Hi all.
New to this forum, looking for help.
Some background:
I live 100% off grid in Australia.
I used to run a lead acid/ mpp solar system which did well, until it recently died in a very weird way (but that's another story) and found myself in the situation where I needed to install a Growatt 12kw system with a maxxcell 10kw lithium battery in a hurry.
Unfortunately a falling tree wiped out all but 3 of my panels and I can't get more for a few weeks, so I've been existing on 3 panels and generator backup, and herein lies the problem - the Growatt inverter refuses to charge the battery off the generator until the voltage drops to what ever it's defined in program 12 and the panels aren't enough to charge the battery to any great extent (it's winter here too). This might be fine for someone with a grid connection but for someone off grid this is absurd to the point that it makes the inverter almost useless. Frankly, when I turn my generator on, I want the damn battery charged no matter what the voltage in the battery is (obviously up to a point of course).
Seriously - this is a major flaw in the design of this inverter since there seems to be no way to turn this 'feature' off.
Has anyone found a firmware hack to kill this nonsense?
Would it be possible to use a stepdown transformer, a bridge rectifier and a large capacitor to take the 240v AC from the generator, turn it into 120VDC and simply jam it into the solar input? (apparently the solar inputs aren't hobbled in this stupid way like the grid input is)
I'm tearing my hair out over this because a system that cost close to $10K can't run a fridge overnight.
New to this forum, looking for help.
Some background:
I live 100% off grid in Australia.
I used to run a lead acid/ mpp solar system which did well, until it recently died in a very weird way (but that's another story) and found myself in the situation where I needed to install a Growatt 12kw system with a maxxcell 10kw lithium battery in a hurry.
Unfortunately a falling tree wiped out all but 3 of my panels and I can't get more for a few weeks, so I've been existing on 3 panels and generator backup, and herein lies the problem - the Growatt inverter refuses to charge the battery off the generator until the voltage drops to what ever it's defined in program 12 and the panels aren't enough to charge the battery to any great extent (it's winter here too). This might be fine for someone with a grid connection but for someone off grid this is absurd to the point that it makes the inverter almost useless. Frankly, when I turn my generator on, I want the damn battery charged no matter what the voltage in the battery is (obviously up to a point of course).
Seriously - this is a major flaw in the design of this inverter since there seems to be no way to turn this 'feature' off.
Has anyone found a firmware hack to kill this nonsense?
Would it be possible to use a stepdown transformer, a bridge rectifier and a large capacitor to take the 240v AC from the generator, turn it into 120VDC and simply jam it into the solar input? (apparently the solar inputs aren't hobbled in this stupid way like the grid input is)
I'm tearing my hair out over this because a system that cost close to $10K can't run a fridge overnight.