diy solar

diy solar

DEYE Inverter UL Listed available in US

"HighTechLab" who is also a moderator on this site just purchased one.. When watching his video I took screenshot of how they state it below.. they take the Apple approach where they plaster "Designed in California" over everything but almost all their stuff is Made in China.
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Since Sunny Islands are AC coupled unit, you also need to add the cost of either micro inverters, or if you stick to DC from the panels, another inverter for the solar modules -correct? For micro-inverters the costs can add up quickly.

I have yet to read one complaint on the Sol-ark units & many praises for their customer service. I did a search for sol-ark & china. There are a few hits, but no real details on what exactly is made in China. My guess would be they buy most of the inverter guts from Deye and then assemble them with additional components, their own version of the software, & a different cabinet in their Texas facility giving it an "engineered & assembled in the US with parts sourced globally" pedigree. Or, maybe it's all done at Deye in China to their specs. Someone that physically has one of these could look at the actual label and provide the "Made in XXXXX" info.
Yes, that is absolutely correct. You still need to convert the power from the panels to ether AC (ac coupled) or use a charge controller (dc coupled)

The beauty is that you can do either or both at the same time.. it gives you options and flexibility. Grid tie inverters are a dime a dozen. sort to say..

You can use almost ANY grid tied inverter to perform AC Coupling with a Sunny Island, but its better if the inverter is capable of Frequency Shift Power Control (FSPC). FSPC allows the grid inverters to adjust their output power based on the grid frequency. So for instance, when my batteries are fully charged and the sun is shining, my array makes far more power than the house uses.. That's a problem, so the sunny island sees this and raises the grid freq.. when the grid freq hits 62hz, all grid-tied inverters shut down. But if the grid inverter is capable of FSPC, it will begin to reduce its output in baby steps.. at 61.1hz, it puts out 90%, at 61.2hz, 80% and by the time the grid freq is at 61.9hz, the big 6000 watt grid tied inverter is only putting out 600 watts (10% of its rated output).

The operation in FSPC is graceful and smooth, and doesn't cycle the batteries by pulling out a kW and then putting it back in.

This allows the sunny island to charge the batteries and then exactly match the loads in the house.. This way, the power goes from the panels directly into your loads and never even see's the battery..

There's nothing wrong with Sol-Ark (except the box that says "made in china").. But why pay a premium price when you can get a much better product for cheaper?

And as far as their EMP claims, that's hog wash.. Surge protectors can be had from any solar supplier, and nothing short of a Faraday cage is going to stop a Nuclear EMP because it transmits right through the air and directly couples to the electronics.
 
Once upon a time I was going to set up one Sunny Island with a 120/240V transformer, coupled to a couple Sunny Boy. With the rest of my Sunny Boy direct to grid because relay on a 5 kW Sunny Boy could only pass 6 kW through. Switch to transfer the other Sunny Boys onto Sunny Island during grid failure (it can manage twice as many watts as it can produce from battery or pass through the relay.)

With those inverters available on eBay I've now installed four Sunny Island, 2s2p. That can pass through 112A 120/240VAC, generate 23kW continuously from battery, 28 kW for 30 minutes, 44 kW for 3 seconds. And manage about 48 kW of PV inverters while off-grid.

You can connect a limited amount of DC coupled PV (no more than your batteries can accept as charging current), but you can have much more PV AC couple because charge current from there is adjustable. So I skimped on batteries.

You want grid tie inverters that adjust power output according to frequency, and not just "Rule 21" because those will go offline after 5 minutes. The Sunny Boys set for "grid backup" or "island" (off grid) will stay on line indefinitely and adjust to match your loads. During blackouts I run the central A/C and everything else.
 
With those inverters available on eBay I've now installed four Sunny Island, 2s2p. That can pass through 112A 120/240VAC, generate 23kW continuously from battery, 28 kW for 30 minutes, 44 kW for 3 seconds. And manage about 48 kW of PV inverters while off-grid.
I have to ask, what the heck are you running with all that power?

I have two of them set up (12kw) and its more power than I need. Just in the house, id have to turn everything I own on at the same time AND take a shower to reach even 12kw.
 
Nothing much, I'm open to suggestions.
Battery is 20 kW, 14 kW usable. PV could provide over 0.5C, but I limit charging to 0.2C and the rest just powers loads if off-grid during a blackout.
So I would actually drain the battery in 20 minutes running full power without sunshine.

The four inverters was mostly to get twice the pass-through relay. If they managed an external 100A or 200A relay then two Sunny Island would probably have been enough.

