Acrel 10R not connected to solis AC coupled inverter

[Paul Wood]

Hi all, another first timer here. I have the solis RAI-3K-48ES-5G AC coupled inverter connected to 2 X US5000 pylontech batteries. The inverter came with a ct and the Acrel 10R meter also with ct, this does not appear to be communcating with the inverter, they are physically connected with the supplied cables, the "comms" light on the meter is not on. Is there a setting on the inverter that needs to be turned on that I have yet to find? Or is there a setting on the Acrel meter that needs tweaking?
The Solis cloud app is only measuring power going to and from the batteries "very slow updating" and showing nothing from the grid. The Solis Techview does not work at all.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[RichardMole]

My similar setup was installed by an electrician so I'm not sure about any settings needed, but this info might help..

My Acrel meter, with the CT installed on the incoming supply from the grid (on the live conductor only). The Run light flashes green and the Com light flashes red. It agrees with what my smart meter displays.


This is monitored by the Solis inverter and is displayed under the 'Meter Info' heading...

The minus sign means that power is being imported, I think.

There is another parameter, Grid Power - does anyone know what this is? It isn't the figure from the Acrel meter, anyway.

Do you have the Solis 'Quick Installation Guide' for the RAI-3K-48ES-5G? This shows the wiring connections for the Acrel meter. If necessary I can scan it and post it here. I suggest you check that yours has been wired correctly, including checking the data cable to the inverter. This should have RJ45 plugs crimped onto each end. If these were fitted by the installer (rather than using a ready made cable) they may not be making proper contact - try unplugging both ends of the data cable (with everything switched off) and checking continuity through each core.

The SolisCloud app: This gets its info on the PV, battery and grid connection power flows from the inverter, and I think it must calculate what the house load is, from the other three. So it won't work right if the inverter isn't getting data from the Acrel meter. (The inverter won't work right either). Also of course the CT on the feed from the PV inverter has to be working correctly too. (This is shown in the inverter menus as PV-CT power). The app only updates every 10 minutes.

In my case, although the inverter is picking up the data from the CTs, Soliscloud is still not displaying it correctly, and Solis Support are looking into the problem.

To use Solis Techview you have to hold your smartphone close to the data logger stick on the inverter and connect to its wifi signal (wifi password solis100). The installer password is solis123 and the advanced user password is solis123456
However the app is something of a disappointment - it shows lots of parameters which seem to be different from those visible via the inverter front panel screen, with no explanation of what they mean. There is no option to e.g set what time to charge the battery from the grid.

 

[Paul Wood]

Thank you so much for the reply. It seems our systems are slightly different, we have RS485 connections from the Acrel meter into the inverter we have checked the continuity from leg 1at the inverter we have connections on pins 1 and 3 at the meter and on the 2nd leg we have connections on pins 2 and 6 at the meter I will have to check to make sure this is correct. The "meter info",on the inverter is comming up as "Null" which is not surprising as its not connected, and as for the solis cloud as you say without the meter it will not read correctly. I will endeavour to find info on the wiring of the RS485 unless anyone else knows what it is supposed to be?
Thanks again for posting.

 

[SeaGal]

I will endeavour to find info on the wiring of the RS485 unless anyone else knows what it is supposed to be?

IIRC, for Solis RHI to Acrel, it is green and green-white connections on cat5 cable - same at both ends, not a cross-over cable - so pins 1 & 2. Assume the RAI would be similar.

 

[RichardMole]

RS485 describes how the devices communicate with each other (communications protocol). RJ45 is just the type of plug on the end of the wire at the Acrel meter end.

I can look at the pinouts in my Acrel meter cable if you are stuck, but it will be a few days before I have an opportunity.

I have just uploaded to Resources in this forum, Solis' Quick Install Guide for this inverter. It shows how the Acrel meter should be connected, though it does not give the data cable pinouts.

Have you tried contacting Solis support? I have found them to be helpful.

 

[Paul Wood]

IIRC, for Solis RHI to Acrel, it is green and green-white connections on cat5 cable - same at both ends, not a cross-over cable - so pins 1 & 2. Assume the RAI would be similar.

Thank you

 

[Paul Wood]

RS485 describes how the devices communicate with each other (communications protocol). RJ45 is just the type of plug on the end of the wire at the Acrel meter end.

I can look at the pinouts in my Acrel meter cable if you are stuck, but it will be a few days before I have an opportunity.

I have just uploaded to Resources in this forum, Solis' Quick Install Guide for this inverter. It shows how the Acrel meter should be connected, though it does not give the data cable pinouts.

Have you tried contacting Solis support? I have found them to be helpful.

I think I have most of the available install guides but will take a look at the one you posted as some are different and the info could be hidden in plain sight.
Thank you so much for your help.
I have also sent a ticket to the Solis Service Support and are awaiting a response.

 

[Umski]

This is monitored by the Solis inverter and is displayed under the 'Meter Info' heading...
View attachment 126882
The minus sign means that power is being imported, I think.

