I'm DONE with MPP Solar

When you buy an MPP product, the internet is your support.

nc73 said:

When you buy an MPP product, the internet is your support.

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When you buy from Watts247, Ian is your support, and he actually knows and supports the product.

sunshine_eggo said:

When you buy from Watts247, Ian is your support, and he actually knows and supports the product.

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What about EG4..anybody bought these and needed support and if so how was it?

?

sunshine_eggo said:

When you buy from Watts247, Ian is your support, and he actually knows and supports the product.

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Yes and he was helpful.

Samsonite801 said:

What about the Schneider XW Pro? I thought these look very promising for half the price.

I already purchased my 4 LV6548 so it's already too late for me to go try them, but I wonder if they live up to this guy's hype:

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You honestly did not fall for the crock of a video? It is riddled with errors that are designed to make the Sol-Ark look bad and to promote the Schneider. Their biggest problem right now is that even their big dealers are steering people to other brands like Sol-Ark, Enphase and Outback because they have had such crappy support for years and their platform is riddled with bugs. Now that their sales have plummeted they are trying to make a come back. BTW Even Will Prowse addresses the problems in that video in his own video he did a couple of weeks ago.

I don't know where you got the half the price idea from. All of the Schneider gear that you would need to do the same thing as a Sol-Ark 12K would be $10,000 and even then you would only have 6.8KW of power vs 9KW and yes my house will routinely get up to 7.5KW for long duration's of time. That Schneider is only good for starting very heavy loads like Well Pumps for short periods of time, but that is true for just about any LF inverter. You could still buy a Sol-Ark 15K for less and it will start those Well Pumps without a problem and keep supplying power for heavy loads.

And you should note that when I say the same thing as the Sol-Ark that is a loose description as you will have no TOU functionality and you the effieceny will be horrible in comparison since it uses DC-DC-AC conversion while the Sol-Ark uses direct DC-AC conversion, which will make it about 5-6% more efficient.

robby said:

You honestly did not fall for the crock of a video? It is riddled with errors that are designed to make the Sol-Ark look bad and to promote the Schneider. Their biggest problem right now is that even their big dealers are steering people to other brands like Sol-Ark, Enphase and Outback because they have had such crappy support for years and their platform is riddled with bugs. Now that their sales have plummeted they are trying to make a come back. BTW Even Will Prowse addresses the problems in that video in his own video he did a couple of weeks ago.

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Well, I did say I never owned any XW Pro's and won't be trying any since I already have my 4 MPP Solar inverters, so I couldn't really fall for a Schneider unless I found some more money to anyway hehe.

robby said:

I don't know where you got the half the price idea from. All of the Schneider gear that you would need to do the same thing as a Sol-Ark 12K would be $10,000 and even then you would only have 6.8KW of power vs 9KW and yes my house will routinely get up to 7.5KW for long duration's of time. That Schneider is only good for starting very heavy loads like Well Pumps for short periods of time, but that is true for just about any LF inverter. You could still buy a Sol-Ark 15K for less and it will start those Well Pumps without a problem and keep supplying power for heavy loads.

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XW Pro - $3495...

Solark 12k - $6900

???

robby said:

And you should note that when I say the same thing as the Sol-Ark that is a loose description as you will have no TOU functionality and you the effieceny will be horrible in comparison since it uses DC-DC-AC conversion while the Sol-Ark uses direct DC-AC conversion, which will make it about 5-6% more efficient.

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The only real evidence I have, to point for, or against either of those brands, is that multiple shareholders on our co-op own single Solark 12k's TODAY, (no 15k yet, nobody stacking 12k's yet), but I know of at least 3 of them who have complained to me personally, of the repeated nuisance tripping.

One guy, I was over at his lot by his RV just visiting, and his Solark 12k tripped 3 times (while I was there), just trying to run one single Dometic AC unit on the roof of the RV. Now I don't know all his details, but he says he is really annoyed because the inverter is in the basement compartment of the RV so he has to go outside everytime if he wants to manually reset it (says it takes too long for it to auto-reset, and sometimes it never comes back on by itself), and he is frustrated because he was sold a supposed golden grail and thought it would work a bit better than it seems to be acting like.

