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diy solar

Growatt 12k smoked and broken

macdad22

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Joined
Apr 11, 2021
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I installed and have been running a Growatt 12k as a ( most of the house ) battery backup system for a little over a year. My home has dual 200 amp panels and I converted one of the panels to be a critical load panel. I have about 29kwh of lifepo4 ( 2 x 16s ) batteries attached in parallel to the Growatt. The off grid inverter has worked flawlessly during this time. We have had multiple short duration power outage and the growatt has kicked in every time without fail truly less than 10ms, and one long duration outage when a transformer down the street blew up at the beginning of summer and we where without power for a little over 24 hours, unfortunately we run out battery backup.

Yesterday, the power went out in the house to all the devices wired into the critical load panel, however i could we still had power because I could hear the A/C running and the dryer still operating ( both are on the other panel ). I hurried out the garage and could hear a loud alarm sound coming from the Growatt, error code 4 was on the screen. My initial was that it was restarting for some reason but by the time I had reached it I heard a pop and could see a small fire inside the unit.. I of course immediately hit the power button to off, disconnected the batteries, and the unit powered down a handful of seconds later.

I didn't pay close attention but i had noticed the charger cycling on the batteries the day before. I had programed the Growatt to constant charge at 56V and float at 54.2V. Post mortem both batteries seemed fine, but the BMS was showing on both batteries one cell that was close to cutoff.

My best guess is the charger malfunctioned or both batteries BMS's disconnected and caused some type of energy build up. A bit scary frankly, but now I'm wondering do I stay with growatt or upgrade to a solark 15k??

Cheers,

Chris
 
Sorry to hear, try warranty claim if you can. if not next time buy Sunny island with 10 year warranty (stronger from any chinese 20 kw device)

or victron energy. i read some problem also with solar ark..
but my sugestion from hart to you and everbody. buy Shelly EM https://shopusa.shelly.cloud/shelly-em-50a-clamp-wifi-smart-home-automation#202 measure how you spend electric and pick your inverter

I'm not rich enough to buy cheap things”. Keep that in mind when deciding between blending into the crowd or standing out of it.
 
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