Sol-ark - eating their own dog food?

HighTechLab said:

They are the CLICK PLC from Automation Direct - however, the Productivity 1000 series is much more powerful in terms of features for slightly cheaper for analog IO. I use them for other things and they are very capable for the price, and can be expanded in the future.

They have become a bit harder to get with supply shortages, but the video tutorials on YouTube for these make it feasible to learn these as compared to something like an ABB or Siemens that requires what I call "proprietary training".

Also from Automation Direct, the C-More EA9 series HMI as a user interface. In the first iteration I used a bunch of buttons and indicator lights, but then I realized how powerful of a solution this was, realized that I would run out of front panel space in notime!

Some of this stuff is on my YouTube channel (HighTechLab)

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Thanks... I'll check out the channel and look back at AutomationDirect. I've been trying to do more with microcontrollers, but there are a few things that PLCs are really an obvious improvement for.

Think About It said:

Issues in order of importance:
1) Generator will not start with TOU enabled.

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Do you have the Gen Charge box checked and the Current plus minimum battery SOC set? (See Post #23)

Think About It said:

2) Revenue Grade Metering

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Think About It said:

3) When PV comes on in the morning, PV charges batteries before satisfying LOAD, causing power to be drawn from GRID to satisfy LOAD.

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Do you have the Energy Pattern set to Load First? If it is set to Battery First then it will charge the batteries until there is enough excess PV to supply the house.

Think About It said:

4) During the day, when the batteries are charged above 15% (TOU), the battery is not used to power LOAD when LOAD exceeds PV.

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How is your TOU slot setup for the morning?
Also under the Battery settings if the Battery Low or Battery Empty Setting are set higher than the 15% it will not use the battery in the TOU.

Think About It said:

I have much to say about my recent Sol-Ark 15 experience. However, it's late and I need to get to sleep.

I have been in communications with management at Sol-Ark. That software update best be ready before the end of Q1 or I will be returning my inverter. Primarily because the generator will not start automatically when the grid goes down if TOU is enabled. Here is some (not all) of the recent communication that I have had with them. I will be happy to elaborate further when time permits.

I'm going to refresh my use case and the outstanding issues that need to be addressed.

My Sol-ARk 15 is wired like this: Meter Socket->200A Main Disconnect->Sol-ARk->200A Load Center
22KW Generac on Gen/Smartloads Input
(2) 100AH SOK LiPo batteries attached to (1) of the (2) battery terminals, with CANbus.

Use Case:
- When PV comes active in the morning, PV power to LOADS first, excess power to charge batteries
-If LOAD is greater than PV and battery is greater than 15%, supply battery power to load
-If PV and/or batteries don't have enough power to satisfy LOAD, add GRID as needed.
-If GRID goes down, (Override TOU Settings) immediately switch to battery, when battery drops below 15%, start generator, supply GEN to LOAD and charge battery. Shut off GEN when the batteries are charged. Restart GEN when batteries discharge to 15%

Issues in order of importance:
1) Generator will not start with TOU enabled.
2) Revenue Grade Metering
3) When PV comes on in the morning, PV charges batteries before satisfying LOAD, causing power to be drawn from GRID to satisfy LOAD.
4) During the day, when the batteries are charged above 15% (TOU), the battery is not used to power LOAD when LOAD exceeds PV.

I hate to think that my generator will not start if the power goes out when I'm away.
The lack of Revenue Grade certification is costing me money because I cannot receive SRECS. Not only that, to my knowledge, there is not a 3rd party solution available.
Items 3 and 4 above are causing me to use more power from the GRID - again causing an additional electricity expense instead of a savings.

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Your sequence of operation is logical, if not the obvious way to run it with a generator and grid tie, with a "modern" rate structure like California NEM2-3. It does seem odd that on loss of utility power it stays in TOU mode.

For item 4, is your unit enabled for grid sell? That is a prerequisite for running with battery charged; there needs to be a place to dump the power.

Not that you want to hear this, but it also seems like your battery might be too small for your objectives...

Honestly though, this is where the infinite customization options that a secondary controller (PLC) brings into play. When rate structures change don't expect a manufacturer to rush out and adapt their firmware to it.

I'm just about to start a 15K install, interested in more details in these issues.

- When PV comes active in the morning, PV power to LOADS first, excess power to charge batteries

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I would think this would be the default. In your experience does the 'load first' option do anything?

-If LOAD is greater than PV and battery is greater than 15%, supply battery power to load

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Isn't that what this TOU setting does? 'Use battery power until they reach 15%'

-If PV and/or batteries don't have enough power to satisfy LOAD, add GRID as needed.
-If GRID goes down, (Override TOU Settings) immediately switch to battery, when battery drops below 15%, start generator, supply GEN to LOAD and charge battery. Shut off GEN when the batteries are charged. Restart GEN when batteries discharge to 15%

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Again it seems like the Gen Charge setting would cover this, are you saying with TOU enabled it just ignores this?

