EG4 Upgrade Program - Turn-in Sol-Ark 15K for EG4 18K

[Michele Cameron]

Wow reading all this got me worried,
I got a Sol Ark , and I am thinking of which decently priced battery I want to put on it.
Had EG4 and Midnite powerflo in mind. Now I have to put Pytes in the mix

Don't use eg4 if you want to be able to monitor batteries. If you use the comms cable and something goes wrong with the SolArk, they will blame it on your hook up, which they can see. That's not speculation, they told me not to use the cable at all, and Eg4 is not listed as an approved battery on the SolArk site... ( Even though there are setting on the battery for SolArk and on the SolArk for EG4... Crazy but true. Our 15K did not work well with matching the settings. They had us switch to lead acid setting, even though we were using 48/100 eg4 LLs. it did stick closer to the actual battery usage, but was not reliable for knowing when to auto recharge from gen line and still let batteries discharge too far.

 

[Mahendra Gomanie]

Well that is exactly what I am trying to avoid.
I would be going with Dyness .
I am currently waiting on shipping.
Price was good

 

[Michele Cameron]

That's a huge wall of text. Questions:

1. So you ended paying $360 to swap out, that included shipping?
2. What brand Manual Transfer switch did you end up getting, I know reliance stopped making their 3 pole version about a year ago.
3. Why didn't you just go with open loop? Seems the Sol-Ark would have worked just fine, you just would need something else to monitor your batteries.

1. No $360 was shipping only... Sent it via fedex business regular freight this morning. We paid full price for the EG 4 18 K a few weeks ago. It came pretty quick. My guy then took out the SolArk and we packed it back in the box and crate that mercifully, we had saved... When Signature Solar receives the SolArk and makes sure it functions fine, they will refund all but $1000 of the price for the EG4 18K. So yes, we lost about $3360, but that is better than continuing the struggle. According to numerous SolArk techs, we were told not to use the comms cable period!
2. It's a commercial super large heavy duty 400 Amp, modified for our 200 Amps, way overkill, but cheap at $750 (incl tax) compared to everything else we found new. It is a Cutler-Hammer, made in USA.
3. Open loop didn't work. The S.A. did not read the bank accurately and so the recharge parameters did not work. S.A would read bank at 35% for instance and we would have some batteries as low as 10% and a few at 23% for instance..... And we had done a full 8 cycles of full charge to discharge & recharge at 20% already to break in the batteries. The S.A. was most accurate when set to read voltage, but then there was no way to set an accurate recharge parameters with Voltage either. The EG4 battery control center is not compatible with the LL's . Never knew of other way to monitor. We like the set up now. Just need to do another update tomorrow to fix a display screen issue. The phone AP and online monitor site work perfectly.

 

[Michele Cameron]

Sorry, this was repeat, couldn't find delete, so I erased

 

[Michele Cameron]

Sorry, this was repeat, couldn't find delete, so I erased

 

[ericfx1984]

We're trying to support our customers, and solar users, as best we can Solar for everyone.. Warrantied, solar for everyone. This is a Signature Solar program, you wouldn't be able to get this through another vendor or EG4 directly, so if anyone has any questions, make sure you reach out to us directly!

I like this... But to be honest I think the only thing that has a warranty in my solar setup is the really sweet bus bars I bought from signature Solar

Everything else is either renewed, refurbished, second hand

And other than that everything is just Chinese and the warranty is not worth the paper airplane you can make out of it

 

[CaliSunHarvester]

What will SS do with all those used SolArks that people have mailed in?
They could sell them for $1000 to those bricked Deye owners.

 

[robby]

What will SS do with all those used SolArks that people have mailed in?
They could sell them for $1000 to those bricked Deye owners.

 

[robby]

 

[miran90]

No idea what the SA rep meant when he said "registry". Could be any logging data.
But I can very well see how the BMS in the EG4 wallmount bats' default settings could conflict with most inverter settings.

At the extreme, but still within reality, the BMS could let the cells get to (true) 3.99V and 2.185V and/or total pack voltage at 43V-63V before bms would cut off. (3.8V or 60V * 1.05%.) . The one thing I don't see is at what Voltage will the bms start balancing. I'm assuming its near 3.45V, I really don't know.... anyone???