Now I don't really know if the XW Pro could do any better (hopefully it could auto-reset very quickly). But at least I'd know that for the money savings of an XW Pro, you could buy 2 of them for the price of the Solark 12k and get more robustness by having 2 separate units parallel stacked.

That's one reason I instead decided (back when I made my purchase), to get 4 MPP Solar LV6548, because all 4 of them together cost only $4900, shipped via DHL from Taiwan to my doorstep in 5-days...

I could've spent $6900 and got just a single Solark inverter which would be a single point of failure (yes, I work in IT / datacenter environments), single points of failure are proven to reduce uptime significantly (and time to recovery). So, with Solark, to avoid a single point of failure, I'd have to buy 2 of them, at $13,800... when more importantly to me, I really need a $30,000 well dug first, and finish my shop, and build a house, put in septic, and, and, and...

If I was more wealthy than I currently am right now, I wouldn't have a problem with buying 12 of the Solark 15k's, for $99,000 ($8250x12), and a whole array of Fortress batteries, but I am on a tight budget, as are many people here hehe... I think the Solarks would be considered a lot more robust as a package, if more than one is stacked (to help avoid tripping due to imbalanced loads or whatever), but it starts getting crazy expensive to stack them.

BTW, cheers bro, no harm meant, nothing against Solark either, I think they do have their proper place in the marketplace...

$30k for a well?

Kornbread said:

$30k for a well?

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Yeah before Covid and inflation rush, they were 18-22k here (depending on if PVC or steel case), today the driller is charging 28-32k.. The well driller didn't raise his rate, he says the increases are all in the costs of the supplies. That price includes pump (3-phase variable-speed pump with VFD), pressure tank and an outdoor freeze rated (orange faucet nozzle).

We do have another driller coming soon who does PVC only and he thinks he can beat that low end by a little bit. Our wells wind up being around 200-some feet deep with water table around 60-80ft depending on if you're up on the foothills or the main valley of our co-op.

Samsonite801 said:

Well, I did say I never owned any XW Pro's and won't be trying any since I already have my 4 MPP Solar inverters, so I couldn't really fall for a Schneider unless I found some more money to anyway.

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It's unfortunate that the guy did the same thing like David Poz and removed all of the comments that showed his numerous intentional blunders.
If you look at the video again the first thing that sticks out is that he is trying to start a 90 LRA single phase compressor that is drawing 77 Amps or 9200W on single phase and then tries it on a Solark that is rated for 4800W Max on a single phase. It was just never going to work with any HF Inverter.
Also people kept on asking him what PSI was in the Tank when he used the Schneider and he would not say. He only said that the Sol-Ark was trying to fill it with something like 40 PSI in the tank already. Well an empty compressor vs one with 40 PSI is a huge difference in starting current.

Samsonite801 said:

XW Pro - $3495...

Schneider Electric XW Pro Inverter/Chargers

Schneider Electric XW Pro Inverter/Chargers can be used for off grid or grid tied applications. Now with higher power ratings and improved battery management.

www.altestore.com

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Have you added in the SCC, PDP, The Gateway? The Sol-Ark has 185A Charger and all the other stuff built in.
Get a Quote for the Schneider with 2x 100A SCC and the PDP plus Gateway and all the other needed pieces and it will be near $10K.

Samsonite801 said:

Solark 12k - $6900

Sol-Ark All-In-One Pre-Wired Inverter Systems

Sol-Ark Pre-Wired Inverter System includes the Inverter and Charge Controller all in one unit. Start off with a grid-tie system and add backup battery storage down the line!

www.altestore.com

???




The only real evidence I have, to point for, or against either of those brands, is that multiple shareholders on our co-op own single Solark 12k's TODAY, (no 15k yet, nobody stacking 12k's yet), but I know of at least 3 of them who have complained to me personally, of the repeated nuisance tripping.

