I have a friend with a sol-ark and 10kwh of batteries. He's not making it thru the night and the solark starts his generator just as it should. But what it does is charge his batteries nearly 100% before killing the generator. This mean the batteries are full when the sun comes up which is NOT what he wants. Seems there is no way to set the top limit of the generator run time....
So we came up with this solution. When in offgrid with solark, the generator is connected to the grid input and the generator input becomes a "smart load" switched input. You can turn the smart load on and off at preset SoC. So our idea is to connect a very small STDP 240v relay to the "smart load/gen" input and use the contacts on the relay to inhibit the genny from starting. Wire the gen start signal thru the normally closed contacts on the relay. When SoC is below xx% (ie 50%) the relay drops, the contacts close and the genstart signal can reach the genny. When the SoC gets to >YY%, the solark will still be commanding the generator to run, but the "smart load" relay will pull in, open the contacts and cause the gen run signal to be lost.
How's that? Or solark could add a menu item to shut the generator off at a given SoC. I guess until that day, you gotta run what you brung.
So we came up with this solution. When in offgrid with solark, the generator is connected to the grid input and the generator input becomes a "smart load" switched input. You can turn the smart load on and off at preset SoC. So our idea is to connect a very small STDP 240v relay to the "smart load/gen" input and use the contacts on the relay to inhibit the genny from starting. Wire the gen start signal thru the normally closed contacts on the relay. When SoC is below xx% (ie 50%) the relay drops, the contacts close and the genstart signal can reach the genny. When the SoC gets to >YY%, the solark will still be commanding the generator to run, but the "smart load" relay will pull in, open the contacts and cause the gen run signal to be lost.
How's that? Or solark could add a menu item to shut the generator off at a given SoC. I guess until that day, you gotta run what you brung.