DEYE Inverter UL Listed available in US

[robby]

Let me clear up a few misconceptions. Sol-Ark is owned by US Veterans, not Deye. The engineers at Sol-Ark designed the Hybrid-Inverters and Deye is a manufacturer of our innovations. We worked with them for 7 years and gave them much of the IP to assist in the development of their grid-tied and microinverter options. 99% of the features, software methods, GUI, and hardware was done by us in the US.

So why would we give away IP? Our mission is affordable energy independence for family homes and businesses. We allowed Deye to sell elsewhere, in accordance to our agreement, so it could lower the costs for everyone and we pass that on.

Our Veteran owners and engineers fought around the world for the love and respect of the US people. Our focus is here now.

Why is there a higher price for Sol-Ark? #1) We paid millions in development, prototypes, debug, and cleaning up manufacturing mistakes. #2) We spent 100's of thousands in UL certificates and engineering time. #3) We warranty and repair our systems. #4) We pay a 25% tariff on these inverters. Others you mention in this blog are falsifying the country of origin to only pay 1.5%. #5) Features and functions of Sol-Ark products are significantly different for the US market and we continuously improve. #6) We designed it for ourselves and DIYers and found this requires a tremendous amount of support. Our rapidly growing engineering team is committed to their success.

Thanks for letting us know about these Stole-Arks. What good is a $30-50K ESS system that fails?

Remember our mission of affordability. We realized long ago that reducing the cost of the inverter was not the complete answer. Below are the largest expenses of an average installed (not DIY) ESS system = $45K before credits.

1. Battery = $13,000
20kWh x $650/kWh
2. Install = $10,000
10kWpv x $1/W
3. Financing = $7,000
$38K x 18%
4. Inverter = $6,000
8000W x $0.75/W
5. PV Panels = $5,000
10,000W x $0.50/W
6. Misc / BOM = $4,000

Each ESS (Batt + Inverter) = $19K. If we can use a single ESS to backup the entire home instead of 2+, that’s a massive savings. If we can make it 2-3X easier to install, we can bring down that expense. If we can make the battery last longer, that saves. We are currently engineering communications for Utilities that allows for “renting” your ESS ~60 times a year and pay you ~$1K/5KWh/year!

You will see some amazing innovations from Sol-Ark in 2021. Most of these will be Made in the USA as our new facility will be completed.

The Deye/Sunsynk Hybrid is a copy of a Sol-Ark, not the other way around.

Respectfully,
Tom Brennan
Sol-Ark CTO
Soli Deo Gloria

Unfortunately I read the first few pages of the thread and then skipped to the end and missed @RickyBobby above post. I have been an EE designer for 35 years and I know exactly what he is talking about. As we all know, most companies including Apple make their products in China. What some people do not know is that whether you want to license away your IP to China because of generosity or not, in most cases China will require access to the IP if you want to do business over there, it all depends on what kind of leverage you have to prevent this demand.
As I stated in my above post, there is a world of difference between the Sol-Ark Inverter and the Knock offs.

To Address a second point I see mentioned about SMA and the high quality of their products. I agree!
They make really good stuff but the problems come in when you want to design a proper Hybrid system around it.

Right now I have a Sunny Boy 6Kw new in the box but I had to abandon the idea of building a system around it because of all the extra equipment that was needed to make a true flexible storage system. The final straw was when it was confirmed to me that the Sunny Island could not do 115V 50Hz voltage which is what I needed. I would instead have to use all European 230V equipment and one or possibly two Autotransformers. I could never get a straight answer on that.

Believe me I spent six weeks going back and forth with SMA America and in the end I educated their sales people on the limitations of what their products could do. They just assumed that they could do what I needed but when I insisted that the documentation was conflicted they contacted Germany and were told that the US equipment could not work for my needs, that I needed EU equipment.

My number one requirement was that during a Daytime power outage the PV system would still work and charge the batteries and power the house. I knew an Auto transfer switch was needed to cut off the grid and prevent feedback but I had no idea how complicated and expensive this was going to be with SMA equipment. I had drawn up a simple design that IMHO would have worked but SMA informed me that they would not honor any warranties if I used that design. They instead said I needed to use their approved design for creating a MicroGrid and having the PV system up and running during a power outage.

This is what I got. Now for my application two of the Sunny Islands would be removed but two Autotransformers would be needed, one for the SI and one for the SB.