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Most nuisance tripping has a cause that is simple to rectify but most people don't read the manual so they don't know how to fix it.
I had 3 trips in one night after I set mine up and it was because I set the lowest Grid VAC before tripping to battery to 112V. I simply moved it to 108V and the problem was gone.

Samsonite801 said:

One guy, I was over at his RV visiting, and his Solark 12k tripped 3 times (while I was there), just trying to run one single Dometic AC unit on the roof of the RV. Now I don't know all his details, but he says he is really annoyed because the inverter is in the basement compartment of the RV so he has to go outside everytime if he wants to manually reset it (says it takes too long for it to auto-reset, and sometimes it never comes back on by itself), and he is frustrated because he was sold a supposed golden grail and thought it would work a bit better than it seems to be acting like.

Now I don't really know if the XW Pro could do any better. But at least I'd know that for the money savings of an XW Pro, you could buy 2 of them for the price of the Solark 12k and get more robustness by having 2 separate units parallel stacked.

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XW Pro is supposedly riddled with bugs, that was why so many people sold them and upgraded to Sol-Arks.

Samsonite801 said:

That's one reason I instead decided (back when I made my purchase), to get 4 MPP Solar LV6548, because all 4 of them together cost only $4900, shipped via DHL from Taiwan to my doorstep in 5-days...

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I have no problem with that, you are a DIYer so your willing to spend the time messing with setting and features that are not well documented and are willing to work with no customer support or warranty. I personally would buy from Watts247 just so I have some support and a warranty.

Samsonite801 said:

I could've spent $6900 and got just a single Solark inverter which would be a single point of failure (yes, I work in IT / datacenter environments), single points of failure are proven to reduce uptime significantly. So, with Solark, to avoid a single point of failure, I'd have to buy 2 of them, at $13,800... I really need a $30,000 well dug first, and finish my shop, and build a house, put in septic, and, and, and...

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Your assumption is based on a false premise. If the Inverter of either system dies your SOL when it comes to power.
If the SCC dies in the Sol-Ark, that does not mean that you cannot get power from the batteries or that you could not Grid charge of Gen charge the batteries and still have AC power. If the Comms board dies on the Sol-Ark, the inverter will still work. The main thing that will bring down both Inverters is the same thing and just because other boards are in the same cabinet in the Sol-Ark does not mean that it will bring down the whole system.

Samsonite801 said:

If I was more wealthy than I currently am right now, I wouldn't have a problem with buying 12 of the Solark 15k's, for $99,000 ($8250x12), and a whole array of Fortress batteries, but I am on a tight budget as are many people here hehe... I think the Solarks would be considered a lot more robust as a package, if more than one is stacked, but it starts getting crazy expensive to stack them.

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They are not cheap but they are not meant to compete with MPP or Growatt in price. When stacked against the other Inverters that are code compliant like Tesla, Outback and Enphase they are all in the same price range.

Samsonite801 said:

BTW, cheers bro, no harm meant, nothing against Solark either, I think they do have their proper place in the market...

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No problem, it just that the video that guy did was less scientific and more of a Con than the one David Poz did and that is saying a lot.

Samsonite801 said:

Yeah before Covid and inflation rush, they were 18-22k here (depending on if PVC or steel case), today the driller is charging 28-32k.. The well driller didn't raise his rate, he says it's all in the costs of the supplies. That price includes pump (3-phase variable-speed pump with VFD), pressure tank and an outdoor freeze rated (orange faucet nozzle).

We do have another driller coming soon who does PVC only and he thinks he can beat that low end by a little bit. Our wells wind up being around 200-some feet deep with water table around 60-80ft depending on if you're up on the foothills or the main valley.

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Wow! Our well was 270' and just under $3k ... of course, it was put down around 1998.

Kornbread said:

Wow! Our well was 270' and just under $3k ... of course, it was put down around 1998.

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Wow what a price change over the years.

robby said:

Wow what a price change over the years.

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Anything put down a few miles West of us would have cost a couple thousand $ more since it would have been drilled through solid rock, instead of the softer layers here, but yeah, huge price increase.

