diy solar

diy solar

Sol-Ark problems by David Poz.. anyone else?

robby said:
Yep it would do 4800W per leg but that is now up to 5Kw+ per leg after the update. If you pass that on any one of the Legs then yes it will trip. My house is typically consuming 2200-2500W all the time due to My Salt Water Aquarium and it's Lighting system, Pumps and Chiller plus the Houses 26Cu Fridge and misc other stuff.
For several hours per day the power may hit 6500W but that is only when the Water heater and 2x 12000BTU Split AC's are running. It is pretty darn hard to get up to 9KW. I have to add on the Dryer and washer plus Microwave to get to that number and it still wont trip because I made sure to balance my Panel box.
Click to expand...
I’m still confused I guess.. so with 4999w on one leg (one watt under the 5000w that would trip the inverter), the amount that the legs are unbalanced doesn’t matter? Meaning the other leg could have only a 1000w load while the other leg has a 4999w load? Your saying the 1600w only comes into play when one leg is at its max?... if one legs at its max then it will trip just due to that, regardless of the amount of load on the other leg.. so then the 1600w doesn’t exist?
 
Cheap 4-life said:
I’m still confused I guess.. so with 4999w on one leg (one watt under the 5000w that would trip the inverter), the amount that the legs are unbalanced doesn’t matter? Meaning the other leg could have only a 1000w load while the other leg has a 4999w load? Your saying the 1600w only comes into play when one leg is at its max?... if one legs at its max then it will trip just due to that, regardless of the amount of load on the other leg.. so then the 1600w doesn’t exist?
Click to expand...
1600W unbalanced is when one leg is at Maximum as far as I know. You would have to contact Sol-Ark to get some hard and fast rule on that as maybe it changes depending on the Level of L1 vs L2. All I know is that under normal working conditions I have had greater than 1600W of differential and not had it trip. Use the example of the Toaster I gave you, I turned on the that load which is 2400W and did not have it trip then went back and turned on more stuff on the other leg to see how far I could go before tripping.

1000W & 4999W is a 3999W imbalance. I have never checked that it can handle that level as it's not something that would occur in my house with the way the breakers are balanced.
 
The take away, for me, is to take Sig Solar off the vendor list. Into the Big Battery bucket. Unforced error.
 
Jim Lee said:
So the answer is putting a note on every plug in the house as to what can be plugged in or just move breakers around daily as the kids plug new stuff in not caring whether the electrical is balanced on each phase. If you ask most kids ( or adult as far as that goes) where electricity comes from they look at you and say from the plugs of course.
Click to expand...
I am grid tied, so my Sol-Ark will handle 15Kw of power!

If your off grid you have two options. You either make sure you have a lot of PV + Inverter power and Batteries and enjoy having minimal restrictions or you can do like most people do and use a modest system and learn to manage your loads.

I don't know if your kids are walking around with devices that draw 1600 Watts, my kids typically have devices that draw 50W. If your off grid and have a hair dryer in the house then yeah you probably should have an outlet in the bathroom for high loads and yes you should have some sort of management system in place. It Doesn't matter what Inverter you get, you cannot have a Modest off grid system and just use power like your connected to the Grid.
 
Last edited:
robby said:
I am grid tied, so my Sol-Ark will handle 15Kw of power!

If your off grid you have two options. You either make sure you have a lot of PV + Inverter power and Batteries and enjoy having minimal restrictions or you can do like most people do and use a modest system and learn to manage your loads.

I don't know if your kids are walking around with devices that draw 1600 Watts, my kids typically have devices that draw 50W. If your off grid and have a hair dryer in the house then yeah you probably should have an outlet in the bathroom for high loads and yes you should have some sort of management system in place. It Doesn't matter what Inverter you get, you cannot have a Modest off grid system and just use power like your connected to the Grid.
Click to expand...
You don't understand what is available with off Grid AND grid tied and are not willing to even learn about what is changing on a daily basis. You CAN now build a modest system that saves you money on everything produced and pairs with the Grid for whatever you need that is more than you can produce. Just because it's not called Sol- Ark doesn't mean it doesn't work, but you are so closed minded you won't see it.
 