That Grey Box in the middle is this unit.

The Enwitec Autotransfer switch along with all it.s breakers and other grounding stuff added another $1200 to the project and Autotransformers another $1200. I was getting Quotations for nearly $11,000 for just this equipment, not including batteries, PV panels or installation. One big concern was that this whole thing was just getting to complicated and had to many parts.

Then I found Sol-Ark and that was life saver! Just the attitude of the company alone was so refreshing. They knew what their product could do and it did exactly what you would want a Hybrid system to do when you have a long multi day duration Grid failure. There was no warranty threats, just help and assistance.

 

[Hedges]

To Address a second point I see mentioned about SMA and the high quality of their products. I agree!
They make really good stuff but the problems come in when you want to design a proper Hybrid system around it.

Right now I have a Sunny Boy 6Kw new in the box but I had to abandon the idea of building a system around it because of all the extra equipment that was needed to make a true flexible storage system. The final straw was when it was confirmed to me that the Sunny Island could not do 115V 50Hz voltage which is what I needed. I would instead have to use all European 230V equipment and one or possibly two Autotransformers. I could never get a straight answer on that.

Believe me I spent six weeks going back and forth with SMA America and in the end I educated their sales people on the limitations of what their products could do. They just assumed that they could do what I needed but when I insisted that the documentation was conflicted they contacted Germany and were told that the US equipment could not work for my needs, that I needed EU equipment.

My number one requirement was that during a Daytime power outage the PV system would still work and charge the batteries and power the house. I knew an Auto transfer switch was needed to cut off the grid and prevent feedback but I had no idea how complicated and expensive this was going to be with SMA equipment. I had drawn up a simple design that IMHO would have worked but SMA informed me that they would not honor any warranties if I used that design. They instead said I needed to use their approved design for creating a MicroGrid and having the PV system up and running during a power outage.

This is what I got. Now for my application two of the Sunny Islands would be removed but two Autotransformers would be needed, one for the SI and one for the SB.


The Enwitec Autotransfer switch along with all it.s breakers and other grounding stuff added another $1200 to the project and Autotransformers another $1200. I was getting Quotations for nearly $11,000 for just this equipment, not including batteries, PV panels or installation. One big concern was that this whole thing was just getting to complicated and had to many parts.

I don't follow what you needed to do, but couldn't at reasonable cost.
Your need for 50Hz seems odd. Frequency parameter is supposed to be adjustable for SI-6048US but I haven't tried.

I do use Sunny Island and Sunny Boy for backup of my house. When grid goes down SI creates an island grid for the house and Sunny Boy.
Everything works great, running off battery at night, recharging during the day while powering house from PV, reconnects to grid when it returns.
Main limitation is each SI has a relay for max 56A at 120V pass thru, so 2s1p gives 120/240V 56A or 2s2p gives 120/240V 112A.

 

[robby]

I don't follow what you needed to do, but couldn't at reasonable cost.
Your need for 50Hz seems odd. Frequency parameter is supposed to be adjustable for SI-6048US but I haven't tried.

I do use Sunny Island and Sunny Boy for backup of my house. When grid goes down SI creates an island grid for the house and Sunny Boy.
Everything works great, running off battery at night, recharging during the day while powering house from PV, reconnects to grid when it returns.
Main limitation is each SI has a relay for max 56A at 120V pass thru, so 2s1p gives 120/240V 56A or 2s2p gives 120/240V 112A.

This is for use in the Caribbean and the voltage is 115/230@50Hz.

I also see a much simpler way to do the whole thing but SMA wants it done their way as outlined in their "Flexible Storage Solution" manual. The Sunny Boy-US can do 50Hz but the Sunny Island-US cannot do 50Hz due to their frequency shifting not being compatible with it at 50Hz. Looking at the documentation it seems like they intended it to work but never finished writing the firmware or they hit into a hardware limitation. In any case the information that it would not work comes from the engineers in Germany.

I was also turned off by the need for Autotransformers. Even if the Si could have done 50Hz with the US model I would have needed two SI to make the system have 230 or 240V on Backup. Considering the cost it just seems like SMA is behind the times in getting out a proper all in one Hybrid model. I still think they have one of the most rock solid systems but times are changing and other companies are coming up with simpler solutions that are probably going to be proven to be just as reliable. I almost went with the Outback Skybox, it's spec sheet says it does 50Hz but on checking with technical support for confirmation they said that it does not work but should work in a future upgrade.