Load first will do exactly what it says.
If at 8am you’re producing 800 watts from the PV and the house is drawing 1500W it will send all 800W to the house and pull the additional 700W from the grid. If by 9am your PV is producing 1800W it will send 1500W to the house and start charging the batteries with the remaining 300W of PV.
This is how my system is configured.

robby said:

Do you have the Gen Charge box checked and the Current plus minimum battery SOC set? (See Post #23)



Do you have the Energy Pattern set to Load First? If it is set to Battery First then it will charge the batteries until there is enough excess PV to supply the house.

How is your TOU slot setup for the morning?
Also under the Battery settings if the Battery Low or Battery Empty Setting are set higher than the 15% it will not use the battery in the TOU.

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Robby, thanks for your input. I have read many of your posts and appreciate your support to the community.

I was hugely enthusiastic about the Sol-Ark before I purchased it. I am trying to remain optimistic that they will remedy these problems in a timely manner.

I currently do not have a net-meter so I cannot sell to the grid.

All four of the issues have been confirmed by senior Sol-Ark support. They are saying that the system is operating the way that it is programmed.

Yes, I have the "Gen Charge" box checked and the "Gen Start SOC %" set to 10% "Battery Low "is t at 5%. It I disable TOU, the generator will start, and will charge the batteries. However, TOU is required for my use case.
It was finally confirmed by Sol-Ark that the generator will not start if TOU is enabled. I'm running 7.2.2.2 firmware.
Yes, I have the "Load First" energy pattern.
My TOU settings are all the same: 15%, no "sell" or "charge" checked.
My working mode is "Limited to Load".
"Grid Sell" is not enabled.

Sol-Ark will soon be releasing "Revenue Grade CTs" so they are compliant with the ANSI C.12 standard, which is required by most states to receive the solar tax credits. The revenue grad CT's are not going to solve the problem if your inverter is wired in-line with your grid. This is because the inverter can push produced power in multiple directions: To the grid, to the load and to the batteries. The Sol-Ark already measures PV production. They have alluded to me that the accuracy does not meet the standard. They haven't revealed in detail exactly what they are pursuing but it has something to do measuring the PV production at the MPPT level. I'm guessing either DC CT's or some other accessory device that would go inline with the MPPT's. I have searched but cannot find any ANSI C.12 compliant revenue grade metering device that would go inline with my MPPTs.

Prior to my purchase, I had several phone calls with Sol-Ark "Engineering Support" discussing my intended configuration, specifically the generator. It was never disclosed to me that my 22KW generator would not start nor would I be able to receive solar tax credits.

I have used "ladder logic" and written PLC code before. I have programmed in other languages also. I would have taken a different approach to the way that the Sol-Ark is programmed and configured.

Which solar credits are you speaking of?

Think About It said:

Yes, I have the "Gen Charge" box checked and the "Gen Start SOC %" set to 10% "Battery Low "is t at 5%. It I disable TOU, the generator will start, and will charge the batteries. However, TOU is required for my use case.
It was finally confirmed by Sol-Ark that the generator will not start if TOU is enabled. I'm running 7.2.2.2 firmware.
Yes, I have the "Load First" energy pattern.
My TOU settings are all the same: 15%, no "sell" or "charge" checked.
My working mode is "Limited to Load".
"Grid Sell" is not enabled.

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With that setup my understanding is that TOU would stop discharging batteries at 15%. That would prevent them from getting to your 10% gen start threshold. What happens if you change gen start to 20%? It should start the gen as the battery crosses 20% on its way down to 15%, and the gen start will trigger a full recharge.

Alternatively, you would increase TOU battery to like 50% and enable ‘charge’, this would cause the gen to start and charge the battery up to 50. For example set TOU at 1am to 25, and at 2am set to 50 with charge enabled, and if between daytime and 1am the battery discharged down below 50, at 2am the gen would kick on and charge it back to 50.

To be clear I am not questioning your setup at all, it sounds like you have been through all this with Sol-Ark, I’m just trying to understand the config logic based on other research I have done, and the settings I thought would make this work.

Danke said:

Which solar credits are you speaking of?

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SenileOldGit said:

What does "or more of grid support" mean? I don't understand.

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I took it to mean a system designed specifically for offgrid use versus a system designed to work with the grid

Item #3) in my list, battery charging from grid. This happens in the morning when the PV comes on. Instead of allocating then PV power to the load, the inverter is using the PV power (DC) to charge the batteries (DC), and using grid power to power the loads.