Jim Lee said:
You don't understand what is available with off Grid AND grid tied and are not willing to even learn about what is changing on a daily basis. You CAN now build a modest system that saves you money on everything produced and pairs with the Grid for whatever you need that is more than you can produce. Just because it's not called Sol- Ark doesn't mean it doesn't work, but you are so closed minded you won't see it.
Click to expand...
Your post is so confusing. Are you talking about OFF Grid or Grid Tied? And who said anything about Sol-Ark? I said lots of "Inverter Power" I never specified how you got that power. I am not sure if English is your first language?
I am saying you need lot of Panels, lots of Inverter Power and Lots of Storage if you plan on living OFF Grid and going about your life as though your on the Grid and just using power whenever you feel like. If your instead going with a Modest OFF GRID system then you have to use good practices like balancing the load panel and putting in place good practices for load management so that you don't lose power at 3am due to dead batteries.
 
robby said:
Your post is so confusing. Are you talking about OFF Grid or Grid Tied? And who said anything about Sol-Ark? I said lots of "Inverter Power" I never specified how you got that power. I am not sure if English is your first language?
I am saying you need lot of Panels, lots of Inverter Power and Lots of Storage if you plan on living OFF Grid and going about your life as though your on the Grid and just using power whenever you feel like. If your instead going with a Modest OFF GRID system then you have to use good practices like balancing the load panel and putting in place good practices for load management so that you don't lose power at 3am due to dead batteries.
Click to expand...
Like I said , TOO closed minded to learn. You should quit preaching and start learning about new tech before you criticize. Sol-Ark was mentioned because I've read A lot of your post. There is no doubt you worship Sol-Ark and hate Growatt.
 
Jim Lee said:
Like I said , TOO closed minded to learn. You should quit preaching and start learning about new tech before you criticize. Sol-Ark was mentioned because I've read A lot of your post. There is no doubt you worship Sol-Ark and hate Growatt.
Click to expand...
Please enlighten me so I may open up my closed mind. What new tech do you propose?
 
robby said:
.... I see that two of mine and several other peoples comments have been deleted? David is deleting all the ones that he does not like and leaving some others like Engineer775 comments up because he knows he will get a video smack down from Engineer775 if he starts to censor him. Some of the other people who are major followers of his channel have been saying the same thing in a more delicate manor.

13x, I wonder why there are so many critical comments still left if the video was so fair and balanced?
Click to expand...
I left a comment on one of his other videos and he deleted it. I can't remember exactly what happened, but he said something that was technically very inaccurate, and I politely corrected him.

I sort of like David, but he's an amateur, and personally, I don't think he should be reviewing things that he doesn't quite have full grasp of. I'm sure he's a great guy though, I've never felt he was trying to deceive me in his videos, but some of the stuff be posts is clearly JUST content.
 
I'm very late to this party but have always liked David Poz. I didn't, and I don't think anyone who's going to dump ~10k on an electrical system should, listen to one guy on youtube. I was going to do the solark but ultimately went with stacked growatts because that's all I really need. I'd rather do that, and then for specific complex use arduino with contactors / sensors.
 
SilverState said:
I'm very late to this party but have always liked David Poz. I didn't, and I don't think anyone who's going to dump ~10k on an electrical system should, listen to one guy on youtube. I was going to do the solark but ultimately went with stacked growatts because that's all I really need. I'd rather do that, and then for specific complex use arduino with contactors / sensors.
Click to expand...
I like the Growatt too. Have you had ANY interaction with Signature Solar. Their negative attitude towards their customers concerning their product before the purchase leads me to believe they would be a disaster to work with after a $20,000.00 purchase. ALL I can imagine them saying after my purchase would be the same as before the purchase. DIY.
 
Jim Lee said:
I like the Growatt too. Have you had ANY interaction with Signature Solar. Their negative attitude towards their customers concerning their product before the purchase leads me to believe they would be a disaster to work with after a $20,000.00 purchase. ALL I can imagine them saying after my purchase would be the same as before the purchase. DIY.
Click to expand...
I haven't talked to them, I got my growatt from someone else as signaturesolar.com is out of stock at the moment. But I did get my gyll batteries from them, so hopefully no funny business there.
 
SignatureSolarUS said:
@robby he is an off-grid reviewer, his audience does not have the luxury of the grid
some of them don't have the luxury of 7k to burn either.

Also YouTube 101: all links are affiliate links, that's how others work, we and others track traffic from affiliates and they get credit with or without coupon codes.

li-comic-3.png
Click to expand...
It wasn’t even a fair review. Not even close and you won’t convince anyone who has one off grid or not.
 