 

[HateGrid]

What is the difference between the Deye 7.6kw and Deye 8kw?

Is one of them a newer model/design?

7.6KW/SUN-7.6K-SG01LP1
8KW/SUN-8K-SG01LP1

I see that both units are available on Alibaba, but only the 7.6KW is listed on their website.

SUN-5/6K-SG01LP1-US SUN-7.6/8K-SG01LP1-US/EU | 5-8KW | Single Phase | 2 MPPT | Hybrid Inverter | Low Voltage Battery Inverter Company, Supplier | Deye Inverter Technology

NingBo Deye Inverter Technology Co.,Ltd is China SUN-5/6K-SG01LP1-US SUN-7.6/8K-SG01LP1-US/EU | 5-8KW | Single Phase | 2 MPPT | Hybrid Inverter | Low Voltage Battery inverter company and supplier。 The series, SUN-5/6K-SG01LP1-US SUN-7.6/8K-SG01LP1-US/EU, is a single-phase low voltage (48V)...

www.deyeinverter.com

Just slightly higher power ratings for the inverter and MPPT controller. I couldn't get a direct answer from Deye other than they were for different markets, so I suspect the 7.6K may be actually an 8K with different software limits due to regulatory reasons.

 

[Keith Moreau]

I came across this thread yesterday and need some help understanding what Mendo is referring to about Sol-Ark 12K's only actually being able to output somewhere between 7.2KW - 7.4KW on the A/C side before tripping???

If this is correct then not only am I very disappointed, but will need to quickly re-evaluate my future plans etc...
I can understand the "Real-World" Continuous A/C output being slightly less than advertised ( a few %), but if true this is closer to 20% less which to me is a very big deal when considering I've spent months tediously figuring out which appliances to replace/how many PV panels to put up/ the degree of tilt of the arrays/ Battery Bank size/and lately how big of a Generator would be required in order to go completely "OFF-GRID" (The local Co-OP changed their Interconnect rules in the middle of my installation and they are now so absurd that currently I see almost no other viable options for my particular situation)

Since I just found this post I haven't had alot of time to test out whether the assertions made in the thread regarding the Sol-Ark 12K's true A/C power/output are correct, at least with regard to my system in particular. Further, now that the Co-OP has locked out the Non-Fusable Safety Switch on my connection to the Grid all I can test for now is the "Off-Grid" performance/A/C Output etc.......

However I do also have some pictures showing the User Screen during Grid-Tie operation that were taken before it was locked out from the Grid as well as a few that I just took in "Off-Grid" mode attached. Hopefully the pictures will allow Mendo and/or someone else here to help me understand what is actually taking place on my system. I am still a relative Newbie, but so far the only way it could make sense to me is if the User Screen showing Output #'s etc.... was somehow also including conversion losses as if it were the Load and even then those losses seem higher than they should be.

Or the User Screen #'s are just artificially and Intentionally inflated while actually producing far below the claimed output and outright Fraud (7.2 -7.4 KW instead of 9 or even 9.6KW). These #'s play critical roles in major decisions that have long lasting ramifications such as whether to stay Grid-Tied or not, whether or not to buy and install a Generator, whether to spend thousands of dollars on additional Batteries, and whether or not to replace select appliances or even possibly buying another Sol-Ark.

I look forward to finding out the truth before I make any more of these important and costly long-term decisions.

I've had the Sol-Ark 12K and I've had the PV + Batteries pumping out more than 9K AC to the house for an extended time without tripping anything. If you have more than 9K coming in from PV the excess will go towards charging batteries if needed, up to 12K, this is where I believe they call it 12K.

 

[Keith Moreau]

actually, the deye/ sol-ark design were done by a guy from the UK called keith.
he sells the same units in the uk, south african and a few other countries as sunsynk.

he has a channel in YT, and has complete training courses online.

makes for very interesting learn material.

furthermore there is "dr solar", who now live in nigeria.
has been using the 5k units extensively for his customers, and he too has a YT Channel called awps renewable energy..
he disected a few

would you be able to provide a link to the Youtube channel you mention with training courses by Keith?