There is another parameter, Grid Power - does anyone know what this is? It isn't the figure from the Acrel meter, anyway.
View attachment 126884

Indeed the power values that Solis uses seem to be inverted from what I would call 'convention' but yes negative is import or charging (grid power) whilst positive values on either mean that the Acrel sees a nett export or in the case of 'Grid Power' the Solis is discharging the battery. It took me a while to match these to my energy monitoring - the Acrel has shown me that my calibration is out on my own CT by a few 10s of Watts.

Back to the original question - it could be a few things - the cable, the Acrel itself or the CT on the live tail - if the Acrel is reading the Watts and Volts correctly on its own display (scroll through the parameters using the arrow keys I recall) then it would point to the cable or an RS485 comms issue - hard one to debug without a known good spare....

 

[SeaGal]

Indeed the power values that Solis uses seem to be inverted from what I would call 'convention' ...

Well... the Solis is an inverter

 

[Umski]

Well... the Solis is an inverter

Hehe

@Paul Wood - is the Acrel display showing values correctly when powered up? Another thought, can't remember on this forum or elsewhere but someone had a connection issue with a Solis and it turned out the internal connection within the inverter was loose and just needed pushing in, which was an easy fix but not great from Solis!

 

[Paul Wood]

Hehe

@Paul Wood - is the Acrel display showing values correctly when powered up? Another thought, can't remember on this forum or elsewhere but someone had a connection issue with a Solis and it turned out the internal connection within the inverter was loose and just needed pushing in, which was an easy fix but not great from Solis!

I might as well check as I'm running out of options. still waiting to hear from Solis Service centre but would imagine they are playing catchup. I will check for a lose connection for the on-board wifi "not datalogger" as that is not showing up either!
Thank you.

 

[Geoff_S]

Indeed the power values that Solis uses seem to be inverted from what I would call 'convention' but yes negative is import or charging (grid power) whilst positive values on either mean that the Acrel sees a nett export or in the case of 'Grid Power' the Solis is discharging the battery. It took me a while to match these to my energy monitoring - the Acrel has shown me that my calibration is out on my own CT by a few 10s of Watts.

@Umski How did you calibrate your system so your meter matched your energy monitoring? My system appears to be off by 200-250W (Grid Power shows "-100W" (importing from grid) and my smart meter display is showing 180W). I'm trying to figure out why my inverter does generate an output when the house load is below 200W.

I'm only using the CT clamp and not the Acrel meter.

Thank you.

 

[Umski]

I might as well check as I'm running out of options. still waiting to hear from Solis Service centre but would imagine they are playing catchup. I will check for a lose connection for the on-board wifi "not datalogger" as that is not showing up either!
Thank you.

Might be worth giving them a call on the UK number - the ticketing system doesn't seem to get acknowledged it seems - I've heard others have success getting firmware updates sent within hours of calling up. Could you take a snapshot of the Acrel powered up? If that is showing the power import/export value (it's unsigned so not clear which way the power is flowing!) - the four digit will show X.XXX in kW - then if you use the arrow keys you can scroll through Voltage, VAr, Phase etc...

 

[Paul Wood]

Hehe

@Paul Wood - is the Acrel display showing values correctly when powered up? Another thought, can't remember on this forum or elsewhere but someone had a connection issue with a Solis and it turned out the internal connection within the inverter was loose and just needed pushing in, which was an easy fix but not great from Solis!

Hi again just to update I have finally sorted it thanks to Solis support.
It appears that that when checking your info so in my case the meter 1phase you have to press "enter" and not "escape" even though you think its already there by pressing "escape" you de-select it!. The same when I was checking the CT meter was set on PV It indicated that it was so I pressed "escape" once again de- selecting it. The solution was therfore easy when you know how, press "enter"

 

[Umski]

@Umski How did you calibrate your system so your meter matched your energy monitoring? My system appears to be off by 200-250W (Grid Power shows "-100W" (importing from grid) and my smart meter display is showing 180W). I'm trying to figure out why my inverter does generate an output when the house load is below 200W.

I'm only using the CT clamp and not the Acrel meter.

Thank you.

Calibration was more the other way around - I'm working on the basis that the Acrel is accurate and that my monitoring (using OpenEnergy EmonTX hardware) was slightly out - I can see that when the Solis is charging, the DNO meter is completely stationary (I have an old spinning dial) - my EmonTX was a between 0 and 10-20W out at very low values so I just needed to tweak the voltage and current calibration constants to get it close. In my experience the CTs aren't that accurate as they cover quite a large current range and so if they're calibrated at high values, there's a bit of drift at very low values. I think this is why the later and current RAIs use the Acrel in parallel with the PV which means it 'knows' how much PV there is roughly but can use the Acrel to determine exactly what the net power in or out is to balance things out - one would assume it was easier to use the external Acrel to get this over RS485 than to re-design the entire internals of the RAI - that's just a hunch.

As for your situation, do you have PV as well - when it's showing -100W is it pulling that from the grid at all times?

