I have a 24V Growatt SPF 3000TL LVM All in one and overall it has been working fine. I am using 8 Lishen 200ah cells and a JK BMS. Everything works but one annoying thing I cannot get the system to stop doing is use solar instead of the battery. It will get 90% +/- charged maybe even 100 % +/- and it will stop using solar power and start draining the battery. It will then drain on the battery for a long time running the battery down 30% +/- ( do not have a logger on the system so I cannot give you exact details) It's draining the battery even though I have plenty of solar available. I'm connected to 2000 watts of PV panels wired 3S3P. If I reset the system it will start using solar again. I have parameter 01 set to SOL and parameter 05 set to US2 . My BMS is not connected to the Growatt AIO. Any ideas on the magic setting.
24V Growatt SPF 3000TL LVM stops using solar even when solar is available
- Thread starter kdiver58
- Start date
sparrowhawk
Christian Prepper
Try changing to the USE setting rather than USE2. There have been a lot of issues with the USE2 setting. I bought my spf 3000tl lvm over 2 years ago and although not a perfect inverter it has been adequate.
My relevant settings:
01. SBU
05. USE
12. 25v
13. 27v
14. CSO
19. 27.4v
20. 27.2v
22. SBE
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sparrowhawk
Christian Prepper
Let me know if those settings help.
BromhofBlonde
New Member
Hi Sparrowhawk,
Could you please explain why you use 37V for setting 13?
It's a lot higher than recommendations I have found (mostly around the 27V mark)
It is my understanding that this is the voltage at which the system will stop using Utility Supply to switch back to using the battery.
But if the battery is only 24V, it will never reach that level - so in effect, you're preventing the use of the battery as a source.
Is that the point?
Please note that I am very new to DIY Solar, so I might very well be completely off the mark - feel free to correct me!
Thank You
Rednecktek
Solar Wizard
I suspect fat fingers are why 37v. ?
sparrowhawk
Christian Prepper
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BromhofBlonde
New Member
Haha, I wasn't about to suggest something like that and get myself kicked out the gang on my first day.
Thanks sparrowhawk, for the advice on the settings - Madame Growatt has definitely been behaving better since I loaded them.
Not sure if you guys know about South Africa and our Loadshedding? We have been in Stage 6 this past week, which means we cycle on and off in 2-4h blocks for a (minimum) total of 12h in every 24h. At least one of those blocks gets extended when they can't turn us back on without their system tripping on overload. That can then take anything from 2h to 2 weeks to sort out. It's *great* fun, as you can imagine. This solar setup is in our guardhouse and it powers our entire security system. Crime is rife during loadshedding, because the crooks know full well that alarms and electric fences probably don't work. And that's why I need the system running optimally.
I have more questions on BMS and ways to optimise battery use / lifespan. I still need to do a search to see if someone has already posted the same or similar questions. If not, I'm coming back here to find you
sparrowhawk
Christian Prepper
Haha, I wasn't about to suggest something like that and get myself kicked out the gang on my first day.
Thanks sparrowhawk, for the advice on the settings - Madame Growatt has definitely been behaving better since I loaded them.
Not sure if you guys know about South Africa and our Loadshedding? We have been in Stage 6 this past week, which means we cycle on and off in 2-4h blocks for a (minimum) total of 12h in every 24h. At least one of those blocks gets extended when they can't turn us back on without their system tripping on overload. That can then take anything from 2h to 2 weeks to sort out. It's *great* fun, as you can imagine. This solar setup is in our guardhouse and it powers our entire security system. Crime is rife during loadshedding, because the crooks know full well that alarms and electric fences probably don't work. And that's why I need the system running optimally.
I have more questions on BMS and ways to optimise battery use / lifespan. I still need to do a search to see if someone has already posted the same or similar questions. If not, I'm coming back here to find you
The original intent of my system was to keep the lights, refrigerator and a window A/C operating during the frequent power outages we have in this part of South Carolina.
On a more disturbing note a few years ago I remember reading a few stories about some of the farmers in South Africa being murdered and there properties being taken over and the government not doing anything about it and may have actually been encouraging it.
BromhofBlonde
New Member
When you say frequent, how often do you mean? And the cause? I'm asking because I guess we all assume that the USA wouldn't be subject to outages other than occasionally as a result of severe weather. The grass is always greener, I guess?