 

[houseofancients]

would you be able to provide a link to the Youtube channel you mention with training courses by Keith?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCirp6bMpAK7AvyKnAo-14FA/featured

 

[Roqm]

Let me clear up a few misconceptions. Sol-Ark is owned by US Veterans, not Deye. The engineers at Sol-Ark designed the Hybrid-Inverters and Deye is a manufacturer of our innovations. We worked with them for 7 years and gave them much of the IP to assist in the development of their grid-tied and microinverter options. 99% of the features, software methods, GUI, and hardware was done by us in the US.

So why would we give away IP? Our mission is affordable energy independence for family homes and businesses. We allowed Deye to sell elsewhere, in accordance to our agreement, so it could lower the costs for everyone and we pass that on.

Our Veteran owners and engineers fought around the world for the love and respect of the US people. Our focus is here now.

Why is there a higher price for Sol-Ark? #1) We paid millions in development, prototypes, debug, and cleaning up manufacturing mistakes. #2) We spent 100's of thousands in UL certificates and engineering time. #3) We warranty and repair our systems. #4) We pay a 25% tariff on these inverters. Others you mention in this blog are falsifying the country of origin to only pay 1.5%. #5) Features and functions of Sol-Ark products are significantly different for the US market and we continuously improve. #6) We designed it for ourselves and DIYers and found this requires a tremendous amount of support. Our rapidly growing engineering team is committed to their success.

Thanks for letting us know about these Stole-Arks. What good is a $30-50K ESS system that fails?

Remember our mission of affordability. We realized long ago that reducing the cost of the inverter was not the complete answer. Below are the largest expenses of an average installed (not DIY) ESS system = $45K before credits.

1. Battery = $13,000
20kWh x $650/kWh
2. Install = $10,000
10kWpv x $1/W
3. Financing = $7,000
$38K x 18%
4. Inverter = $6,000
8000W x $0.75/W
5. PV Panels = $5,000
10,000W x $0.50/W
6. Misc / BOM = $4,000

Each ESS (Batt + Inverter) = $19K. If we can use a single ESS to backup the entire home instead of 2+, that’s a massive savings. If we can make it 2-3X easier to install, we can bring down that expense. If we can make the battery last longer, that saves. We are currently engineering communications for Utilities that allows for “renting” your ESS ~60 times a year and pay you ~$1K/5KWh/year!

You will see some amazing innovations from Sol-Ark in 2021. Most of these will be Made in the USA as our new facility will be completed.

The Deye/Sunsynk Hybrid is a copy of a Sol-Ark, not the other way around.

Respectfully,
Tom Brennan
Sol-Ark CTO
Soli Deo Gloria

Can you please implement a standard with this inverter for bms communication! So any bms can give basic info to inverter...instead of only specialist battery makers having comunication!

 

[Roqm]

On my last install of a 12k, it was tripping regularly at a little over 8kw. Sol-Ark actually was monitoring and contacted me about it. Their recommendation was that I run a second 12k unit in parallel to overcome the problem.

Lmao

 

[MurphyGuy]

Can you please implement a standard with this inverter for bms communication! So any bms can give basic info to inverter...instead of only specialist battery makers having comunication!

That's not quite as easy as it sounds. While the CAN BUS is basically standard, the communications for it are not, so far as I can tell.

That said, not knowing a lot about all inverters, (only mine), I have to ask: Does the SolArK inverter have a set of enable/disable contacts for charging? If it does, than any BMS worth the board its made on should be able to tell the SolArk to stop charging.

 

[Roqm]

That's not quite as easy as it sounds. While the CAN BUS is basically standard, the communications for it are not, so far as I can tell.

That said, not knowing a lot about all inverters, (only mine), I have to ask: Does the SolArK inverter have a set of enable/disable contacts for charging? If it does, than any BMS worth the board its made on should be able to tell the SolArk to stop charging.

This is the reason i ask them to make a spec in firmware that any bms can simply tell a solark basic info..voltage/ soc, current draw/charge and temp...most Chinese bms's use what seems to be the same protocol but i highly doubt they would give this ability...it could cost high end battery makers to lose sales as d.i.y versions are already a cheaper alternative.

 

[Cheap 4-life]

How does the splitphase Deye do limiting-zero export with only one external CT?

 

[Cheap 4-life]

Is the splitphase UL Deye two inverters in one case or is it one 240v inverter with an internal transformer to get splitphase?

 

[XO4001]

How does the splitphase Deye do limiting-zero export with only one external CT?

The US version comes with 2 CT's
the EU version has only 1

 

[Roqm]

How does the splitphase Deye do limiting-zero export with only one external CT?