In an extremely unbalanced state a single cell could get to 3.8V and the low one could be <3.0V.

For a user to not intimately be aware of individual cell V, this could be a recipe for disaster. Frankly, I do not trust SOC nor total V readings w/o cell level V data. Imagine, 4 Packs running at near max power, and 2 packs cut off suddenly due to bms shutdown for inaccurate SOC/V total.

DC amps double, remaining packs may not deliver and shuts down, inverter needs to switch to AC to supplement, those relays are making full power connections. imaginethat cycle of on/off as resting Voltage recovers.

This is just a simple example I can think of off the top.

From my experience passive balancers balance at least 6 cells at the same time so 120ma times 6 =720ma. Active balanced jkbms us 2 Amp but it can only either charge or discharge a cell at 2a so real current is 1a and only for one cell.

 

[bigfather99]

Well that is exactly what I am trying to avoid.
I would be going with Dyness .
I am currently waiting on shipping.
Price was good

May i know who/where you bought it?

 

[shadowmaker]

From my experience passive balancers balance at least 6 cells at the same time so 120ma times 6 =720ma. Active balanced jkbms us 2 Amp but it can only either charge or discharge a cell at 2a so real current is 1a and only for one cell.

My premade batts have 30-60mA passive balancer (according to manual), balancing only 4 cells at the time. I have opened few which had terrible top balance from factory and installed Neey 4A active balancer harness (15e/60min) to them. Even active balancer is just dealing with one cell at the time deltaV gets down pretty fast as it transfers power from high cell to low cell. After nice top balance I disconnect Neey from the harness (so only one ~85e balancer unit is needed) as then passive balancer is usually beefy enough to keep top balance.

If one cell is low passive balancer needs to burn extra energy from15 cells while active balancer deals with it immediately.

 

[Michele Cameron]

I was questioning why open loop wasn't used as well. KISS

hmmm, quick answer, Sol Ark could not auto recharge the batteries before they run down below the 20% suggested setting because it can not read them accurately with open loop. Eyes on monitoring of battery bank was needed. Ap was not accurate as it gets data from S.A.

 

[Michele Cameron]

So why not just come out and say it.

"If you have a Sol-Ark 15k that Sol-Ark refuses to warranty, we will take it off your hands and give you $1000 toward the purchase of a EG4 18kPV"

At that point, we can discuss how prevalent this refusal to warranty is. Sol-Ark's refusal to warranty is not a know problem on here.

actually, no, Sig Sol refunds the cost of the EG -4 except for $1000.

 

[Michele Cameron]

We are continually working to improve our monitoring services, and I will ensure that your feedback is shared with our software development team. Regarding battery compatibility, we provide a list of compatible batteries, along with their associated lithium brands, on our website. This list is updated as new batteries are tested and can be found on each inverter’s product page.

Here’s the link for your reference:
EG4 12kPV Battery Compatibility List

There are EG-4 settings in the SolArk and SolArk settings in the EG-4 batteries. SolArk was the problem. They said we can not use the closed loop or we would invalidad the SolArk's warranty if any problem comes up with SolArk. This was stated after a year or so of them saying they were working with EG-4 and expected to have the closed loop working eventually.

 

[Michele Cameron]

Ahh i read it as $1000 off, you are correct.

Still, to give up a working $7000 unit and pay another $1000 to get a inverter worth $4900. It just doesn't pencil out. Customer ends up $8k invested and his Solark didn't fail in the first place.

Maybe if they took failed Solark 15Ks in on this program it would make sense

Might not pencil out, but having the SolArk ruin our batteries if we don't watch them constantly and tell it when to recharge is no way to live.

 

[Michele Cameron]

I'm sorry, reading that again, I mistyped and put SOK Support. I meant to say the Sol-Ark has never once said anything about them voiding my warrantyy

You should ask them directly if you are using the EG-4 batteries with the comms cord. I spoke with both SolArk and Shop Solar and got the same answer,

 

[Michele Cameron]

I see there is quite a bit of piling on here. But my 2c if anyone cares. I would not trade my 15k for an 18k "pv". I believe the EG4 product has a smaller continuous inverter, so its a bit odd to call it an "upgrade" program. But to each their own.