Yes, we do have some issues here. Farm murders are often not properly investigated because they are in outlying areas with small police forces that are spread thin. There is a lot of corruption and mismanagement within the government which is why we have all this loadshedding; but we also have amazing people who regularly pull together and help each other out. We are nothing if not resilient - we have ridiculous amounts of sunshine (probably 360 days of the year) and our residential / private / small business solar PV capacity increased from 983MW in March 2022 to 4,412MW in June 2023. We all live in the hope that things will get better, if we just hang in there long enough.
sparrowhawk
Christian Prepper
Frequent to me my not be frequent to others. Anyway I lose power anywhere from 8 to 15 times a year. Most are only a few minutes long the majority of the rest are are a few hours long but I rarely know the cause of them. On rare occasions I will have weather related outages that can range from 1 to several days.
BromhofBlonde
New Member
OK, I'm having a bit of a laugh. Frequent to you would be bliss for us! We are off for a minimum of 6h in 3 x 2h stretches *every single day* But hey, I'm grateful you felt the outages were often enough to warrant solar, because that's what got you here, and I get to pick your brain
sparrowhawk
Christian Prepper
OK, I'm having a bit of a laugh. Frequent to you would be bliss for us! We are off for a minimum of 6h in 3 x 2h stretches *every single day* But hey, I'm grateful you felt the outages were often enough to warrant solar, because that's what got you here, and I get to pick your brain
My original solution was to run a generator when the power went out. But that was a real pain in the butt because I had no place close to the house to put it. I had to drag it out and put it about 100 feet away and hook up a long cord which very difficult when the weather was bad, plus keeping the generator fueled was fun also.
And then there's never knowing how long the outage is going to be. So it was always how long do I wait before bringing out the generator? More than once I dragged it out only to have the power come back on by the time I had it ready to go. It wouldn't be that big of an issue if it wasn't so hot and humid here in the summer. It really doesn't take long for it to get uncomfortably warm when the power goes out.
What actually tipped the scales was when the power would go out at night while I was asleep. The A/C turning off would wake me up and then it would quickly become to warm and it was way to much trouble to get up at night and fire up the generator. Once I was up there was no way I would be able to go back to sleep.
BromhofBlonde
New Member
@sparrowhawk - I need advice please! (Not entirely related to this topic, but hopefully close enough)
We are currently 50h+ into an extended outage......
Power went off 8am Tuesday. It was a sunny day so we operated with solar covering the load all day and the battery was fully charged when the sun went down.
Obviously we ran off the battery power over night - and were down to 20% of battery yesterday morning.
Murphy's Law - yesterday was totally overcast with intermittent rain so the panels were not able to charge the battery up at all and by mid-morning the battery was dead and the inverter turned off.
Today it is reasonably sunny and my personal Sunsynk system with 6 x 545W panels is showing a PV input of 2kWh currently.
The Growatt Inverter is still deader than dead.
I understand that the Growatt system only has 2 x 545W panels so the PV input will probably only be around 0.66kWh but with the Inverter being off..... my concern is that even this small amount of energy produced is not reaching the inverter or the battery.
Do you know if the Inverter have a minimum input "threshold" before it can turn back on? Will this happen automatically once the Inverter has "received" enough PV input?
I really need to be making hay while the sun shines - because we are forecast for rain from tomorrow through to Tuesday and the thought of being without security lighting, electric fencing and the majority of our communications system is really worrisome.
Any advice or info you (or anyone else here) can give would be most appreciated.
Thank you.
sparrowhawk
Christian Prepper
There is a minimum voltage the mppt needs to start charging again but shouldn't be an issue if your current set of panels were enough for you inverter to function before this extended outage. Also even if the inverter is off I believe the mppt charger will still charge the batteries.
But some battery BMSs will not restart automaticly and will need to be restarted manually in order to function properly again.
But some battery BMSs will not restart automaticly and will need to be restarted manually in order to function properly again.
Yes, I also had a bit of a laugh. We lose power at least daily, often more, for a few seconds or five minutes. Sever hours a couple times a month for upgrades and repairs but times are available online. My previous permanent house was grid connected but completely off line except for maintenance. Now I'm only in country for a few months a year and the new mini house will not be connected. Power is very poor, for instance the fans change pitch over an octave as the volts build and wane. But strong tropical sunshine near always and in the unlikely event of a day when the sun couldn't penetrate the clouds I can hold out. Panels are cheap and I will be seriously overpaneled.
Hi, he wrote 27V and not 37V.
The Inverter have a range from 150 to 250V.
If your panels Deliver not in this range your Inverter will not charge the battery.
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