The u.s version is the only split phase version and comes with 2 ct's the euro version is 230 single phase and has 1 ct

 

[Roqm]

Is the splitphase UL Deye two inverters in one case or is it one 240v inverter with an internal transformer to get splitphase?

They are all single inverters in one chassis and transformer less( high frequency)

 

[Cheap 4-life]

They are all single inverters in one chassis and transformer less( high frequency)

To get splitphase from any inverter dont they have to be either 2 single phase inverters in one chassis or have an internal auto transformer to make the single phase into splitphase

 

[houseofancients]

They are all single inverters in one chassis and transformer less( high frequency)

actually, they have 8 Kwh , 10 Kwh and 12 Kwh euro 3 phase inverters

 

[rickypr]

Can you please implement a standard with this inverter for bms communication! So any bms can give basic info to inverter...instead of only specialist battery makers having comunication!

If you look at their documentation it says that the inverter supports Sunspec draft 4. Sunspec's mission is to create open standards for equipment interoperability, here's the link to their mission page. I did some captures using a logic analyzer and figured out they didn't support it and contacted them:

"In the 12K manual it says that "RS485 is SunSpec draft 4 (will not work with draft 3)", what sunspec models does it implement?"

Their response:

"That specific excerpt seems to be a remnant from some early attempts at implementing communications with a SunSpec Draft 4 compliant BMS. Unfortunately since none of the BMS'es we communicate with use SunSpec, our inverter does not communicate with or use any SunSpec models from any draft revision of the standard."

I understand Sunspec V4 has not been implemented in any current BMS but I believed that if they supported it, other BMS manufacturers would follow. I was disappointed since I was building my own BMS and had already implemented Sunspec V4 myself on the ESP32 and it worked beautifully. I tested my implementation with Sunspec's own tool SVP Dashboard.

I hope they implement it in the near future, but they at least should remove that from their documentation until they do.

I own a Sol-Ark 12K and I love it! Their tech support is also great, if you are looking for an Inverter, this one is expensive but worth it.

I have two things on my wish list for them:

1. Add support for Sunspec 4 as they mention in their documentation
2. Open their communication protocol so we can query their device (either using RS485 or through their WiFi dongle).

PS. I believe energy devices should intercommunicate as our WiFi and Ethernet devices do. Sunspec's protocol is well made and the documentation is very good too. You can read it here:

• SunSpec Device Information Model Specification
• SunSpec Energy Storage Models

 

[solardad]

If you look at their documentation it says that the inverter supports Sunspec draft 4. Sunspec's mission is to create open standards for equipment interoperability, here's the link to their mission page. I did some captures using a logic analyzer and figured out they didn't support it and contacted them:

"In the 12K manual it says that "RS485 is SunSpec draft 4 (will not work with draft 3)", what sunspec models does it implement?"

Their response:

"That specific excerpt seems to be a remnant from some early attempts at implementing communications with a SunSpec Draft 4 compliant BMS. Unfortunately since none of the BMS'es we communicate with use SunSpec, our inverter does not communicate with or use any SunSpec models from any draft revision of the standard."

I understand Sunspec V4 has not been implemented in any current BMS but I believed that if they supported it, other BMS manufacturers would follow. I was disappointed since I was building my own BMS and had already implemented Sunspec V4 myself on the ESP32 and it worked beautifully. I tested my implementation with Sunspec's own tool SVP Dashboard.

I hope they implement it in the near future, but they at least should remove that from their documentation until they do.

I own a Sol-Ark 12K and I love it! Their tech support is also great, if you are looking for an Inverter, this one is expensive but worth it.

I have two things on my wish list for them:

1. Add support for Sunspec 4 as they mention in their documentation
2. Open their communication protocol so we can query their device (either using RS485 or through their WiFi dongle).

PS. I believe energy devices should intercommunicate as our WiFi and Ethernet devices do. Sunspec's protocol is well made and the documentation is very good too. You can read it here:

• SunSpec Device Information Model Specification
• SunSpec Energy Storage Models

@rickypr - See the following forum post.

https://powerforum.co.za/topic/8451-sunsynk-inverter-monitoring/

I believe this has been figured out with the close relatives of Sol-Ark. There is a post on that site talking about how they applied the steps for Sunsynk to a DEYE version and it worked fine. I personally have not dug into the steps to confirm on my Sol-Ark 12k but my confidence is high that this should work for Sol-Ark versions.