Which one of the 2 inverters are the beter option to select? Is the victron worth the extra cash? What are the pros and cons between the 2 units?

Hi Hennie. I had the Goodwe 4.6kw paired with 3 x 2.4kwh Pylontechs and 17 x 330w panels and it never skipped a beat. It ran like clockwork for 2 years till we sold the house. The only downside is the Goodwe cannot be paralleled so we had to manage how many appliances we switched on at any one time. I love the fact that it has no fan so it’s completely silent. I know many guys love Victron because of the quality. 

Thanks Leshen. Good to hear that the Goodwe had given good service. My reason for being undecided between the victron and Goodwe is what I was told, apparently with the victron, if there is excess power available, the power can be shifted to the Non Essential loads, where the Goodwe apparently cannot do this, any excess power is dumped and cannot be rerouted to the Non essential loads. Not sure how this works.

The Goodwe has an AC Backup side which in the even of a grid failure will be able to power up  to 4.6kw of load by blending PV and battery power if PV is insufficient. On this side, when Eskom is online, it can blend all 3 sources depending on load and supply. It also has an AC on grid side where it can push excess power back into the grid which can be zeroed by using a current transformer. But you can also power high load appliances on the on grid side before the CT like geysers etc. On this side, it can blend PV and Eskom power up to a max of 9.2kw. This on grid side will obviously shut down when Eskom is offline. The Goodwe is a true HYBRID and is seamless in the way it works and it’s a plug and play system when paired with the Pylontechs. 

Thanks Leshen, value your input. 

2 hours ago, HennieJH said:

My reason for being undecided between the victron and Goodwe is what I was told, apparently with the victron, if there is excess power available, the power can be shifted to the Non Essential loads, where the Goodwe apparently cannot do this, any excess power is dumped and cannot be rerouted to the Non essential loads. Not sure how this works.

Good morning Hennie. 

Both the inverters can move access power to the Non essentials. The only drawback with Goodwe that I have pickup so far, It uses less power from the Pylontechs compared to Victron. What this means it that Goodwe will blend in Grid at a lower wattage than Victron. 

20 minutes ago, Jaco de Jongh said:

Good morning Hennie. 

Both the inverters can do move access power to the Non essentials. The only drawback with Goodwe that I have pickup so far, It uses less power from the Pylontechs compared to Victron. What this means it that Goodwe will blend in Grid at a lower wattage than Victron. 

That’s true Jaco. I also noticed that with my system. Also I don’t like that the Goodwe cannot be paralleled. So for next project, I think I’ll just stick with the Victron Quattro 12kw  

Hi, can anybody tell me if the goodwe 5048d-es can be setup to prioritize it's power sources? Solar power when PV is sufficient, if PV is insufficient use the batteries and when the batteries are drained only then use utility power?

9 hours ago, HennieJH said:

Thanks Leshen. Good to hear that the Goodwe had given good service. My reason for being undecided between the victron and Goodwe is what I was told, apparently with the victron, if there is excess power available, the power can be shifted to the Non Essential loads, where the Goodwe apparently cannot do this, any excess power is dumped and cannot be rerouted to the Non essential loads. Not sure how this works.

I can't give the technical explanations that others have, but I watched my Goodwe inverter today via SEMS Portal (the on-line monitoring tool) and it certainly ran the pool pump (which is a non-essential load in my home) from the solar panels.

So, yes, it can shift excess power to non-essential loads.

4 hours ago, Biocide said:

Hi, can anybody tell me if the goodwe 5048d-es can be setup to prioritize it's power sources? Solar power when PV is sufficient, if PV is insufficient use the batteries and when the batteries are drained only then use utility power?

Yes. But that could leave you with nothing to spare in case of load shedding.

Mine is set up so that it uses solar first, battery second, then if there is a grid connection AND the battery drops to 40% charged then it uses whatever power sources are available to recharge the battery and service the load - even if that means drawing from grid.