The inverter should invert the power UNTIL it meets the full load requirements, then it is supposed to use additional power to charge the batteries. It will eventually do this later in the day.

Item #4) in my list is that the Inverter occasionally uses the grid instead of the battery. This usually happens right after my batteries reach full charge - around 1:30. The batteries get to 100%, the inverter stops drawing power from the PV, hence the sharp drop off. Then the load increases and the system draws from the grid instead of the ramping up PV draw or drawing from the battery. Clearly a bug.

cm119 said:

With that setup my understanding is that TOU would stop discharging batteries at 15%. That would prevent them from getting to your 10% gen start threshold. What happens if you change gen start to 20%? It should start the gen as the battery crosses 20% on its way down to 15%, and the gen start will trigger a full recharge.

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Thanks for you idea. I did a lot of testing and was never able to get the generator to start with TOU enabled. I was told by Sol-Ark support that your config (which I tried) would cause "conflicting" data and the generator would not start. Even if it did, it would not satisfy my use case. I only want the generator to start when the grid is down.

They explained to me that the only way the generator is going to start is to have a TOU time slot with the "Charge" box checked. If I could predict ahead of time the next time my Utility power is going to go out, I would program my TOU so that my generator would start at that time. Unfortunately, I don't have a crystal ball.

Think About It said:

They explained to me that the only way the generator is going to start is to have a TOU time slot with the "Charge" box checked. If I could predict ahead of time the next time my Utility power is going to go out, I would program my TOU so that my generator would start at that time. Unfortunately, I don't have a crystal ball.

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Maybe I'm not understanding the configuration, but couldn't you just pop the Grid breaker on the Sol-Ark (or the main disconnect) so the 15K would think you had a power outage (which you effectively would have)?

Think About It said:

Sol-Ark will soon be releasing "Revenue Grade CTs" so they are compliant with the ANSI C.12 standard, which is required by most states to receive the solar tax credits. The revenue grad CT's are not going to solve the problem if your inverter is wired in-line with your grid. This is because the inverter can push produced power in multiple directions: To the grid, to the load and to the batteries. The Sol-Ark already measures PV production. They have alluded to me that the accuracy does not meet the standard. They haven't revealed in detail exactly what they are pursuing but it has something to do measuring the PV production at the MPPT level. I'm guessing either DC CT's or some other accessory device that would go inline with the MPPT's. I have searched but cannot find any ANSI C.12 compliant revenue grade metering device that would go inline with my MPPTs.

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Is this so one cannot arbitrage the electric rates using batteries? As in charge at cheap rates late at night and sell back using batteries during the expensive rates during the day?

HighTechLab said:

The generator start control is handled by an independent system (runs on a PLC)

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If you're willing to go with an external device but want a more turnkey solution, the Victron 700 series monitors can be used to start/stop a generator. From my reading of the manual (I don't have one), you can program the both the start and stop SoC. It does not appear to offer the "run for fixed time" of the PLC solution, and switching between "run to %" vs. "run to full" would require resetting parameters.

I can tell you my gen will start in a grid outage and I believe I have my SA15 operating the way you describe. Night on battery as sun comes up PV ramps up charging batteries but also covers my loads until batteries are full then it’s grid sell the excess. Reverse process in the evening/night. I do grid charge in the early AM usually when rates are low. I have gen charge unchecked at the moment but usually both gen charge and grid charge boxes are all checked for all time periods.

Think About It said:

Item #3) in my list, battery charging from grid. This happens in the morning when the PV comes on. Instead of allocating then PV power to the load, the inverter is using the PV power (DC) to charge the batteries (DC), and using grid power to power the loads.

The inverter should invert the power UNTIL it meets the full load requirements, then it is supposed to use additional power to charge the batteries. It will eventually do this later in the day.

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For this one, it seems like your TOU setting at 7-8am might be trying to charge batteries. Have you tried to configure a 'slow ramp', i.e. at 8am leave the TOU battery low, like 20% or whatever your minimum is. Then at 10am increase it to 40%, etc, until you have it up to 100% by 3pm or whatever. That way maybe it will give the priority for PV to loads, rather than charging battery, as you aren't telling it you need all that battery charge right away. Posting your settings might help us understand also.

As for revenue grade CTs no one has them in any AIO that I know of and this has been a requirement for the 9 years I have owned solar even back in my SMA days. I solved this requirement by simply buying and mounting my own separate meter base and meter next to my inverter. Sent a picture and no one has ever looked at it since but it was there. I was required to install it for SREC payments now that those are gone it’s gone too

Think About It said:

Item #4) in my list is that the Inverter occasionally uses the grid instead of the battery. This usually happens right after my batteries reach full charge - around 1:30. The batteries get to 100%, the inverter stops drawing power from the PV, hence the sharp drop off. Then the load increases and the system draws from the grid instead of the ramping up PV draw or drawing from the battery. Clearly a bug.

