brainwashed
New Member
I have replaced my old Voltronix-based inverter with a Deye one, mainly because the "old" one had a severe failure after six months. I need this to be a reliable component that should last 10 years.
Cost: Deye is about 40% more expensive.
Size/weight: Deye is almost double the weight and height.
Noise/heat: Deye is almost silent except the coil whine. The old one was noisy most of the time and very noisy during peaks of generation or consumption, with the fans ramping up aggresively. At least some of the flow was going on the battery bank, cooling it. It was placed in the attic and could be heard from outside or the patio.
Efficiency: Both draw about 70W at idle. The old one started generating power at about 7am until 7pm. Deye starts almost as soon as there is any light and stops when it's almost dark, so about 6am to 9pm. Although the installed PV panels are rated at about 3200W maximum, the maximum sustained production for the old inverter was about 2800W, with peaks of a few minutes at 3150W when the sun came from behind clouds. I haven't had a full sunny day with Deye but it looks about the same or slightly better. The MPPT on the old one seemed much worse at handling overcast.
Build quality: Deye is clearly designed for outdoors with a lot of weatherproofing. The old one is indoors-only. The connectors on Deye are slightly higher quality but both do their job equally well as analyzed with a thermal camera.
Extras: You get some chokes (ferrite cores) with Deye for smoothing battery leads and BMS transients. You also get 2 pairs of MC4 connectors, a mounting plate with concrete studs, a current transformer for monitoring the grid and a thermal probe for the battery. Both inverters came with WiFi modules and RS485 cables.
Menu: the old one uses basic input interface with two buttons and some codes. You have to click 100 times to lower the float voltage by 0.1V for example and you should always keep the printed pages nearby to know what the codes mean. The new one has a graphical menu with touchscreen.
Settings: I would say the old one was a bit more intuitive, the new one has a ton of features and it's easy to get lost into them. You are able though to control almost every aspect, something that was not possible with the old one.
Battery integration: I would say they are about equal but I used them without any BMS integration, just by voltage control. Deye has more features which might prove useful, like controlling how power gets distributed according to a time-of-day schedule. Neither system has native support for JK-BMS.
Grid-tie: the old one could not handle both a battery and grid injection. Deye can, but it is a bit of hassle to set up for your specific scenario.
Online menu: both offer their own apps, Solarpower is simpler but also easier to use. Solarman has a ton more features but accessing some settings requires patience and many taps. There was a bug in Solarpower that they've since fixed, where you could not set numbers (e.g. float voltage).
Home Assistant integration: for the old one I had to modify/fix an ESPHome component and upload it to a NodeMCU board and connect it to the RS232 port. For the new one, I only had to install a HACS component and use the default setup. It presents the data in a very nice way including grid injection/consumption. The data updates are much rarer though, about once per 30s where the old one defaulted at once per second. For the old one I had to set up some integrating sensors to present data to the energy dashboard.
For me there is a clear winner, for others the price might win. Just having power for more hours of a day is enough of a win for me. Fine-grained grid control is also nice to have since now I have a justification to prepare the documentation for becoming a grid "producer". I cannot comment on reliability based on just one case.
Cost: Deye is about 40% more expensive.
Size/weight: Deye is almost double the weight and height.
Noise/heat: Deye is almost silent except the coil whine. The old one was noisy most of the time and very noisy during peaks of generation or consumption, with the fans ramping up aggresively. At least some of the flow was going on the battery bank, cooling it. It was placed in the attic and could be heard from outside or the patio.
Efficiency: Both draw about 70W at idle. The old one started generating power at about 7am until 7pm. Deye starts almost as soon as there is any light and stops when it's almost dark, so about 6am to 9pm. Although the installed PV panels are rated at about 3200W maximum, the maximum sustained production for the old inverter was about 2800W, with peaks of a few minutes at 3150W when the sun came from behind clouds. I haven't had a full sunny day with Deye but it looks about the same or slightly better. The MPPT on the old one seemed much worse at handling overcast.
Build quality: Deye is clearly designed for outdoors with a lot of weatherproofing. The old one is indoors-only. The connectors on Deye are slightly higher quality but both do their job equally well as analyzed with a thermal camera.
Extras: You get some chokes (ferrite cores) with Deye for smoothing battery leads and BMS transients. You also get 2 pairs of MC4 connectors, a mounting plate with concrete studs, a current transformer for monitoring the grid and a thermal probe for the battery. Both inverters came with WiFi modules and RS485 cables.
Menu: the old one uses basic input interface with two buttons and some codes. You have to click 100 times to lower the float voltage by 0.1V for example and you should always keep the printed pages nearby to know what the codes mean. The new one has a graphical menu with touchscreen.
Settings: I would say the old one was a bit more intuitive, the new one has a ton of features and it's easy to get lost into them. You are able though to control almost every aspect, something that was not possible with the old one.
Battery integration: I would say they are about equal but I used them without any BMS integration, just by voltage control. Deye has more features which might prove useful, like controlling how power gets distributed according to a time-of-day schedule. Neither system has native support for JK-BMS.
Grid-tie: the old one could not handle both a battery and grid injection. Deye can, but it is a bit of hassle to set up for your specific scenario.
Online menu: both offer their own apps, Solarpower is simpler but also easier to use. Solarman has a ton more features but accessing some settings requires patience and many taps. There was a bug in Solarpower that they've since fixed, where you could not set numbers (e.g. float voltage).
Home Assistant integration: for the old one I had to modify/fix an ESPHome component and upload it to a NodeMCU board and connect it to the RS232 port. For the new one, I only had to install a HACS component and use the default setup. It presents the data in a very nice way including grid injection/consumption. The data updates are much rarer though, about once per 30s where the old one defaulted at once per second. For the old one I had to set up some integrating sensors to present data to the energy dashboard.
For me there is a clear winner, for others the price might win. Just having power for more hours of a day is enough of a win for me. Fine-grained grid control is also nice to have since now I have a justification to prepare the documentation for becoming a grid "producer". I cannot comment on reliability based on just one case.