Kylepharmd
New Member
I just recently setup a Sol-Ark 12k with a EG4 powerpro (with the help of an electrical engineer). The system is grid tied and permitted for net metering and I have TOU setup so that once the sun is down it uses the battery instead of the grid. Overall goal for the solar system is to run load, charge battery and sell excess back to the grid and then run load off of battery most of the time (with the grid as back up for the occasional scenarios where we don't have enough battery to get us through the night or some cloudy days). Today I was able to get the closed coms to work between the two.
However, I still have one puzzle. For some reason during the evening the sol-ark is pulling 10-20w from the grid while running the majority of the load from the battery. I have the load limit under TOU set well above the current load and yet for some reason it pulls very low wattage from the grid (see below).
It seems to do something similar when PV is running during the day. Today I was pulling 4.5kW of solar into the inverter which was being used to charge the battery, but then the sol-ark was still taking anywhere from 50-250w from the grid to run the load.
r
That purple line that is flat until about noon is the grid and it's showing a draw of 250w (and then later 50w) from the grid during the morning while the battery was charging. You can see once the battery hits 100 SOC it starts sending electricity back to the grid until the sun goes down. Then it turns flat again, this time pulling about 10-20w from the grid (even though the battery is charged and capable of meeting the relatively low load of <2kW.
I talked to someone at sol-ark today briefly who told me the EG4 BMS messes the sol-ark up so it's best to remove the closed communications between them, but I thought others had reported using EG4 successfully with sol-ark before so I wanted to see if anyone can point me in the right direction here. Are there disadvantages to disconnecting the closed communciations between the two of them? I like that the percentage shown on the sol-ark matches what the battery bms is actually saying, but are there other advantages beyond that? Is there any way to do what I want while not disconnecting the coms between the two?
Thanks in advance for your help!
However, I still have one puzzle. For some reason during the evening the sol-ark is pulling 10-20w from the grid while running the majority of the load from the battery. I have the load limit under TOU set well above the current load and yet for some reason it pulls very low wattage from the grid (see below).
It seems to do something similar when PV is running during the day. Today I was pulling 4.5kW of solar into the inverter which was being used to charge the battery, but then the sol-ark was still taking anywhere from 50-250w from the grid to run the load.
r
That purple line that is flat until about noon is the grid and it's showing a draw of 250w (and then later 50w) from the grid during the morning while the battery was charging. You can see once the battery hits 100 SOC it starts sending electricity back to the grid until the sun goes down. Then it turns flat again, this time pulling about 10-20w from the grid (even though the battery is charged and capable of meeting the relatively low load of <2kW.
I talked to someone at sol-ark today briefly who told me the EG4 BMS messes the sol-ark up so it's best to remove the closed communications between them, but I thought others had reported using EG4 successfully with sol-ark before so I wanted to see if anyone can point me in the right direction here. Are there disadvantages to disconnecting the closed communciations between the two of them? I like that the percentage shown on the sol-ark matches what the battery bms is actually saying, but are there other advantages beyond that? Is there any way to do what I want while not disconnecting the coms between the two?
Thanks in advance for your help!