The real reason was, "because I can". I bought a pallet of them, so what he heck.
For now my house is on the protected loads side, and I have electric heat so I can use net metering credits in the summer to heat the house in the winter. For now I manually shut off some loads if Sunny Island automatically switches to off-grid. I should wire a few control signals to make that automatic, later pull more wire and have such loads go straight to the grid.
My garage is manually transferred to the protected loads side because it is on the main panel.

I should look into the settings for shutting down slaves under light load, and going to standby if the house has been load-shed due to low battery. With four on line, that's 100W being burned waiting for the sun to come up. Load shed is 70% DoD and battery protect is 80% DoD, so not really that many hours run time. Better to consume 24W standby.
 
Nothing much, I'm open to suggestions.
Battery is 20 kW, 14 kW usable. PV could provide over 0.5C, but I limit charging to 0.2C and the rest just powers loads if off-grid during a blackout.
So I would actually drain the battery in 20 minutes running full power without sunshine.

The four inverters was mostly to get twice the pass-through relay. If they managed an external 100A or 200A relay then two Sunny Island would probably have been enough.

The real reason was, "because I can". I bought a pallet of them, so what he heck.
For now my house is on the protected loads side, and I have electric heat so I can use net metering credits in the summer to heat the house in the winter. For now I manually shut off some loads if Sunny Island automatically switches to off-grid. I should wire a few control signals to make that automatic, later pull more wire and have such loads go straight to the grid.
My garage is manually transferred to the protected loads side because it is on the main panel.

I should look into the settings for shutting down slaves under light load, and going to standby if the house has been load-shed due to low battery. With four on line, that's 100W being burned waiting for the sun to come up. Load shed is 70% DoD and battery protect is 80% DoD, so not really that many hours run time. Better to consume 24W standby.

I didn't hook my SI's up the conventional way, I have them completely isolated from everything when not in use, not even a neutral or ground wire is connected. And nothing is automated when we need to switch over to the off grid system.

When needed, I simply plug a patch cord into the off-grid box and the other end connects to my home's main breaker panel through an interlocked breaker that can't be turned on if the main breaker is on. We simply turn off the main breaker, turn on the off-grid breaker, and fire up the sunny islands.
25kw of lithium can easily run my home for 24 hours as if nothing was wrong. When the sun comes up, the 10.7kw array can pump 150+ amps into the battery and have it charged in about three hours if I needed. I throttle it back to 100 amps so it takes 4 to 5 hours.. no reason to warm the batteries if its not needed.
 

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My portable test setup.

One SI 5048, SIC 40 charger, DC breaker panel, AC breaker panel, 120/240 auto transformer, 100 Ah 48V AGM battery.
Much of this will become a vehicle mounted setup.
I've put current transformers on my fixed 2s2p setup, will eventually have wires to my lab allowing measurement of current waveforms as motors start and run anywhere on my property. So far I've only taken measurements like that with a 120V extension cord.

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These portable setups you guys are using has really got my mind churning.
Since I have net metering and my grid rarely goes down I would be happy with a manual switch over to off grid.

I am very confused about why you guys are saying Sunny Island works better with AC coupling.
 
So, this statement from their website really means Sol-Ark is an American made engineering firm but their products are made in China.

"Sol-Ark is an American-Made, U.S Department of Energy Solar 2020 Semi-Finalist Winner, veteran-owned and engineering firm based in Parker, Texas."
 
These portable setups you guys are using has really got my mind churning.
Since I have net metering and my grid rarely goes down I would be happy with a manual switch over to off grid.

I am very confused about why you guys are saying Sunny Island works better with AC coupling.
Sunny Island can be used with DC coupling or AC coupling.
With AC coupling, Sunny Island decides and knows how much current goes into the battery or comes out of it, because it is the only connection.
With DC coupling, it only has measurement but not control.

SMA previously sold "Sunny Island Charger", SIC-40 and SIC-50, which were actually manufactured by MTSE:


With the addition of "SIC-PB", its data bus is converted to the CAN bus used between multiple Sunny Islands. Voltage set-points of charging phases (but not maximum charging current) is controlled by Sunny Island, and amps/amp hours are reported.

Midnight Solar's Classic charge controller similarly has a data interface, so it can do the same.

With addition of a battery shunt, any other DC source can be used as well. Current is seen by Sunny Island, but voltage settings are separately controlled by the other sources.

Sunny Island can export to grid (net metering) from DC sources, if the battery voltage is driven higher than what Sunny Island wants. I think that means only sources it doesn't control, i.e. those which require addition of a shunt. And if the grid happens to be down, those sources will hold the battery at a higher voltage, so that setting needs to be low enough to do no harm.

Sunny Island's menu displays up to four SIC, showing PV voltage and current.

