking to SA? Be sure to use the recommended pylontech settings for user defined. The unit that still has pylontech defined, i would it to giving errors regarding the battery as it is no longer connected, directly to the inverter?

1 hour ago, Arandoza said:

I would turn ECO mode (power Saving) off on both if it's enabled, I expect it could also create a few challenges :) especially if the load is low.

Also as you no longer have the pylontechs talking directly to the inverter you may have to set both units to user defined ? As the pylontechs are all talking to SA? Be sure to use the recommended pylontech settings for user defined. The unit that still has pylontech defined, i would it to giving errors regarding the battery as it is no longer connected, directly to the inverter?

Thanks again Arandoza,

ECO was set to test, but same behaviour in auto, which I reverted to last night again.

Pylontech's are still connected directly to the master. It throws an error when the cable is unplugged.

Last night I reverted to user on the master as well, allowing SA to change settings as needed. So far it hasn't made a difference, solar still sitting at the 65/70w mark on the master, while slave producing expected power.

Cheers