Replacement for Growatt 5000 ES needed ** Too many issues **

[Olasitu]

I have 2 Growatt 5000 ES installed in Parallel with 2 x Blue Carbon 48V 200Ah Lithium Battery Pack For Solar Home System. PVs are Mono 10 x 550W. 5 panels each in series to each Inverter. Priority is set to Solar, Utility and Battery.

My experience has been frustrating to say the least. The lack of support being the most unacceptable. I have made a decision to discard them for another brand with better reliability and support. I am still keen on having a balance of cost to performance.

I would appreciate recommendations for replacements and your experience with the recommended inverter(s).

Thank you,

 

[Gavin Stone]

I would say the mpp lv6548 is a great unit overall. I’ve been using mine for 10 months without an issue. Which is still a relatively short time in comparison with other off grid setups I realize. But since you mentioned price I thought I’d throw that out there. Obviously there are much more expensive and higher quality units out there.

 

[timselectric]

I have 2 Growatt 5000 ES installed in Parallel with 2 x Blue Carbon 48V 200Ah Lithium Battery Pack For Solar Home System. PVs are Mono 10 x 550W. 5 panels each in series to each Inverter. Priority is set to Solar, Utility and Battery.

My experience has been frustrating to say the least. The lack of support being the most unacceptable. I have made a decision to discard them for another brand with better reliability and support. I am still keen on having a balance of cost to performance.

I would appreciate recommendations for replacements and your experience with the recommended inverter(s).

Thank you,

10 - 550w panels in series?
What's the VOC?

Opps, miss read.
Old eyes. lol

 

[timselectric]

What issues are you having?

 

[LydMekk]

Are you located in the US?
Then I would recommend Sol Ark.
Outside the US: Deye, same inverter factory in China. But this one works!
My Growatts literally exploded internally.
My Deyes just work and 10x better build quality.

 

[myles]

I have sol ark 15k, I love it! It was EXPENSIVE to say the least, but I needed a reliable unit that doesn't need babysitting as I am a busy individual, I work full time and have a family, I can't be in the garage all the time fixing issues. Best move I made was to avoid using my already purchased 5000ES units, I kept one and use it solely for charging from an alternate generator which you can see in my signature. More vids to come. Pay now or pay later is the motto, I pay now! :D

 

[Vigo]

So uhh... anyone feel like selling me some more Growatt 5ks for cheap?

I've tripled the horsepower of a minivan that already had over 200k miles on it. I modify everything and fairly often i find lines by going past them. I generally change the operating parameters of a system enough that i have to take full ownership of whatever happens next. I am SURPRISED that my Growatts have survived me thus far.. At this point i would be perfectly happy to buy more of them and all the bad things i have to say are mostly about the 'architecture' of all such cheaper AIOs, but not much bad to say that is specific to Growatt or this model in particular.

I would say first step to replacing the Growatt system is figuring out, do you actually need 10kw? If there is room to go down that might put 1 of something in the budget when 2 of them would be way over budget, or 2 vs 3, for example. What's your actual power need?

 

[myles]

Also we need you to elaborate if your off grid or grid tied? this is a big difference on the way you should go then, and where are you located?

 

[timselectric]

So uhh... anyone feel like selling me some more Growatt 5ks for cheap?

Stop hoarding in on my deals. lol

 

[timselectric]

Also we need you to elaborate if your off grid or grid tied? this is a big difference on the way you should go then, and where are you located?

The Growatt's are off grid AIO's.

 

[myles]

Stop hoarding in on my deals. lol

You guys don't have to worry the growatt 5000ES sells itself, as in people get rid of them Most people don't want to dive into an auto transformer situation, myself included. If I didn't watch the David Poz video of "how good the growatt is" I would have never made that terrible late night decision

I have a brand new in box victron auto transformer 100A, i'm keeping it in case the sol-ark ever quits then I can install the growatt in and make something work while the sol ark gets repaired, I am just praying i never have to do that!

 

[timselectric]

You guys don't have to worry the growatt 5000ES sells itself, as in people get rid of them Most people don't want to dive into an auto transformer situation, myself included. If I didn't watch the David Poz video of "how good the growatt is" I would have never made that terrible late night decision

I have a brand new in box victron auto transformer 100A, i'm keeping it in case the sol-ark ever quits then I can install the growatt in and make something work while the sol ark gets repaired, I am just praying i never have to do that!

6 of mine came from the marketplace in this forum.
From people who changed their mind. I'm more than happy with the discounts.

 

[Olasitu]

I am off grid i.e. I am not sending power to the Grid. But I get power from the Grid and PV. My issue has also involved the installation. I have slowly worked my way past the installation issues (breakers, wire gauge and so on).