Because Sunny Island can't control current to battery from those sources (only choose not to add more from its AC sources), you need to limit DC coupled PV (or other types) to maximum battery charge current. For instance, to keep battery charging at 0.2C, if you have 10 kWh of battery then only 2 kW of PV should be DC coupled. If you're consuming 3 kW of AC at that time, battery gets discharged at 1 kW. If you had 5 kW of PV, battery would get 2 kW and AC would get 3 kW, but when your AC loads turn off battery would get 5 kW which is 0.5C

Sunny Island can manage AC coupled PV up to 2x its own rating. A pair of SI-6048 for 12 kW can have 24 kW of AC coupled Sunny Boy (which can be over-paneled beyond 24 kW of PV.) It will simply adjust frequency to request 5 kW of whatever, so your AC loads get 3 kW and exactly 2 kW is drawn down to charge batteries.

SMA recommends 100 Ah at 48V (5 kW) of battery per 1 kW of PV, probably to handle the load-dump situation when your A/C or well pump shuts off, and suddenly Sunny Boy is delivering more kW than you need. The frequency shift control is relatively slow, takes seconds. Sunny Island can deliver 140A (7kW) maximum charge current but if battery can't accept that, AC voltage could rise to where Sunny Boy disconnects.

I get away with having battery 1/4 the recommended size. I don't have individual loads turning on and off which are such a large fraction of the total.

I would suggest using DC coupling up to the "C" rate your batteries can accept, if you use DC coupling at all. AC coupling with inverters that have an off-grid setting (not just "Rule 21"). Batteries sized according to your budget and nighttime draw or periods without enough sunlight. Because my PV array is oversize, even overcast days should usually produce enough power for some loads like refrigerators. Large loads (A/C, tools) can wait for sunny days.
 
These portable setups you guys are using has really got my mind churning.
Since I have net metering and my grid rarely goes down I would be happy with a manual switch over to off grid.

You can connect Sunny Island to your main breaker panel with two breakers. One, adjacent to main breaker, would be connected to output of Sunny Island and interlocked so only one of [Grid, Sunny Island] can ever feed the panel at any given time.

The other breaker should go at far end of breaker panel (if backfeeding through Sunny Island from DC coupled sources or GT inverters), or any position in panel if not backfeeding through Sunny Island.

During a grid failure, you manually turn off the breaker for input of Sunny Island (so its input doesn't see its output and think grid has returned). Then you turn off main breaker, move the interlock, turn on backfeed breaker. Now Sunny Island is powering your house.

If you have GT inverters that are just UL1741 or Rule 21, they can go straight to your breaker panel. They will feed the grid when it is connected, and feed Sunny Island when that is connected. They will cycle on and off depending on loads, and batteries will charge and discharge.

If you have GT inverters with settings to work with Sunny Island's frequency shift, put them on a separate breaker panel on the output of Sunny Island. (no more than the wattage it can pass through its relay, 56A at 120V per Sunny Island.) They will be operated in a mode where they do not implement UL1741; Sunny Island takes over that role. So with their settings altered they can't be connected directly to grid.

There are a few other details to take care of so inverter can protect batteries from over-discharge but still operate GT inverters for recharging, larger loads like A/C can be enabled when batteries are near full, etc.

Sunny Island is 120V. Sunny Boy is 240V, and your house is 120/240V. You either need two Sunny Island or a transformer.
Some other brands (e.g. Outback Skybox) provide similar functionality.
 
There are 2 Sunny Island 6048s open box on Ebay now for $1500 each
I bought both of my Sunny Islands from that same seller.. but that was in 2019 and I paid $2200 ($1100ea) for both of them w/free shipping.

When they got here, one was in good condition, the other looked like UPS had tied a chain to it and dragged it here. I contacted the seller and they sent out another one as soon as they got the busted one back.

I would strongly recommend LTL Freight for these units.. Drivers can't lift 140 lb packages and they tend to drop them off the back of the truck. I caught them doing it on security camera.
 
There are 2 Sunny Island 6048s open box on Ebay now for $1500 each
Pretty good, buy'em if you want'em.

A seller (maybe not this seller?) has also advertised the box with two Sunny Island, Midnight Classic, AC and DC breakers for $5000 plus shipping.
He might get $500 for the charge controller, nothing for the rest. That's a total of $3500
You could contact him, see if you can pay $3500 for the whole assembly. Plus truck shipment of a couple to few hundred $$.

Just add wheels and batteries.
 
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I would strongly recommend LTL Freight for these units.. Drivers can't lift 140 lb packages and they tend to drop them off the back of the truck. I caught them doing it on security camera.