Jim Lee said:
I like the Growatt too. Have you had ANY interaction with Signature Solar. Their negative attitude towards their customers concerning their product before the purchase leads me to believe they would be a disaster to work with after a $20,000.00 purchase. ALL I can imagine them saying after my purchase would be the same as before the purchase. DIY.
Click to expand...
Hey there Jim! I'm new to the party on the DIY solar forum but just wanted to let you know that we are changing tons of our processes over here. I've only been with the company for a few months now, but since I've been here we have nearly tripled in size. This has led to some poor interactions I'm sure as people have been stressed but I promise we are doing our best to help everyone and stay positive. Let me know if there is anything I can do to change your opinion of us! We do cater to DIYers but our technical and sales team have expanded a ton so we may be able to answer some more of your questions than we could have back in November. It's only been a few months but we've grown tremendously.
 
Jim Lee said:
I like the Growatt too. Have you had ANY interaction with Signature Solar. Their negative attitude towards their customers concerning their product before the purchase leads me to believe they would be a disaster to work with after a $20,000.00 purchase. ALL I can imagine them saying after my purchase would be the same as before the purchase. DIY.
Click to expand...

I haven't had a need to interact with Sig Solar after the sale, but I placed an order on line and my Growatt 6k arrived from Texas to Pennsylvania 3 days later in perfect condition.
 
Yeah Signature Solar doesn't have the best customer service, minutes after placing my order through a sales person they all of a sudden had a "sale" on the equipment I just purchased and would not refund the difference, neither did they mention that they were about to change their prices down lower while on the phone with them shortly before.

The guy on the phone was quite rude as well considering we were spending thousands with them, he also caused his company to lose $1,800 in sales to another vendor due to not knowing correctly what they had in stock.

I did finally receive just about everything I ordered but the shipment was considerably slower than a competing vendor I purchased other equipment from.

At the end of the day it was an okay experience but I wasn't left convinced that we can push their products to our customers without issues like I was hoping to as a cheaper option over Sol-Ark.
 
Aleksrussian said:
Yeah Signature Solar doesn't have the best customer service, minutes after placing my order through a sales person they all of a sudden had a "sale" on the equipment I just purchased and would not refund the difference, neither did they mention that they were about to change their prices down lower while on the phone with them shortly before.

The guy on the phone was quite rude as well considering we were spending thousands with them, he also caused his company to lose $1,800 in sales to another vendor due to not knowing correctly what they had in stock.

I did finally receive just about everything I ordered but the shipment was considerably slower than a competing vendor I purchased other equipment from.

At the end of the day it was an okay experience but I wasn't left convinced that we can push their products to our customers without issues like I was hoping to as a cheaper option over Sol-Ark.
Click to expand...
They pulled the same bs with me on their battery chargers. Bought $7k worth of batteries, rack and 2 chargers. I went to pick up my batteries and asked about getting the difference for the chargers since they are now 33% off with the purchase of a battery and I was told sorry, they can't do that. They did offer to sell me another charger with the 33% off! WOW!

All this and the eg4 lifepower batteries still won't turn on many inverters including mine, the custom $500 rack doesn't even hold the battery modules due to holes not lining up properly and their battery chargers don't work as advertised.
 
OffGridInTheCity said:
On the one hand, (I'm US) my AIMS inverters work the same way - e.g. each 120v let is only 50% of max and I went to a fair amount of trouble to make sure my circuits were well balanced so I could get 80% of the capacity. So I don't fault SolArk for this.

One thing that @Engineer775 emphasizes is that SolArks are EMP hardened. Implying that off-grid diehards might survive an EMP attack with a running system. Is this true at all? or is more just a surge protector?
Click to expand...
You have to pay for EMP hardenin, it doesn't come that way and yes it could take a hit from EMP. blast. But you can forget about the BMS on the battery. But countries now have EMP WEAPONRY and it will not survive that.
 
Last edited:
I bought sig solar batteries and then the sale showed up, a guy on here who works for them said to call for the deal which I did. No problemo and the guy on the phone at sig solar was nice and professional.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

L
Grid breaker for Sol Ark 15K bypass
Replies
13
Views
350
Leodoggie
L
Lt.Dan
Sol-Ark 15k Current Capabilities
2 3
Replies
42
Views
2K
niccolosartor
niccolosartor
Tulex
Sol-Ark Down?
Replies
14
Views
475
Carlos_Sol-Ark
Carlos_Sol-Ark
J
Sol-Ark 12K short review
Replies
1
Views
311
LydMekk
L
H
Sol-ark damaged by small generator?
2
Replies
36
Views
2K
Luthj
L
Back
Top