Pre-pandemic prices in my area ranged from $27-45K for a 700' deep well. I haven't had the heart to make new inquiries.

robby said:

It's unfortunate that the guy did the same thing like David Poz and removed all of the comments that showed his numerous intentional blunders.
If you look at the video again the first thing that sticks out is that he is trying to start a 90 LRA single phase compressor that is drawing 77 Amps or 9200W on single phase and then tries it on a Solark that is rated for 4800W Max on a single phase. It was just never going to work with any HF Inverter.
Also people kept on asking him what PSI was in the Tank when he used the Schneider and he would not say. He only said that the Sol-Ark was trying to fill it with something like 40 PSI in the tank already. Well an empty compressor vs one with 40 PSI is a huge difference in starting current.

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Yeah, I have pretty decent intuition with discerning people's intentions in these kinds of videos, I could tell the guy was really fanatic in augmenting his good points on the XW Pro and placing excessive emphasis on the negative points of the Solark, I can't necessarily tell if his intentions are driven by money, or just by his own strong liking for the product he thinks he really likes a lot, but wouldn't surprise me if it was money driven hehe.

robby said:

Have you added in the SCC, PDP, The Gateway? The Sol-Ark has 185A Charger and all the other stuff built in.
Get a Quote for the Schneider with 2x 100A SCC and the PDP plus Gateway and all the other needed pieces and it will be near $10K.

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Fair enough, the devil is in the details... Those parts could nickle and dime a person to death. I always did like how Solark really polished off the all-in-one approach and included all the breakers and everything in the unit.

robby said:

Most nuisance tripping has a cause that is simple to rectify but most people don't read the manual so they don't know how to fix it.
I had 3 trips in one night after I set mine up and it was because I set the lowest VAC before tripping to battery to 112V. I simply moved it to 108V and the problem was gone.

XW Pro is supposedly riddled with bugs, that was why so many people sold them and upgraded to Sol-Arks.

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Yeah this neighbor of mine with the RV and tripping issue, isn't that technical, and I haven't had enough time to get over there to look at his settings and see if there are some optimizations we could make to help improve the trips (plus he's always out of town for weeks and hard to catch him). I know when he usually hits a trip, it's when the AC first kicks on, so I know it's related to surge. I told him to put on soft starters like I did on my Dometic AC roof units so it doesn't hammer the inverter so hard (is just good for it anyway). He's just frustrated because of the nuisance of it...

robby said:

I have no problem with that, you are a DIYer so your willing to spend the time messing with setting and features that are not well documented and are willing to work with no customer support or warranty. I personally would buy from Watts247 just so I have some support and a warranty.

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True on that, I'm willing to spend the extra time it sometimes takes to get to the bottom of problems and work around them, helps me learn more about how it really works too.. Some people aren't willing to read the entire manual before they start getting mad about stuff not working. But I also used to be an old drag racer and car tuner, that took a lot of patience to get things right.

I am actually willing, and starting into reading the full NEC 2023 book (918 pages long!)... See if I can do it hehe. Back when I was studying for the ASE F1 CNG certification test, I read the entire NFPA book on alternative fuel safety and fire code hehe. I can't even remember how many pages it was (I had printed it on paper and it was like an inch thick), but I read it cover to cover, even many paragraphs twice (since their legal wording is so confusing for a layman like me)...

robby said:

Your assumption is based on a false premise. If the Inverter of either system dies your SOL when it comes to power.
If the SCC dies in the Sol-Ark, that does not mean that you cannot get power from the batteries or that you could not Grid charge of Gen charge the batteries and sill have AC power. If the Comms board dies on the Sol-Ark, the inverter will still work. The main thing that will bring down both Inverters is the same thing and just because other boards are in the same cabinet in the Sol-Ark does not mean that it will bring down the whole system.