By default that percentage is set to 50%, but I have a heat pump that kicks in in early each morning, and on a cold morning that could drain the battery past 50% and so the system would start drawing from the grid because PV was not yet available. It would usually get down to about 44-45%, so I tweaked the setting so as to maximise savings.

This is really what you are asking about. It's just how far you let your batteries go before they are considered "drained".

Mine still uses a little grid power. I am assuming this is because of momentary spikes when fridges (mostly) turn on.

26 minutes ago, Bobster said:

Yes. But that could leave you with nothing to spare in case of load shedding.

Mine is set up so that it uses solar first, battery second, then if there is a grid connection AND the battery drops to 40% charged then it uses whatever power sources are available to recharge the battery and service the load - even if that means drawing from grid.

By default that percentage is set to 50%, but I have a heat pump that kicks in in early each morning, and on a cold morning that could drain the battery past 50% and so the system would start drawing from the grid because PV was not yet available. It would usually get down to about 44-45%, so I tweaked the setting so as to maximise savings.

This is really what you are asking about. It's just how far you let your batteries go before they are considered "drained".

Mine still uses a little grid power. I am assuming this is because of momentary spikes when fridges (mostly) turn on.

Hi, thanks for info. 

I have a problem with the GoodWe architecture.

It has a wireless connector unit and if this gives problems you have no idea what your system is doing. They do seem to be problematic, there are many posts where they mention that the wireless connection comes and goes..

There is no port to connect a LAN cable in directly either.

Im not sure if the victon has both a wireless and LAN cable port.

Have a Goodwe 5048D-ES, less than a year old which has been effectively out of service for more than 2 months, and has been with the local importer for several weeks now, while we have to cover the interest on the loan for the non functional system along with higher electricity bills (again) while also suffering from the loadshedding.

 

Would summarize the pro’s and con’s as follow:

 

Pro’s

- All in one unit, no need to buy additional (and costly) extra modules.

- Fanless design, means it is quite and does not suck in dust.

- High IP rating 

- Seems to integrate well with the Byd batteries and can deliver a high discharge current, equivalent to the full capacity of the inverter with 2 X 2.56kWh Byd  batteries.

 

Cons

- Not as configurable as I understand the Victron is, this should not be an issue for most users who does not wish to fiddle to much with the system.

- Online SEMS monitoring portal loose contact with the inverter fairly often, showing it to be "offline" and is a pain to get up and going again.

- Local support ( or rather lack of) in case of problems and issues is simply shocking, this would also be the main reason I would not choose Goodwe again in future, anyway not in SA.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited February 2, 20206 yr by WeNotGood
grammar and spellin

On 2019/09/23 at 7:51 AM, Jaco de Jongh said:

Good morning Hennie. 

Both the inverters can move access power to the Non essentials. The only drawback with Goodwe that I have pickup so far, It uses less power from the Pylontechs compared to Victron. What this means it that Goodwe will blend in Grid at a lower wattage than Victron. 

@Jaco de Jongh I must admit I don't fully understand the capabilities of the easy solar.

The GoodWe makes it clear that is can supply 4.6kw to the non-essentials and 4.6kw to the essentials at the same time (provided the batteries and panels etc are specked correctly). It can blend the PV output to essentials and non-essentials as required and limited by the chosen settings/profile of the unit.

The MPPT range is also much higher than the Victron? With the victron, depending on the number of panels, you would need to add combiner boxes as well whereas with the Goodwe you can have a big series string and use less cable/thinner cable if the array is far away?

With the easy solar, it seems you have to split your essential loads according to the 4 breakers' limitations. So if you already split your DB between essentials and non essentials, do you know have to split it even further per breaker? If for example, your Inverter is far away from your DB would that then not be impractical? Maybe I am missing something obvious.

Still learning about all the options.

 

11 hours ago, branderplank said:

The GoodWe makes it clear that is can supply 4.6kw to the non-essentials and 4.6kw to the essentials at the same time

that is incorrect. The maximum output power of the inverter is 4.6kW (essential and non-essential combined).