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On this one, when your TOU setting says 'Batt 100%', that means 'charge the battery to 100% and leave it there', i.e. it will not discharge any battery. If you are wanting the use battery to supplement PV power, you would have to keep that number lower, like 80% or whatever, so it knows it can use 20% battery power to cover loads (assuming you have at least one set point that does get the battery up to 100% full charge).

As for the part where it is not increasing PV to cover the loads, that does sound like a bug, of course you would want PV to run at full power to cover loads.

Danke said:

Is this so one cannot arbitrage the electric rates using batteries? As in charge at cheap rates late at night and sell back using batteries during the expensive rates during the day?

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In NJ I don't think so. The net-metering is done by the power utility and the SRECs are administered by the State government. You could store your power in batteries and sell it back at anytime. The state gives you your SRECs based on Solar power produced. I don't think they really care what you do with your produced power.

cm119 said:

On this one, when your TOU setting says 'Batt 100%', that means 'charge the battery to 100% and leave it there', i.e. it will not discharge any battery. If you are wanting the use battery to supplement PV power, you would have to keep that number lower, like 80% or whatever, so it knows it can use 20% battery power to cover loads (assuming you have at least one set point that does get the battery up to 100% full charge).

As for the part where it is not increasing PV to cover the loads, that does sound like a bug, of course you would want PV to run at full power to cover loads.

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Thanks, my TOU settings are all the same. 15%, no charge, no sell. Definitely a bug on both #3 & #4.

Think About It said:

Thanks, my TOU settings are all the same. 15%, no charge, no sell. Definitely a bug on both #3 & #4.

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I don’t think it’s a bug at all. I think you do not have your TOU settings correct. You are also a little light on your attached storage IMO. I get you are frustrated however but I think other than the gen alarm thing your Sol Ark will meet your other expectations right now. The TOU menu is confusing I agree but once you get a better understanding of it things will improve. In a nut shell both grid charge and gen charge boxes must be enabled in all time slots. Set your gen charge settings lower than grid charge settings. I personally use 40% grid and 30% for gen charge. I have 928 Ah of storage and find we can operate with some sun off grid for 22 hrs a day. We go grid charge early AM and charge for 2 hrs to 100% then back on battery. By the time PV starts producing its maintaining loads and charging the batteries until 100% again then goes to grid sell. The only way we would be using grid for loads is 1: During the charging time periods or 2: if I didn’t have enough battery to make it until PV production could make up the loads.

jfpetesn said:

I can tell you my gen will start in a grid outage and I believe I have my SA15 operating the way you describe. Night on battery as sun comes up PV ramps up charging batteries but also covers my loads until batteries are full then it’s grid sell the excess. Reverse process in the evening/night. I do grid charge in the early AM usually when rates are low. I have gen charge unchecked at the moment but usually both gen charge and grid charge boxes are all checked for all time periods.

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What program are you using to make those settings? My PV pro and PV View do not look anything like that.

jfpetesn said:

I don’t think it’s a bug at all. I think you do not have your TOU settings correct. You are also a little light on your attached storage IMO. I get you are frustrated however but I think other than the gen alarm thing your Sol Ark will meet your other expectations right now. The TOU menu is confusing I agree but once you get a better understanding of it things will improve. In a nut shell both grid charge and gen charge boxes must be enabled in all time slots. Set your gen charge settings lower than grid charge settings. I personally use 40% grid and 30% for gen charge. I have 928 Ah of storage and find we can operate with some sun off grid for 22 hrs a day. We go grid charge early AM and charge for 2 hrs to 100% then back on battery. By the time PV starts producing its maintaining loads and charging the batteries until 100% again then goes to grid sell. The only way we would be using grid for loads is 1: During the charging time periods or 2: if I didn’t have enough battery to make it until PV production could make up the loads.

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Thanks. I never want the grid to charge. Some days I have more PV than I do batteries, therefore I always want to charge from the PV and never from the grid. If I don't have enough battery, I'll simply use the grid.

I do believe this is a bug because I have my working mode set to "load first" not "battery first".I read somewhere that at one time "load first"was classified as experimental.

jfpetesn said:

As for revenue grade CTs no one has them in any AIO that I know of and this has been a requirement for the 9 years I have owned solar even back in my SMA days. I solved this requirement by simply buying and mounting my own separate meter base and meter next to my inverter. Sent a picture and no one has ever looked at it since but it was there. I was required to install it for SREC payments now that those are gone it’s gone too

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That's a great idea. Did you even have it wired up?