Jackery 5000 Plus High PV Issues

[Jsweeney000]

Looking to see if anyone out there is running a decent sized array with their jackery 5000 plus successfully on the high pv inputs. Current setup is a 3.2kw array (all panels in series) with a single jackery 5000 and one expansion battery. Powering 6 circuits via an existing manual transfer switch i've used for years with a gas generator during grid outages. Desired outcome is a partial offgrid setup where those 6 circuits run permanently off solar/battery. I'm close to getting this dialed in but have one major issue with the jackery.

Issue - Whenever the high pv inputs start to detect voltage or start to not detect voltage (early am or evening), the jackery will throw an F6 and shut down the AC inverter. To get around it i have to recycle the unit (flip the high pv disconnect, power off, power on, flip the high pv disconnect back on). In most cases the high pv inputs will start working and it's fine for the day. Supplying power for the load with no problem and charging via the high pv input. Then at dusk, right when the unit decides there is not enough voltage to use the high pv inputs it will shut down the AC inverter and interestingly not throw an F6 error. Then i just re-enable the AC inverter and it's good for the night. Major problem obviously, can't keep doing this.

I've checked voltage from the array during these times and it's always within spec, normally 240-250 volts. I do have an escalated case with jackery and it's been sent back to another team, waiting to hear from them. Anyone have any suggestions on what i can do or check in the meantime? Oh worth mentioning, a week ago i had just 4 panels wired in parallel/series using the low pv input and i did not have this problem at all. Seems to be specific to the high pv inputs.

 

[jeeptj12]

What type/model of panels?

Looking to see if anyone out there is running a decent sized array with their jackery 5000 plus successfully on the high pv inputs. Current setup is a 3.2kw array (all panels in series) with a single jackery 5000 and one expansion battery. Powering 6 circuits via an existing manual transfer switch i've used for years with a gas generator during grid outages. Desired outcome is a partial offgrid setup where those 6 circuits run permanently off solar/battery. I'm close to getting this dialed in but have one major issue with the jackery.

Issue - Whenever the high pv inputs start to detect voltage or start to not detect voltage (early am or evening), the jackery will throw an F6 and shut down the AC inverter. To get around it i have to recycle the unit (flip the high pv disconnect, power off, power on, flip the high pv disconnect back on). In most cases the high pv inputs will start working and it's fine for the day. Supplying power for the load with no problem and charging via the high pv input. Then at dusk, right when the unit decides there is not enough voltage to use the high pv inputs it will shut down the AC inverter and interestingly not throw an F6 error. Then i just re-enable the AC inverter and it's good for the night. Major problem obviously, can't keep doing this.

I've checked voltage from the array during these times and it's always within spec, normally 240-250 volts. I do have an escalated case with jackery and it's been sent back to another team, waiting to hear from them. Anyone have any suggestions on what i can do or check in the meantime? Oh worth mentioning, a week ago i had just 4 panels wired in parallel/series using the low pv input and i did not have this problem at all. Seems to be specific to the high pv inputs.

What type/model of panels?

Spec of Jackery High PV=135V-450V⎓15A Max, Max 4000W.

 

[Jsweeney000]

2 different panels being used -
4 195w Eco Worthy, Voc=24.5V, Imp=9.65A
11 200w Newpowa, Voc=21.8, Imp=10.75

Sorry i had said it was a 3.2kw array, it's actually 2980w (i have a couple more panels on the way). I know there is some inefficiency with the mixed panels but i'm fine with that for now. The Newpowa's are used, were a year old and hooked up to a friends Bluetti. The Eco Worthy's are brand new. This is all well within the spec though.

 

[jeeptj12]

If you take the ecoworthy out does it have any problems?

What climate are you in?

 

[Jsweeney000]

If you take the ecoworthy out does it have any problems?

What climate are you in?

