Growatt - Odd behavior

[shopman]

Shopman, Octal_IP and others: Thank you for the thoughtful responses. It is members like you which take the time to respond that make this forum great.

Agree that very small changes in the settings 19, 20 make a big difference, and until I added battery capacity I had found settings that worked reliably for me. It appears that the added battery capacity has changed the voltage curve for my system and now my battery voltage remains higher than the float voltage after absorption charging and disconnects from solar until the voltage drops to approx. 52.5V which can be a long time with my loads and larger LiFePO4 battery bank . I also am conservative in my settings and do not want to push voltage settings higher than 55V so may be screwed, but will see.

Hard to believe that Growatt is not aware of this and has not addressed this issue via a firmware update. Perhaps they have but I have not been able to find any info on what updates are available and what issues they fix.

@shopman; you suggested I'd contact Growatt USA directly. Can you provide the contact email you used. I tried in the past but never got a response.

Thanks

We're all here to help each other(well most of us are). I always get an email response from usaservice@ginverter.com. Check your spam/junk folder if you don't see a reply as sometimes their emails get flagged. You can also call them directly at 866-686-0298.

 

[apctjb]

@shopman; thanks for the Growatt contact info. They did respond this time!

 

[ABio]

Thank you so much Debron55. The USE option worked for me as well.
Now am trying to connect y PC to the inverter using PVKeeper with little success so far, can you assist?

 

[ABio]

the error i am getting is "COM open fail".

 

[ABio]

Got it connected on COM3 now but not displaying any info yet....patience?

 

[Olasitu]

Hello all .... Would like to revisit the USE vs USR2

I have 2 Growatt 5000 ES installed in Parallel with 2 x Blue Carbon 48V 200Ah Lithium Battery Pack For Solar Home System. PVs are Mono 10 x 550W. 5 panels each in series to each Inverter. Priority is set to Solar, Utility and Battery.

I replaced my AC In breaker last night and rebooted the system. I now see that my Inverters are now charging via Solar ONLY and not pulling power from the Grid even though setting 14 is set to SNU. I am using USE. I am forcing utility charging by shutting down the PVs. My preference is to have Solar and Grid charge together to achieve faster Bulk Charge. This was working well until this morning. This is the exact opposite of the issue normally encountered i.e. discharging batteries while there is surplus PV supply. I would really appreciate any ideas.

As you can see from the screenshot. There is both Grid and Solar yet there is no charging despite Battery voltage at 52.6.

My settings are as follows all other parameters are default for 5000 ES.

1 Output source priority: To configure load power source priority– SUB

2 Maximum charging current: – 80A

5 Battery type – USE not USE2

11 Maximum utility charging current – 30A

14 Charger source priority: To configure charger source priority– SNU

19 C.V. charging voltage. – 56.4V

20 Floating charging voltage – 54V

21 – Low DC cut-off voltage 42V

 

[Rho]

Hello all .... Would like to revisit the USE vs USR2

I have 2 Growatt 5000 ES installed in Parallel with 2 x Blue Carbon 48V 200Ah Lithium Battery Pack For Solar Home System. PVs are Mono 10 x 550W. 5 panels each in series to each Inverter. Priority is set to Solar, Utility and Battery.

I replaced my AC In breaker last night and rebooted the system. I now see that my Inverters are now charging via Solar ONLY and not pulling power from the Grid even though setting 14 is set to SNU. I am using USE. I am forcing utility charging by shutting down the PVs. My preference is to have Solar and Grid charge together to achieve faster Bulk Charge. This was working well until this morning. This is the exact opposite of the issue normally encountered i.e. discharging batteries while there is surplus PV supply. I would really appreciate any ideas.

As you can see from the screenshot. There is both Grid and Solar yet there is no charging despite Battery voltage at 52.6.

My settings are as follows all other parameters are default for 5000 ES.

1 Output source priority: To configure load power source priority– SUB

2 Maximum charging current: – 80A

5 Battery type – USE not USE2

11 Maximum utility charging current – 30A

14 Charger source priority: To configure charger source priority– SNU

19 C.V. charging voltage. – 56.4V

20 Floating charging voltage – 54V

21 – Low DC cut-off voltage 42V

Try setting 19 and 20 closer together maybe 56.4 and 56
Then I use 21 at 46

 

[herb007]

Thanks to anyone that can provide some input. I have a Growatt 24v SPF 3000TL LVM in service. I built 2 24 v batteries from CALB 100AH cells and 24v overkillsolar bms. I have a single critical circuit in my home I am wanting to power from this unit. (Computers, WIFI etc.) I also have 4 renogy 320 Watt panels 2p2s. I top balanced the cells and batteries as per will's video. I monitor the BMS' using an apple IPAD. I have the relevant parameters on the Growatt set as follows:
Option: 19 (CV) - 27.3, 20 (Float) - 27.3 21 (Batt Undervoltage) 22.9

here is a video of the BMS on the ipad and the screen of the growatt. There is also a renogy guage on the unit - ignore the AH 100%. I have yet to actually set it up with full and empty settings but the power and volt measurement is accurate. Just the AH guage part is not dialed in

here is the relevent entries from the pvmonitor program from ian.
View attachment 48943