All the more reason to buy a 500# or more assembly.
It can ship on a pallet.
You either pay for shipping company to send a truck with lift gate and pallet jack to drop it in your garage, or go with a pickup to freight terminal, then unload with engine hoist or lumber ramp when you get home.

(You've probably seen Funniest Videos of people kicking ramps out from under quadrunners or lawn tractors. Use straps to secure the ramp to your bumper.)
 
I bought both of my Sunny Islands from that same seller.. but that was in 2019 and I paid $2200 ($1100ea) for both of them w/free shipping.
And I paid $1250. People who bought at the DC solar auction may have paid half as much.
Best I've been seeing recently was $2200 each.
Kind of like what you see in the stock market, brief spikes or dips. You probably miss the extremes, but prices settle to what the market will bear.
People here tried for complete trailers at later DC solar auctions but they weren't such a bargain anymore. Awareness of the deals to be had, and COVID making more people interested in stand-alone systems.

These are a limited-time fire sale. We expect SMA to bring the new model over from Europe one of these days, and when the liquidation of SI-6048 is over, the deals will be gone. The new ones will probably support "Speedwire" and talk to the latest model Sunny Boy -40 and -41, making a better system for those with recent grid-tie installations. Those of us using older Sunny Boy or buying those for an off-grid setup are fine with SI-6048


2559 Euro = $3034 USD, so well below previous $5000 MSRP of SI-6048
 
All the more reason to buy a 500# or more assembly.
It can ship on a pallet.
You either pay for shipping company to send a truck with lift gate and pallet jack to drop it in your garage, or go with a pickup to freight terminal, then unload with engine hoist or lumber ramp when you get home.

(You've probably seen Funniest Videos of people kicking ramps out from under quadrunners or lawn tractors. Use straps to secure the ramp to your bumper.)
I get LTL shipments here frequently... we just put loading forks on the farm tractor.. no lift gate required for us.. saves money.

Of a far larger issue is that we live on a dirt road with frost laws.
 
Thanks for all of the great info guys.

I was hoping to pick the inverter up at a shipping terminal with my small SUV. Then have someone help me get it on a furniture dolly when I get home.

I don't see the combo deal with Midnight classic

It doesn't seem like I need to worry about missing this deal. I'll probably make a low offer. I don't use Ebay much.
 
I don't see the combo deal with Midnight classic

It doesn't seem like I need to worry about missing this deal. I'll probably make a low offer. I don't use Ebay much.
No listing of it at this time, but the picture shows it. You could ask if he has the entire assembly available to sell.

In eBay you can see completed/sold listing including more of this inverter from this seller.
 
You can connect Sunny Island to your main breaker panel with two breakers. One, adjacent to main breaker, would be connected to output of Sunny Island and interlocked so only one of [Grid, Sunny Island] can ever feed the panel at any given time.

The other breaker should go at far end of breaker panel (if backfeeding through Sunny Island from DC coupled sources or GT inverters), or any position in panel if not backfeeding through Sunny Island.

During a grid failure, you manually turn off the breaker for input of Sunny Island (so its input doesn't see its output and think grid has returned). Then you turn off main breaker, move the interlock, turn on backfeed breaker. Now Sunny Island is powering your house.

If you have GT inverters that are just UL1741 or Rule 21, they can go straight to your breaker panel. They will feed the grid when it is connected, and feed Sunny Island when that is connected. They will cycle on and off depending on loads, and batteries will charge and discharge.

If you have GT inverters with settings to work with Sunny Island's frequency shift, put them on a separate breaker panel on the output of Sunny Island. (no more than the wattage it can pass through its relay, 56A at 120V per Sunny Island.) They will be operated in a mode where they do not implement UL1741; Sunny Island takes over that role. So with their settings altered they can't be connected directly to grid.

There are a few other details to take care of so inverter can protect batteries from over-discharge but still operate GT inverters for recharging, larger loads like A/C can be enabled when batteries are near full, etc.

Sunny Island is 120V. Sunny Boy is 240V, and your house is 120/240V. You either need two Sunny Island or a transformer.
Some other brands (e.g. Outback Skybox) provide similar functionality.
I don't get why anyone would not automate the transfer switch operation. Living in Florida, our grid is pretty reliable, but it does drop out, especially when hurricanes come through. Much of my reason for going solar is to be able to sell my generator and stop having to manually switch to generator power when the grid goes down.

SolArk includes everything but the batteries. Wire the PV in, the loads out, tie in the grid if needed, and you're done. From what I'm reading here about Sunny Island, functions like transfer switches and inverters need to be added separately, so any price comparisons seem to be seriously lopsided.
These extra components not only add cost, but inefficiencies by having to be wired through mire connectors and longer wires.
 
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