I haven’t tried taking the eco worthy’s out but I will try that today. Worth a shot. Florida, temp at night hasn’t seemed to matter. We’ve had nights in the 40s and nights in the 60s this week and same result.

 

[jeeptj12]

I’d test your panels too. I have eco-worthy panels and a few came with irregular voltage. I sent them back.

 

[Gaijin2]

Just as a random thought, I was notified that Jackery has a firmware update available for the 5000 Plus. Might want to try applying that in case it's a known bug they've already fixed?

 

[Jsweeney000]

I’d test your panels too. I have eco-worthy panels and a few came with irregular voltage. I sent them back.

Yeah, next step i think is to test each one. I have thoroughly tested the eco-worthy's though. i had them wired up to the low pv input for a solid week with no issues and i tested them to make sure i wasn't exceeding the voltage limit. before that i had them wired up to a jackery 2000 v2 and no issues there either. I should test the rest of the panels though.

 

[Jsweeney000]

Just as a random thought, I was notified that Jackery has a firmware update available for the 5000 Plus. Might want to try applying that in case it's a known bug they've already fixed?

this is what i'm hoping for. it's their first time with high voltage pv inputs so logically if there were going to be issues with this unit it would make sense. i've been checking for a firmware update every day but nothing yet, says i'm up to date. i did hear from support again today, they just said it was escalated again and i would hear more tomorrow.

 

[Gaijin2]

Okay, interesting, maybe yours is newer than mine and already had the latest firmware installed. For reference, here is what they sent me on 12/25/2024:

We would like to inform you that, due to some bugs in the current system, you may have encountered some issues while using your Explorer 5000 Plus and Smart Transfer Switch. To resolve these issues, we recommend upgrading the system by following the steps below:
1.Open the Jackery App and tap on Settings.
2.Tap on Firmware Upgrade.
3.Select Update now and wait for the update to complete.

Please keep in mind the following precautions during the upgrade process:
1.Ensure your Wi-Fi connection is stable.
2.Make sure the battery level of your Explorer 5000 Plus is at least 10%.
We appreciate your understanding and patience as we work to improve your experience. If you encounter any difficulties or have further questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our customer support team.
Thank you for choosing Jackery!
Best Regards
Team Jackery

 

[Jsweeney000]

Okay, interesting, maybe yours is newer than mine and already had the latest firmware installed. For reference, here is what they sent me on 12/25/2024:

Hmm, my firmware version says 1.0 as the latest. You would think it would be 1.1 or 1.0.1 or something. Are you using the high pv inputs or soley as a backup solution with the smart transfer switch? Assuming this gets fixed i'm considering the smart transfer switch in a couple months, i would definitely benefit from the peak shaving features and interest to know your opinion on the switch.

 

[Gaijin2]

Hmm, my firmware version says 1.0 as the latest. You would think it would be 1.1 or 1.0.1 or something. Are you using the high pv inputs or soley as a backup solution with the smart transfer switch? Assuming this gets fixed i'm considering the smart transfer switch in a couple months, i would definitely benefit from the peak shaving features and interest to know your opinion on the switch.

I've got the STS sitting in a box, with all the wires and cables and conduits and everything ready to install, but I'm waiting on my AHJ to approve the permit to install it, so right now I can just look at it and research about it, but can't connect it to the STS yet.

 

[Jsweeney000]

If anyone else is interested . . . after quite a bit of testing i have been doing on my own, this has nothing to do with startup voltage when the array starts producing. It's just the jackery has an issue when it tries to activate the high pv inputs regardless of voltage, and again when it decides to disable the high pv inputs. I've tested at all different time of the day, voltage levels, etc and it happens every time it tries to enable or disable the high pv inputs. Not sure if this is a defective unit or it's a firmware problem. Jackery has been getting back to me every couple days but no real progress yet.

Is anyone else successfully using the high pv inputs on their jackery 5000 plus yet? This is very specific to the high pv inputs, i wired up the low pv inputs to a different array and no issues at all.