Here's the issue... early in the morning the the sun comes up and 80% of the time the charger starts creeping up naturally. But twice now I have came out at 9 am ish or so and no solar charging going on... if I reboot the growatt it powers up and will quickly start charging the batteries and powering the load. It continues powering and charging through the day... then about 1 pm generally the unit stops charging the batteries (IE it reaches the CV amount) and the solar charge controller seems to full on stop. The load is transferred to the batteries. Though there is many hours of sunlight left the unit does not use that solar power at all. I can see the line from the panels disappear and the amps and watts go to zero. IF I manually power cycle the unit it will power on and start charging the batteries and carry the load again for a while.

The video shows this happening at 30 second into the short video. You can see from the growatt screen that the battery voltage the unit sees has hit 27.3. at that moment the unit stops using solar power for anything. My understanding is that it should continue to use solar to power the load until solar alone was not sufficient and that it would then augment the solar with battery power... but it appears that the solar just gets completely dropped...

I can provide additional detail if needed... thoughts? ideas? hints or tips?

thank you for asking the questions and sticking to it when people were telling you "that is how it should work". I have been having the same problem for 8 months and was having to reset every time 100% charge once a month. It has been only a day but system fully charged and now it seems to work.

 

[istl]

Ok, I'm in the Odd Behavior Club too!

I've been using this 48V LFP powered SPF 3000ES for over a year now, primarily as a portable, job-site power source. It works great! Use it all day, plug it in at night and it's ready to go again.

Recently plugged a 5S/2P, 3kW solar array in to charge and that's where things got odd. It acts like it charges with whatever it can get from the panels and does not respect either current or voltage limits!

I saw 45A and 57V before the BMS said, "Whoah!"

Tried a variety of different settings, but these are the basics:

01    SBU        Battery Priority
02    25         Maximum Charging Current
05    USE        Battery Type
08    120        Output Voltage
09    60         Output Frequency
10    4          Number of series batteries
11    20         Utility charging current
14    CSO        Solar charge priority
19    56.4       CV Charging Voltage
20    53.4       Float Charging Voltage
21    45.9       Low DC Cut-Off Voltage
43    dIS        Battery equalization
49    0000       Utility charging time

Watching it when it begins charging, the current wavers a bit around the 25A limit and then climbs to what seems like the maximum that the panels can produce. When over charging, #18 error is shown in the lower right of the display "Buck over current"

Original, as purchased firmware:

051 01 A28
052 01 A30

 

[Mattb4]

Setting #10 at 4 series batteries. What exactly is the Operators manual description for this setting?

 

[istl]

Setting #10 at 4 series batteries. What exactly is the Operators manual description for this setting?

"Number of series batteries connected" Helpful huh?
I think 4 is the max and assume it's for 12V batteries.

 

[Mattb4]

"Number of series batteries connected" Helpful huh?
I think 4 is the max and assume it's for 12V batteries.

It does not sound correct. Most of these have a number of series cells connected such as 16 for a 48v though you also see 15 or other arrangements.

 

[istl]

Yep, this is 16S LFP.

Just checked and the number seems to be hard coded as trying to change it advances to the next setting.

 

[istl]

Funny thing. . . typing this out seems to have triggered my memory.

During commissioning of this thing, which was under a major time crunch and extremely rushed, there was a magic smoke moment. Doh! 2 IGBTs and a gate driver resistor later and I thought everything was 100% I wonder if some portion of the PV charge circuit might have been affected and I'm just now finding out.

So, this might be self inflicted and I've got some hardware troubleshooting to do.

 

[Mattb4]

Funny thing. . . typing this out seems to have triggered my memory.

During commissioning of this thing, which was under a major time crunch and extremely rushed, there was a magic smoke moment. Doh! 2 IGBTs and a gate driver resistor later and I thought everything was 100% I wonder if some portion of the PV charge circuit might have been affected and I'm just now finding out.

So, this might be self inflicted and I've got some hardware troubleshooting to do.

Thanks for the information. I had nothing else to offer.

 

[istl]

Sorry, thanks for looking!

 

[istl]

Funny thing. . . typing this out seems to have triggered my memory.

During commissioning of this thing, which was under a major time crunch and extremely rushed, there was a magic smoke moment. Doh! 2 IGBTs and a gate driver resistor later and I thought everything was 100% I wonder if some portion of the PV charge circuit might have been affected and I'm just now finding out.

So, this might be self inflicted and I've got some hardware troubleshooting to do.

Following up:

Replacing smoked Q69 IGBT PN# STGW80H65DFB and R264 47R0 1206 pkg. seems to have fixed the charging issues. Not sure of cause. . . delayed failure from previous abuse?