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Not understanding why I'd be SOL though... If one inverter dies, it seems to me that if it were a slave, I can just take it out of the loop and reboot the master as a single and it will work (or go into the settings and set it up as single). If it was a slave that didn't work, reconfigure that one as single and it would work. Too me that is better redundancy than having an inverter fail, then have to order another one which could be days out of solar power (running on generator), if I even had the money to get another one if outside of warranty...

robby said:

They are not cheap but they are not meant to compete with MPP or Growatt in price. When stacked against the other Inverters that are code compliant like Tesla, Outback and Enphase they are all in the same price range.

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Understood. Like I said, there is a place in the market for Solark. In my opinion, anything like the 12k where it has a 4800w per leg, I would feel more comfortable stacking 2 at least, to help avoid potential surge-based trips, and help imbalanced loads have lower chance of manifesting into a trip event.

robby said:

No problem, it just that the video that guy did was less scientific and more of a Con than the one David Poz did and that is saying a lot.

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I think the video had some value, even though he was a little fanatical at times. I'd be curious to see more real world type users try them out and give opinions about them. For me, I never get like fanboy status about any product in the world. I realize they're still all made by humans and mostly inferior. There are a lot of parameters that come into play when selecting best components for a given person, as we all have different needs and requirements.

Kornbread said:

Wow! Our well was 270' and just under $3k ... of course, it was put down around 1998.

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Yeah, I wish it was 1998, those were the good 'ol days, am I really getting this old? I think my parents spent $2000 on their well up in Washington State (like around 1979), it was only like 25 ft deep if I remember right (but it was like a 2 ft diameter cement).

Samsonite801 said:

Yeah, I wish it was 1998, those were the good 'ol days, am I really getting this old? I think my parents spent $2000 on their well up in Washington State (like around 1979), it was only like 25 ft deep if I remember right (was like 2 ft diameter cement).

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A few miles East of here, at the MIL's old farm, their well is 20' deep. Around there, some people still wash their wells down by hand. Here most wells are either ~60' and you hit a nice layer of sand with good tasting water, then it's not water till ~300' and it tastes like you just drilled into a Chinaman's sewer. Thirty miles West and most everything is +300'.

Prices have gone krazy. I should have ordered as many batteries as possible a while back, now it looks like they are getting harder to find and surely, increasing in price. The used solar panels I've been pricing have also gone up considerably. Groceries ... forget about it.

I'm currently investigating rainwater harvesting off the solar panels with heavy metals filtration.

sunshine_eggo said:

I'm currently investigating rainwater harvesting off the solar panels with heavy metals filtration.

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I think distillation might remove the heavy metals from solar panel runoff. Energy intensive, my 1 gallon distiller uses 580 watts and runs for 5 hours to do about a gallon. 3000watts !

Kornbread said:

Groceries ... forget about it.

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Good thing I bought all my groceries in 1998 though. All that canned food is really paying off now. Some of it tastes kind of weird but it's still fine I think.. I'm hoping I know how to grow more food from the garden by the time I run out of my stock...

cs1234 said:

I think distillation might remove the heavy metals from solar panel runoff. Energy intensive, my 1 gallon distiller uses 580 watts and runs for 5 hours to do about a gallon. 3000watts !

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I found a study showing run-off collected from a panel. Slight elevations in lead and cadmium - Cad was under safe limits, but Lead was 2X safe limits. Lots of very effective filtration systems to filter out lead.

robby said:

It's unfortunate that the guy did the same thing like David Poz and removed all of the comments that showed his numerous intentional blunders.

...

No problem, it just that the video that guy did was less scientific and more of a Con than the one David Poz did and that is saying a lot.

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I thought I was in the wrong video or was wrongly titled, he was "reviewing" his expertise and work experience in the first several minutes. Got bored.

(Sarcasm ooppssss...)

sunshine_eggo said:

I found a study showing run-off collected from a panel. Slight elevations in lead and cadmium - Cad was under safe limits, but Lead was 2X safe limits. Lots of very effective filtration systems to filter out lead.

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All of that can be removed with a Good RO system and Carbon Filters. You can aerate it with some Ozone if you want to get rid of any possible organics. I see what looks like about two gallons of water coming off my panels at night. Might not be a lot but it could be the difference between life and death in an emergency!