Personally, I wouldn't trade a 15k for two 18kpvs.

Even if you could not monitor the batteries without eyes on? Even if the SolArk is set to recharge batteries at 20%, but reads 35% when batteries are already below the safe recharge %, say at 15% like mine were?

 

[Michele Cameron]

How about a good story? Sol-Ark support took a while, and it wasn't exactly "smooth", but in the end, they upgraded me to a free 15k all because my 12k was getting hot, but still functioning as it should, I just wasnt perfectly happy with the unit.

This, at the time, was also when I only had DIY/Seplos batteries in closed loop. They never said a word about them voiding a warranty.

Post in thread 'Final steps of home install.' https://diysolarforum.com/threads/final-steps-of-home-install.39584/post-876228

If your batteries are not on the SolArk approved battery list, you may run into warranty difficulty if inverter fails. Also, in many cases, some techs just don't have all the company policies down, but I'm not particularly stupid and I checked with numerous techs and sales people about it.

 

[GRMRC]

You should ask them directly if you are using the EG-4 batteries with the comms cord. I spoke with both SolArk and Shop Solar and got the same answer,

Might not pencil out, but having the SolArk ruin our batteries if we don't watch them constantly and tell it when to recharge is no way to live.

Just an observation. This “circular firing squad” wrt these HF inverters and open loop battery issues is sad. I have no issues with closed loop SOC but I chose a LF solution generating some peoples “old school” comments. When it comes to reliable solar, bleeding edge is a tough place to be. Signature below has the LF details

 

[Michele Cameron]

you'll be fine with EG4 batteries

So houses of ancients obvioulsly has not inquired of SolArk about warranty voiding if EG-4 batteries are used... and in spite of direct guidance from the SolArk Techs and Engineers, my master electrician was never able to get the batteries and inverter communicating well enough to charge within the set parameters... Ok, I am just stating facts, that I absolutely know, because we have experienced 1.5 years of trying to get this right and could not... but houseofancients probably knows best... maybe he can advise you instead of SolArk tech support or EG-4. #thestrugglewasreal#

 

[robby]

You should ask them directly if you are using the EG-4 batteries with the comms cord. I spoke with both SolArk and Shop Solar and got the same answer,

Michele Sol-Ark already replied in the EG4 James Thread and said it was a Lie, Warranties are not effected.
They still warranty the Inverters no matter what batteries you connect but they will not help you diagnose issues with closed loop systems unless the Batteries come from one of their approved vendors.

There is nothing new about this! From as long as three years ago Sol-Ark was working with battery partners to ensure that the comm code in the BMS was fully compatible with Firmware in their Inverters.

 

[houseofancients]

So houses of ancients obvioulsly has not inquired of SolArk about warranty voiding if EG-4 batteries are used... and in spite of direct guidance from the SolArk Techs and Engineers, my master electrician was never able to get the batteries and inverter communicating well enough to charge within the set parameters... Ok, I am just stating facts, that I absolutely know, because we have experienced 1.5 years of trying to get this right and could not... but houseofancients probably knows best... maybe he can advise you instead of SolArk tech support or EG-4. #thestrugglewasreal#

1 spell my name correct
2 use the standard pylontech protocol and set your battery/BMS parameter correct and you'll be fine
3 seems you might need to find a new "master electrician"
4 ask Eg4 to provide you the management software for your BMS as it should come with you battery

Tell both sol-ark and Eg4 to grow up

 

[SparkyJJO]

Tell both sol-ark and Eg4 to grow up

Pure gold.

 

[42OhmsPA]

hmmm, quick answer, Sol Ark could not auto recharge the batteries before they run down below the 20% suggested setting because it can not read them accurately with open loop. Eyes on monitoring of battery bank was needed. Ap was not accurate as it gets data from S.A.

It can't run off voltage setpoints?
The SOC is only as accurate as the BMS...