 

[Jsweeney000]

@Gaijin2 Looks like jackery is fixing bugs and creating new firmware versions but only making them available to the customers that need them right now. I suspect they have quite a few issues with this new unit and the smart transfer switch. They did push a firmware update out to me but unfortunately no resolution. The high pv inputs simply don't work properly, i have tested several scenarios at varying voltage levels/panel configurations, all within spec and it will throw an F6 every single time, restart the unit and the high pv inputs start working. My issue is back with their engineering department again. Still hoping they can fix this but losing confidence.

 

[Gaijin2]

Understood. Best of luck with it, I hope they can resolve it quickly. Looks like my permit is getting approved soon, so I'm hopeful I can have mine installed in the next week or two and can then try to conduct some testing as well.

 

[sst]

Did Jackery provide a fix yet? I am in the process of getting permits from the city to install solar panels and connect it to the high pv input on the jackery. If this does not work then I am wondering if I should delay that project until Jackery has provided a solution.

 

[Jsweeney000]

@sst Unfortunately no, still waiting on hopefully a 2nd firmware update. I'm not sure if this is an issue with all units or I've got a defective one. I'm going to give them about 2 more weeks then i'll attempt to return it and go with an EG4 6000xp + batteries. Not as portable but I know it works.

I will make sure to post here as soon as i have another update from them.

 

[Will Prowse]

Looking to see if anyone out there is running a decent sized array with their jackery 5000 plus successfully on the high pv inputs. Current setup is a 3.2kw array (all panels in series) with a single jackery 5000 and one expansion battery. Powering 6 circuits via an existing manual transfer switch i've used for years with a gas generator during grid outages. Desired outcome is a partial offgrid setup where those 6 circuits run permanently off solar/battery. I'm close to getting this dialed in but have one major issue with the jackery.

Issue - Whenever the high pv inputs start to detect voltage or start to not detect voltage (early am or evening), the jackery will throw an F6 and shut down the AC inverter. To get around it i have to recycle the unit (flip the high pv disconnect, power off, power on, flip the high pv disconnect back on). In most cases the high pv inputs will start working and it's fine for the day. Supplying power for the load with no problem and charging via the high pv input. Then at dusk, right when the unit decides there is not enough voltage to use the high pv inputs it will shut down the AC inverter and interestingly not throw an F6 error. Then i just re-enable the AC inverter and it's good for the night. Major problem obviously, can't keep doing this.

I've checked voltage from the array during these times and it's always within spec, normally 240-250 volts. I do have an escalated case with jackery and it's been sent back to another team, waiting to hear from them. Anyone have any suggestions on what i can do or check in the meantime? Oh worth mentioning, a week ago i had just 4 panels wired in parallel/series using the low pv input and i did not have this problem at all. Seems to be specific to the high pv inputs.

That's a common software issue that occured on older models. Can you check what firmware you have?

I will send this to my rep. That should not be happening.

 

[Jsweeney000]

That's a common software issue that occured on older models. Can you check what firmware you have?

I will send this to my rep. That should not be happening.

Thanks! It's running firmware version 1.1. This is the new 5000 plus, when i received it a few weeks ago it was verison 1.0. They specifically sent me version 1.1 as a first attempt to fix this issue but it didn't work. The case was escalated back to engineering again but no ETA.

Meanwhile I have tested all sorts of scenarios, it basically needs a fresh restart every time to properly enable the high pv inputs, no matter what the voltage and amperage levels are (all within the spec range). Literally every single time. I've even changed the size of my array to test different voltage levels. I've also waited until mid day before enabling the hpv inputs, when current is very steady (5-8 depending on which day i tested), volts steady at 285. And it still needs a restart, then it works fine for the day. Then when it decides to disable the hpv inputs, when the array stops producing it will not throw the F6 as it does every morning, but it will disable the AC inverter. Insanely annoying. Since the F6 was not thrown I can just re-enable the AC inverter without a total restart (after the wife and kids complain that half the houses power went out lol)

One other interesting note, I am using the NEMA 14-30 output connected to my manual transfer switch. If I restart the jackery and do not physically unplug the 14-30 from the jackery it will error again when i enable the hpv disconnect, every time. I absolutely must physically unplug the 14-30 as part of the restart, and this is with all circuits on my transfer switch back to Line/Grid before I begin the restart process. Seems odd.