The persistent issue now is that the Growatt continuously overcharges the batteries whenever there is minimal load on the inverter for an extended time and PV power is high. If the load is less than 500W for like 4-6 hours and there is strong sunlight the inverter throws an overcharge error. Appears the charge controller is not working right.

Local vendor has only reset and not attempted to upgrade the SW. There is really no month I have not had an issue. I dont have any more bandwidth for the back and forth. Just need a strong inverter 8KVA - 10KVA. Great support. Easy upgrade process and remote monitoring. I am in West Africa by the Way. So will need the international version of whatever is recommended. And by the way are there inverters that do auto upgrades - download and upgrade the inverter software without manual download of files. The whole Growatt upgrade process is another issue I dont want to deal with.

 

[timselectric]

I assume you have the charge settings correct.
Sorry that you are having problems.
Mine have been working great for the last year.
I rarely even look them, anymore.

 

[Vigo]

So im not making excuses because one would think that if the product was designed ‘robustly’ it would never ‘overcharge’.

BUT, the one thing i would say is that if you are powering a large load and then releasing it quickly, battery voltage can shoot up quicker than the charger will back off, resulting in voltage going past setpoints. For example, my growatts max voltage is 58.0 but i have seen 59.X momentarily from such situations. It’s also possible for one of them to read voltage lower than the other and when it charges to its target voltage the other one sees too high a voltage. I have seen both. Neither is an issue for my system currently. So there may be stuff in settings or connections you can fiddle with to correct the issue. But im not trying to talk you out of upgrading!

 

[sunshine_eggo]

So im not making excuses because one would think that if the product was designed ‘robustly’ it would never ‘overcharge’.

BUT, the one thing i would say is that if you are powering a large load and then releasing it quickly, battery voltage can shoot up quicker than the charger will back off, resulting in voltage going past setpoints.

Or if a BMS triggers over voltage protection.

@Olasitu If you could fix your system in the next few days, would you prefer that to replacement?

How would you feel if you swapped everything out and still had the same problem because the issue isn't with the inverters?

 

[timselectric]

I can definitely understand the frustration. But maybe you just haven't asked the right people for help.
If you've already had enough, I can also understand that. But if you want, we can try to help.

 

[Olasitu]

So im not making excuses because one would think that if the product was designed ‘robustly’ it would never ‘overcharge’.

BUT, the one thing i would say is that if you are powering a large load and then releasing it quickly, battery voltage can shoot up quicker than the charger will back off, resulting in voltage going past setpoints. For example, my growatts max voltage is 58.0 but i have seen 59.X momentarily from such situations. It’s also possible for one of them to read voltage lower than the other and when it charges to its target voltage the other one sees too high a voltage. I have seen both. Neither is an issue for my system currently. So there may be stuff in settings or connections you can fiddle with to correct the issue. But im not trying to talk you out of upgrading!

Thank you for your comments. This is my point. There is no support for the Inverters. Ordinarily there should be some form of guidance from the manufacturer, but this is not the case here. You are left with trial and error. Like you said it is about continuous fiddling. And that gets tiring. This forum is the only source of support !

 

[Olasitu]

I can definitely understand the frustration. But maybe you just haven't asked the right people for help.
If you've already had enough, I can also understand that. But if you want, we can try to help.

Thank you @timselectric. I could most certainly use any help I can. Thank you for offering. Please let me know how to get in touch and a good time. I am currently in Barcelona but will return home over the weekend.

 

[Olasitu]

So im not making excuses because one would think that if the product was designed ‘robustly’ it would never ‘overcharge’.

BUT, the one thing i would say is that if you are powering a large load and then releasing it quickly, battery voltage can shoot up quicker than the charger will back off, resulting in voltage going past setpoints. For example, my growatts max voltage is 58.0 but i have seen 59.X momentarily from such situations. It’s also possible for one of them to read voltage lower than the other and when it charges to its target voltage the other one sees too high a voltage. I have seen both. Neither is an issue for my system currently. So there may be stuff in settings or connections you can fiddle with to correct the issue. But im not trying to talk you out of upgrading!

The other point on the overcharging is that this happens only when the PV is charging. I shut down the Grid source before leaving home this week. So this tells me the Charge controller is not working right. Only option to further explore is to calibrate the Voltage reading between the Batteries (No BMS) and the Inverter. Again no support. I do understand there is a way that can be done.

Also setting Float to 54 sets the SOC to 75%. Again, the issue with reading SOC off voltage. I can try the lower Voltage and just disregard the SOC %