 

[Umski]

Hi again just to update I have finally sorted it thanks to Solis support.
It appears that that when checking your info so in my case the meter 1phase you have to press "enter" and not "escape" even though you think its already there by pressing "escape" you de-select it!. The same when I was checking the CT meter was set on PV It indicated that it was so I pressed "escape" once again de- selecting it. The solution was therfore easy when you know how, press "enter"

Good stuff Ah yes the old Solis UI which has different positive selections depending on the menu ?‍

 

[Geoff_S]

Calibration was more the other way around - I'm working on the basis that the Acrel is accurate and that my monitoring (using OpenEnergy EmonTX hardware) was slightly out - I can see that when the Solis is charging, the DNO meter is completely stationary (I have an old spinning dial) - my EmonTX was a between 0 and 10-20W out at very low values so I just needed to tweak the voltage and current calibration constants to get it close. In my experience the CTs aren't that accurate as they cover quite a large current range and so if they're calibrated at high values, there's a bit of drift at very low values. I think this is why the later and current RAIs use the Acrel in parallel with the PV which means it 'knows' how much PV there is roughly but can use the Acrel to determine exactly what the net power in or out is to balance things out - one would assume it was easier to use the external Acrel to get this over RS485 than to re-design the entire internals of the RAI - that's just a hunch.

As for your situation, do you have PV as well - when it's showing -100W is it pulling that from the grid at all times?

Thanks for clarifying that @Umski. I was wondering whether the meter would be more accurate. I'll hook up the meter and see if there is any improvement.

I don't have PVs in my installation. I'm just charging off the grid.

Update
I have connected the meter and removed the PV-CT clamp. The offset is now gone and the smart meter is showing ~15W.

 

[Worded]

Hi - hope you don't mind me resurrecting this thread. I seem to have a similar problem to @Paul Wood, but seemingly not with the same fix. The Acrel is displaying accurate grid readings from the CT, but the COM light on the unit is off and the inverter is just displaying a meter reading of NULL even when it is connected and the correct meter selected in the config settings. The fix that worked for Paul via the Solis UI hasn't worked for me.

One thing that occurred to me - I know the communication between meter and Solis is supposed to be over RS485, but the network plug seems to be wired like a regular RJ45 ?



Based on the info on this page I'm wondering if it should look more like this ?



Big favour - would someone with an RJ45 connection to their Acrel meter mind having a quick look at the cabling visible through the back of the plug to see if it matches mine in the photo or the diagram above? (or something completely different!)

In the meantime, my fledgling battery setup is currently being balanced via the unmetered CT clamp, which as others have found isn't very accurate, but otherwise seems to be a pretty fabulous system.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Umski]

Hi - hope you don't mind me resurrecting this thread. I seem to have a similar problem to @Paul Wood, but seemingly not with the same fix. The Acrel is displaying accurate grid readings from the CT, but the COM light on the unit is off and the inverter is just displaying a meter reading of NULL even when it is connected and the correct meter selected in the config settings. The fix that worked for Paul via the Solis UI hasn't worked for me.

One thing that occurred to me - I know the communication between meter and Solis is supposed to be over RS485, but the network plug seems to be wired like a regular RJ45 ?

View attachment 135654

Based on the info on this page I'm wondering if it should look more like this ?

View attachment 135658

Big favour - would someone with an RJ45 connection to their Acrel meter mind having a quick look at the cabling visible through the back of the plug to see if it matches mine in the photo or the diagram above? (or something completely different!)

In the meantime, my fledgling battery setup is currently being balanced via the unmetered CT clamp, which as others have found isn't very accurate, but otherwise seems to be a pretty fabulous system.

Thanks in advance.

Sorry not able to quickly get into my Acrel enclosure but the other end of it is a 'bespoke' two pin connection that plugs into the Solis - is that the cable you have in the image? If you go into Enter>Information>Meter Info>Meter status - is that the place it shows null? The connector on the Solis end is a tricky one to place and then screw the surrounding retainer - could it be loose? I could check again but will need to pull the cover off my Acrel enclosure which is a bit fiddly...

 

[SeaGal]

Physical connection is using the green+green-white twisted pair of RJ45. Green is RS485A, Green-white is RS485B connection.

 

[Worded]

Many thanks @Umski and @SeaGal. (and apologies for the slow response - the whole family has been knocked out with Covid this week, so looking at screens has been pretty uncomfortable for a few days!).

To confirm, @Umski, yes the cable in the image is the one with the RJ45 at one end and the bespoke connection at the Solis and. And yes, I'm seeing NULL under Information>Meter Info>Meter status. I did wonder if the connection was just loose or needed repositioning somehow - I've tried but will give it another go. As you say, it's in a slightly awkward position.

And thanks, @SeaGal - that's really useful!

I'll have another look hopefully over the weekend once my head has stopped throbbing! I raised a ticket with Solis, but haven't heard anything back yet (although they responded to a request for API access within 2 hours).

 

[SeaGal]

Get well soon ?