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New 10kw NHX AIO From Watts247

mciholas said:
As to the bug fix thing, who knows. Watts247 has said there are still minor issues, so not all bugs have been fixed. How serious those bugs are remains to be seen.
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The EG4 inverters are actively being updated by USA people and data every day. Bugs, user improvements and power/reliability are being tested and rolled out regularly. USA support and development should be considered. When I make a suggestion to EG4, it gets worked on.
 
Quattrohead said:
When I make a suggestion to EG4, it gets worked on.
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Can you provide an example of something you suggested that was worked on and is now evident in the product?

I was under the impression the EG4 18KPV was designed by Luxpower.

luxpowertek.com

Solar Inverters Manufacturer & Factory | LuxpowerTek

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They are in Shenzen, China per their website. I am skeptical there is an USA based engineering team working on it. It is certainly manufactured in China and the test labs are based there, too.

Mike C.
 
mciholas said:
Can you provide an example of something you suggested that was worked on and is now evident in the product?
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Too many to list, check the firmware update logs. Gavin and Zapper do better video's than I ever could, there are several of us thrashing these things daily, my 18k runs the whole house and has done for nearly a year now.
mciholas said:
I was under the impression the EG4 18KPV was designed by Luxpower.
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Yes it is, and EG4 give a lot of feedback to make improvements.
mciholas said:
They are in Shenzen, China per their website. I am skeptical there is an USA based engineering team working on it.
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Ask Markus, Jarret, Jimmy, Joshua etc at EG4 about that.
 
Quattrohead said:
Too many to list, check the firmware update logs.
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Which ones represent suggestions you personally made to EG4?

I'm trying to verify this claim that you, personally, have caused firmware updates to occur on the EG4 equipment. If the claimed benefit of EG4 is that an individual can suggest changes that get incorporated, that's a nice feature, but I remained skeptical it works the way you have portrayed.

Watts247 makes similar claims with regards to the Amensolar, that he has interacted with the factory to get things fixed and improved. I'm also somewhat skeptical of that claim as well.

At present, I can't even get EG4 to properly document the RSD feature on their wall mount batteries. This isn't a feature request, just trying to get basic information on how that works. It seems nobody in the solar industry can actually write decent manuals.

Mike C.
 
Sounds like he is more closely involved with them, if there is an NDA (unless it was a settlement.)
In which case, the responsiveness he sees is not representative of what the average customer can expect.
 
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mciholas said:
Which ones represent suggestions you personally made to EG4?
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Hi Mike,

Top of my head that I can think of...LifePower4 Battery - 2.2 amp display, Bulk Voltage reduction, Simple things like making sure they include change logs.

I would need to look at the change logs of the inverters to see what made it in.


Most of the ideas that we come up with were already floating around in the R&D department...but it gets more attention when users are requesting the same changes.
 
Oh good grief. I've made a number of firmware suggestions to the EG4 team, several have been implemented over time, likely others have made similar ones, and I'm sure they've "stolen" ideas where other systems implement edge case issues in a more perfunctory manner. Products like these must not stagnate and continue to be improved to match the performance of competing products. Nothing nefarious going on here, you could always get happy, buy a unit and dissect it if you felt froggy enough. I'm also sure that the engineering is a joint effort, as there is often a big disconnect between designing something and actually building it at scale, which creates a back-and-forth as all that stuff gets ironed out.
 
mciholas said:
Which ones represent suggestions you personally made to EG4?
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Generator boost for the 18Kpv and 6000XP were always on our list of wants.
More user accessible settings like Off grid mode, PV start voltage, Max AC input, CT offset,
Battery Data on the monitor site.
Generator cool down and warm up before and after applying load to generator.

I don't know if any of those changes were preplanned or only added because of user suggestions.
 
Quirks using the nhx as a solar battery charger only:

No communications with battery bank so using lead acid setting. Instead of showing voltage on the home page, it shows %. Does not show amps going to the battery on the homepage either, only % and kw.

