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Will Solar Assistant work with 2 arrays?

PWH

PWH

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Sep 27, 2023
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Manitoba, Canada
I am setting up 2 arrays, a 4800w and 1800w and want to be able to track each array's production using Solar Assistant. One array is connected to an EG4 3000ex inverter which communicates with Solar Assistant. The other will be connected to a charge controller.

Would a Growatt or EG4 charge controller communicate with Solar Assistant via their BMS communication port?

Any other ideas on how to setup this system to communicate with Solar Assistant???
 
Solar Assistant will only work with
1 type of AIO, at a time.
And
1 type of battery monitoring (BMSor shunt), at a time.
 
Well using SA to monitor multiple solar charge controllers is easy just expensive.

First you need one pi per charge controller so at least $60 per charge controller.

One victron smart shunt per charge controller. $135 or so.

Data cable per smart shunt $35 or diy it.

Something to run home assistant on which can be another pi.

Now have the SA pi's broadcast to the HA pi/computer. Setup the HA screen to show each SA pi's info and or to combine the info into a
total charged amount.

Bad expensive if you have a bunch of them but its doable.

It will be nice if SA decides to add this natively since it wouldn't be hard at all other than the horsepower load on the pi reading them.

I'm doing something like this now to monitor my epever 4215bn charge controllers on my 12v stuff. Still waiting on SA support for epever which is supposed to happen this year.
 
I actually talked to SA yesterday about this very thing. EG4 SCC doesn’t have a method to communicate, so even if SA supported it, it wouldn’t “talk”. The USB port can be used to communicate with your batteries but according to Signature Soler, the SCC with fight the output of the inverter and you will not get full production of one or both of your charging equipment.
 
dmkjr said:
I actually talked to SA yesterday about this very thing. EG4 SCC doesn’t have a method to communicate, so even if SA supported it, it wouldn’t “talk”. The USB port can be used to communicate with your batteries but according to Signature Soler, the SCC with fight the output of the inverter and you will not get full production of one or both of your charging equipment.
Click to expand...
The charging part isn't a real problem since you can have as many charge controllers on a battery bank as you want. They just charge up to what you have them set to.

If the battery bank can charge at 100 amps and you use 4 charge controllers its possible each controller will charge at 25 amps and you will still hit the 100 amp max.

Where this shines is when your using power from the banks during the day. The charge controllers will provide all the way up to whatever they are rated at if needed in that scenario.

I've been running multiple charge controllers on a single battery bank for years at my old house and it worked great. Solar assistant wasn't around then so the monitoring part wasn't an issue but multiple charge controllers is known good idea.

Back then its the only way you could charge large battery banks since no single charge controller could handle the job.
 
Crowz said:
The charging part isn't a real problem since you can have as many charge controllers on a battery bank as you want. They just charge up to what you have them set to.

If the battery bank can charge at 100 amps and you use 4 charge controllers its possible each controller will charge at 25 amps and you will still hit the 100 amp max.

Where this shines is when your using power from the banks during the day. The charge controllers will provide all the way up to whatever they are rated at if needed in that scenario.

I've been running multiple charge controllers on a single battery bank for years at my old house and it worked great. Solar assistant wasn't around then so the monitoring part wasn't an issue but multiple charge controllers is known good idea.

Back then its the only way you could charge large battery banks since no single charge controller could handle the job.
Click to expand...
I think what they were referring to, and what makes sense, is the MPPT output being lowered because it believed the batteries to be charged (higher voltage) because of sharing a bus bar. That makes sense as “charging” is from anything higher in voltage than the target accepting the voltage.

Disclaimer here, I’m an engineer, but def not an EE and I’m just learning the solar world. However, it made sense so I just bought another inverter that will communicate effectively.
 
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Well damn. I knew if I searched I would find the answer. Sad that it is not what I was hoping. My thought process was....

EG4 6000ex *sucks that it only has ONE MPPT*
Adding a Victron smart charge controller and possibly a cerbo GX and smart shunt.

Getting Solar assistant to communicate with everything so I can track all solar input/power output/battery state. Looks like that will be a no go for right now at least.
 
I have no problem tracking how much is going in and out of my batteries no matter how many charge controllers are charging it. I have a victron smart shunt connected to solar assistant showing charge and discharge. Everything battery wise goes thru that shunt.
 
Crowz said:
I have no problem tracking how much is going in and out of my batteries no matter how many charge controllers are charging it. I have a victron smart shunt connected to solar assistant showing charge and discharge. Everything battery wise goes thru that shunt.
Click to expand...
That was kind of my thought process on a *temp solution*. Using the EG4 app to see what my inverter is doing and using a smart shunt and Victron MPPT's for additional solar capacity, and just monitor the shunt info and battery info via SA. But not having the ability to have all the info in one place kinda defeats the reason for having the SA setup as I could just monitor the Victron stuff via its own application.
 
I don't monitor bms data on the solar assistant itself so its the primary method I use not a side method via the shunt.

The inverter is hooked to solar assistant and the shunt. Thats all. If I add more inverters solar assistant will work with them too.
 
One Solar Assistant,
Three MPP 6048's AIO's
Five incoming strings of PV 2, 2 and 1 on inverters 1, 2, & 3
SA monitors each - shows me Inverter 1 MPP1 MPP2 and total of the two; Inverter 2 MPP1 MPP2 and total of the two; Inverter 3 MPP 1 and total which is the same naturally.
Can't get much easier.
 
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