Morning, does any one have any feedback on installations that have been done with these inverters Sofar 6000-ES 6kVA/6kW 48V Hybrid Inverter, Or similar models. 

 

Does anyone have any detailed info on the components used and how the design works ? From what i have found it runs Parallel to the Grid so can thefore blend all 3 Sources ( PV,BAT,Grid) but i stand to be corrected. 

I have 4kW of Solar PV connected to a Sofar HYD6000-ES and 4 x US3000 batteries.

It seems to be working fine but I may add an ME3000SP and swap the batteries to that because in the UK I'm not allowed to charge the batteries during off-peak electric because it will discharge through the solar meter and show up as extra generation.

What I don't like is that battery discharge is limited to 3kW (on both models) which means I have to buy from the grid even though the batteries may be full.

Andy

18 hours ago, AndyWhittaker said:

It seems to be working fine but I may add an ME3000SP and swap the batteries to that because in the UK I'm not allowed to charge the batteries during off-peak electric because it will discharge through the solar meter and show up as extra generation.

I went with ME3000SP in 2017 for exactly this reason, although back then there were far less options for battery storage.

The trade off with the ME3000SP is that you end up with two lots of conversion losses because you're doing AC -> DC to charge them and then DC -> AC to discharge them. 

I've logged data from my system since I installed it and in general that round trip is about 82% efficient, i.e. for 10kW of electricity I put in I get 8.2kW back.  This still makes it worthwhile to me because I maximise self-generation usage (100%) from the solar PV and also charge off-peak at about 50% of the cost.  Last year we used just 20% peak electricity, this year should be even less since I'm increasing the capacity again by adding a final pair of Pylontech US2000.

The 3kW limit I've not found to be a problem, but we don't have any high current appliances anymore (cook with gas, changed electric showers to thermostatic mixers, etc).  We make sure we schedule washing machine, dishwasher, etc during off-peak and non-overlapping timing.

I also find that the Pylontechs do much better with a slow and steady discharge too rather than maxing them out, so I've got my ME3000SP set at a maximum of 50A draw on the DC side anyway, with the current 6 battery packs this spreads at around 8A per pack and gives about 2.5kW maximum output on the AC side.  I also set the DOD at 80% because I'm mixing a pair of the older US2000B which only go down to 20% and even though the newer batteries go down to 10% Pylontech state this reduces their cycles from 6000 to 4500, so I'm erring on the side of caution there.

I started with two battery packs, then have added two more each year and this year will be the final pair.  For reference my oldest two packs (July 2017) have done around 750 cycles, the pair from April 2018 have done around 640 cycles and the pair from July 2019 have done around 246 cycles.  SOC and SOH still seem to be 100% so I am optimistic that I will see 6000 cycles or more from them all.