Set max charge at 100amps. When the last array was hooked up, the battery menu sat at 99.9amps charge. Went into settings and changed max charge to 120amps. The battery menu went from 99amps to occasionally bumping 102amps but the battery icon still says max charge 100amps. I do not know if it took the new setting or not.
 
SolarAssistant does indeed work. Used the adapter Watts supplied with the inverter>cat5>rs485to usb adapter>pi. Megarevo setting.

If using the supplied adapter. The board connector it plugs into is covered in glue. It is a pita trying to be gentle cutting/pulling the glue away, inserting the new plug, tying everything back up out of the way, all while holding the cover open.

Here's the cheap usb to rs485 adapter that was lying around.

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Kornbread said:
SolarAssistant does indeed work. Used the adapter Watts supplied with the inverter>cat5>rs485to usb adapter>pi. Megarevo setting.

If using the supplied adapter. The board connector it plugs into is covered in glue. It is a pita trying to be gentle cutting/pulling the glue away, inserting the new plug, tying everything back up out of the way, all while holding the cover open.

Here's the cheap usb to rs485 adapter that was lying around.

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So how's solar assistant vs the built in app?
 
Ordered several of the connectors you linked.
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... but this sux. None of the management tools are available.
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1201 said:
If you had an interconnection agreement then you wouldn't have to worry about zero export. That alone would be reason enough for me
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Interconnect agreements are getting worse and worse and in my case I have 13.5k watts of solar which puts me in the tier 2 category which requires a 1 million dollar liability insurance policy and with Fpl! You can never have a 0.0 bill everyone has to pay the 25 dollar minimum so yeah it actually cost more to sell back. I'll attach the file
 
CuriousJohn said:
I have not done the fine testing to see if there are short bursts of export. I'm sure there is, as if you think about it - any system that measures and then responds is going to have some finite amount of lag. Unless you maintain a large buffer of input power from the grid as Victron does, it will be impossible to guarantee no export at all.

For me - I plan using this on a subpanel, so if a little gets pushed backwards into the rest of my house, it is not a big deal. I'm essentially maintaining a buffer of input power by virtue of using this on a subpanel.

Long term - I don't want ANY export either. If I were to use this on my main panel, I would probably set up a small load - perhaps 100-500 watts that are in place up-stream from the CT's. That would be my buffer. I would probably also use a current activated switch to shut down the grid connection to the NHX if any reverse flow was detected.

The nice thing about this inverter - for me, is that it is big enough that I can power a lot of loads on the output, and I don't HAVE to use the export feature if I don't want to. It's appealing to use it, because I don't have to do a lot of rewiring and shifting things around.
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Why the dig deal if a small amount gets pushed to grid? Does the poco know and then comes after you for no interconnect agreement?
 
Ennis437 said:
Why the dig deal if a small amount gets pushed to grid? Does the poco know and then comes after you for no interconnect agreement?
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I cannot verify, but it appears some utilities do have the ability to closely monitor small amounts pushed back to the grid.
 
mciholas said:
Kornbread,

I've joined the N3H-X10-US club. On its way. This will be an 11.7 KW array with one or two EG4 wall batteries. Not sure if the batteries will talk to the inverter or not, willing to go without battery comms.

I am VERY interested in making Solar Assistant work so it can monitor the inverter and the batteries. Have you done so? Any guidance?

Mike C.
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If you are going without comms you can use the Victron smart shunt to get accurate state of charge and use it with solar assistant to handle automations Works great! You just need the Ve direct cable to your pi!
 

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Kornbread said:
I cannot verify, but it appears some utilities do have the ability to closely monitor small amounts pushed back to the grid.
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Modern meters can detect reverse flow.

Whether or not your meter does detect this and report it, it is illegal to feed any power into the grid until you have an approved and inspected system with a connection agreement in place.

Mike C.
 
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