 

[sst]

Thanks for further clarification, my setup is going to be different. I am going with the jackery 5000 plus STS and then two jackery 5000 plus units and high pv input with self consumption option. I have been told that in such setup jackery sts will enable charging exclusively from PV inputs (no grid draw for charging) and will start drawing from batteries once it reaches 100% but if it does not reach 100% then draw during the evenings/night. I am in the process of pulling permit and should know if it works in couple of weeks.

 

[Gaijin2]

I think your understanding is basically correct but I'd ask for clarification on this part:

and will start drawing from batteries once it reaches 100% but if it does not reach 100% then draw during the evenings/night

My understanding of the system is that the 5000+ will always use all solar that is available to charge itself. If its battery is 100% charged, then any further solar input is wasted.

But I'm not sure about the wording you used here. It sounds to me like what you're saying is that it will only start drawing from its battery once it's reached 100% charge. And I'm 99.87% certain that's not the case, so I wanted to see if that's what you meant.

My understanding is that the STS powers itself using either the grid or the 5000+ battery. You can tell the STS what hours it can draw from the grid and when it can't, that's true. You can configure it to only pull electricity from the grid when it's off-peak rates, but I'm pretty sure it'll tap the grid when the 5000+'s battery is too depleted to meet the STS's load.

But I further understand that when the STS is being powered by the 5000+, it's being powered by the 5000+'s battery. All electricity flowing out of the 5000+ comes from its own battery, at all times. If there's grid input available, it will tap the grid (through the STS) and recharge itself whenever it depletes itself below a certain user-set level, if you tell it to, or you can have it run itself all the way out.

If there's solar available, it will go to recharging the 5000+ battery. If there's solar available that's sufficient to meet the STS's draw, the battery will be able to discharge itself and then recharge itself, maintaining 100% battery so long as sufficient solar reaches it. But once the solar input dries up, if you've configured the STS to not draw until off-peak hours, all electricity supplied to the STS's load will be from straight discharging of the 5000+ battery. If the battery has still got some charge when off-peak hours arrive, the STS will switch to grid power for running its load and it will recharge the 5000+ battery to full.

If you have sufficient battery capacity and sufficient solar, that means that you could run the STS 100% off-grid; the solar will charge it when the sun comes up, and keep it charged until the sun goes down, at which point the 5000+ battery will meet the STS's load until either the battery reaches 0%, or the sun comes up again to start recharging it.

Does this match with how you understand it to work?

 

[sst]

I spoke to Jackery support and he tells me that once the battery reaches 100% capacity, additional pv input does not go to waste but will be instead used to supply power to the load. I have not put this to test yet so not sure whether it will work or not. Any way after further thought I am going to just go with low pv inputs and have one solar panel out put to one low pv input and given each unit has two low pv inputs, 2 panels per jackery 5000 plus. It will likely take whole day to charge them but my goal is to offset the peak hours and hence for my situation, this may work fine

 

[Gaijin2]

The Jackery tech told me the exact opposite. They said that since solar input is DC and STS output is AC, they're incompatible, and so the DC input is used for charging.

In my question, I asked:

the High PV inputs say that they can accept up to 450 volts at 13.7 amps. That indicates that it can accept up to 6,750 watts of solar input, and the Low PV says it can handle another 1,200 watts of solar input, making a potential 7,950 watts of input. BUT, the product marketing page says that recharging from solar will be at 4,000 watts and take 1.7 hours.