4 hours ago, Fuenkli said:

that is incorrect. The maximum output power of the inverter is 4.6kW (essential and non-essential combined).

Please help then with this from their product data sheet:

 

Max apparent output of 9200 VA?

11 minutes ago, branderplank said:

Max apparent output of 9200 VA?

This is a new feature. My inverter specification does not list "Max Apparent Power from Utility Grid (VA)". Thanks for pointing it out. I am not sure what it refers to. It could be the maximum pass through power to the back up output when the grid is available. I am however still certain that the inverter can only generate 4.6kW.

On 2020/02/09 at 1:47 PM, Fuenkli said:

This is a new feature. My inverter specification does not list "Max Apparent Power from Utility Grid (VA)". Thanks for pointing it out. I am not sure what it refers to. It could be the maximum pass through power to the back up output when the grid is available. I am however still certain that the inverter can only generate 4.6kW.

Is this apparent power from grid not the max the inverter can draw from the grid? Iow it can provide 4.6kW to the backup loads and use 4.6kW via mppt to charge batteries to give the 9.2kW?

Edited March 4, 20206 yr by Pietpower

1 hour ago, Pietpower said:

Is this apparent power from grid not the max the inverter can draw from the grid?

Yes that is also how I read the specification sheet 

1 hour ago, Pietpower said:

Iow it can provide 4.6kW to the backup loads and use 4.6kW via mppt to charge batteries to give the 9.2kW?

I think you are right. Although the back up is connected via the relay array to the grid (see attached diagram) it will disconnect if the load is >4.6kVA 🙁. I have never managed to trip the back up output during normal grid operation. Maybe there is a Goodwe ES inverter owner here on PF who did, and can confirm if our theory is correct. 

 

On 2020/01/16 at 12:51 PM, FixAMess said:

Im not sure if the victon has both a wireless and LAN cable port.

The Victron "GX" device (which is an ARM computer controlling things and logging data) has an ethernet port. The Venus-GX, Cerbo-GX and the inverters with a built-in GX device all have Wi-Fi as well (but not the older CCGX).

Now people obviously know me as a member of the blue team, so obviously I'd want to steer people towards that side, but with that said, the Goodwe has just one glaring issue that I hope they address in the near future: It does not bond neutral and earth while islanded.

On 2019/09/23 at 3:34 PM, Bobster said:

Mine is set up so that it uses solar first, battery second, then if there is a grid connection AND the battery drops to 40% charged then it uses whatever power sources are available to recharge the battery and service the load - even if that means drawing from grid.

Correction. It will sit at 40% until PV power is available again. At night the system will power the property from grid and keep the battery in stand by at 40%

Edited March 5, 20206 yr by Bobster
spelling

On 2020/02/09 at 1:47 PM, Fuenkli said:

This is a new feature. My inverter specification does not list "Max Apparent Power from Utility Grid (VA)". Thanks for pointing it out. I am not sure what it refers to. It could be the maximum pass through power to the back up output when the grid is available. I am however still certain that the inverter can only generate 4.6kW.

A constant 4.6 kw. It can burst to 6.9 for up to 10 seconds.

I do t know how it all works, but in my home, I often pull > 5KW loads for extended periods, where pv provides 4. 2 KW and escom the balance (battery reached DoD limit already).. It's mostly the non-essential load.... 

On 2020/02/02 at 11:04 PM, WeNotGood said:

- Online SEMS monitoring portal loose contact with the inverter fairly often, showing it to be "offline" and is a pain to get up and going again.

- Local support ( or rather lack of) in case of problems and issues is simply shocking, this would also be the main reason I would not choose Goodwe again in future, anyway not in SA.

THIS is what caused me to chuck my Goodwe.

The rotten local support and the inability to talk to the inverter without sacrificing virgins and doing a rain dance.