So my question is: if only 4,000 watts are usable for charging, what happens to the other 3,950 watts of potential solar input? Is that electricity available for pass-through to the Smart Transfer Switch?

And after going through two technicians, this is the answer they gave:

According to our technician's reply, the PV input is 150-450 volts and 15 amps, so taking the 2 maximum values and multiplying them directly is the correct way to calculate. Voltage and current cannot be maximized at the same time, there is an optimal operating point, which is 4000W. The internal solar charging system will automatically adjust the current according to the voltage. It is not a matter of utilizing as much power as you can connect externally. More power can not be utilized, it will be wasted. This power cannot be transferred to the smart transfer switch, the solar power is DC, the smart transfer switch is AC, the type of electricity is different. The excess solar power is not utilized, so it is important to consider the rationality of the solar configuration, otherwise it is a waste.

So from that, and knowing that the battery charges at a maximum rate of 4,000 watts no matter how much power is available (240V from the STS, 1800w from the AC cord, and theoretically 8,000 watts from solar), and him saying that the solar power is DC (obviously) and the STS is AC (obviously), I deduced that what he was saying is that the DC input has to be run through the battery charging system, and that the inverter doesn't have the ability to invert directly to the AC outputs but that it had to be run through the battery first as part of the charging system.

But, taking the answer you got from the tech, maybe it's as simple as the Jackery's internal inverter is only capable of 4,000 watts of solar input, so anything in excess of that is wasted. But I question that because my technician's answer said that you can't send solar to the STS as it's got to be converted to AC first.

I would freakin' love for your tech's answer to be the correct answer. I'm not mad about the answer I got, but obviously I would prefer excess solar not have to be run through the battery first, as that would create a lot of microcycling. Plus, we already know the 5000's battery is capable of supplying 7,200 watts continuously; it would be slightly epic for that 7,200 watts to be coming from 4,000 watts of solar and only 3,200 watts of battery. I'll fire off a question to them worded in this way, to see if I can get a more comprehensive answer.

I am going to just go with low pv inputs and have one solar panel out put to one low pv input and given each unit has two low pv inputs, 2 panels per jackery 5000 plus. It will likely take whole day to charge them but my goal is to offset the peak hours and hence for my situation, this may work fine

Glad you have a workaround available until they finally fix it. If you have a large array and don't want to waste your potential, you could consider getting an EG4 or Ruixu wallmount battery and an inverter and have the solar panels charge the big battery all day, and then run the terminals of that big battery to your 5000+ units. That way they will bank all the solar you could get, while they'll trickle charge the 5000+ units at 1200 watts. That will help your Jackery units make it through the night so you may be able to slash your power bill even more.

In other news, my permit finally got approved so my STS will hopefully be installed soon and I can try to figure out what the final answer is on the wasting/no-wasting situation. I also upgraded to 1.1 firmware, it's publicly available, so you might want to check and see if downloading the public release contains any updates since you got that pre-release version of 1.1.

 

[sst]

Besides Jackery setup, I am also in the process of installing 10 trina 710w panels, two SRNE 12kw in parallel with 20kwhs of batteries and move my HVAC, heat pump water heater and other heavy draw circuits to this setup and leave lights, tv, fridge on the jackery setup so the workaround of just using 4 panels to to charge two units of jackery 5000 plus should work in my case. Good to know you got your permit and Good luck and please share your expereince once you tried it out.

 

[sst]

Here is the response from Jackery, now I have not tested this but as per their engineer once the battery gets to 100%, the power goes towards the house loads so it should not get wasted. Apparently once the pv input goes to zero ie after dark they will switch to power house loads from battery. Here is the cut and paste of their response:

We have confirmed with our engineering team that during self-powered mode, your HPV panels will start providing power to your load in case the battery is 100% full. During the night, when solar power is not available, only your battery will provide power.

I hope this helps you clarify your doubts.
Best Regards,
Team Jackery