I have two Lvx6048wp in parallel purchased from watts247 March 2022 (these were from the first batch of this model). I updated the firmware to U 101.19 as recommended by Ian at watts247 as soon as the inverters arrived at my house. I took them to Mexico last Fall and had installer set them up off grid (no grid available). They worked fine with 10K solar input and 30Kw batteries (3 x 10k GSL). There may have been a later firmware update to this model but since everything was working well I decided to keep things as is. I then added solar assistant using orange Pi to inverter #1. It only read inverter #1 though I had heard it might be able to read both with just one cable to one inverter if they were in parallel. I read somewhere else that sometimes you have to add a second cable to other inverter because the serial numbers are the same. Since I couldn’t read the second inverter I bought another cable.
So today I shut down the inverter #2 (PV input, battery and AC load) and plugged in the second cable from solar assistant. Originally, I think I turned on the battery switch and then the solar and it turned itself on right away without me pressing the cold start button. I got a F32 warning (“DC/DC overcurrent”) and then all the buttons were not responsive anymore (e.g. I cant turn on the inverter with the left pointing arrow). Manual says to restart inverter. I shut everything off and did that again and this time started by switching on the battery (left PV off) and then pressing the cold start button on the side of inverter and it gives me fault code 3 (“BUS soft start time out”, more ominous as it says possible cause is “internal components failed”). I turned everything off again and turned on battery switch. Since the inverter doesn’t start unless I press the cold start button on side when only the battery switch is on (ie PV off) and doing that before produced the F3 fault code I decided to turn on battery switch, wait a minute, and then turned on PV which immediately started it up and I get F32 again. So I am left with two different fault codes no matter what order I switch things on. I didn’t want to try just starting it with the PV because I thought maybe the inverter is supposed to be on first. As I stopped to think about things I do seem to remember seeing F32 flash up on that particular inverter a couple of times on the day before I started to add the new cable during that same time of day the day before. It literally was there for just a split second so didn’t give it another thought. I was also started thinking that maybe I turned on the PV first and that was a problem but these inverters can run without battery so not sure why that would damage it.
Initially I was thinking that maybe there was too much power coming in from PV as it was high noon and full sun and maybe it saw the full brunt of the PV before it was turned on completely. Hoping that I didn’t burn anything up inside the inverter with what I had done previously, I waited until dark when there was no PV input and switched on the battery on and PV on (in that order) and pressed cold start and within about 30 seconds it gets a F03 fault.
I searched the internet to see if there was anything posted about these errors and found one post about something similar for fault F32 and it seems like he ended up needing to replace the main board (?) after talking with Mpp solar (they sent him one). Another post indicated that sometimes the inverter will default back to grid settings (it was set up for off-grid before this happened) and maybe hooking up a computer to it with the software can switch it back to off-grid. My installer has the software on his computer so I could ask him to come out and try that if that has worked for others. Of course, this doesnt address the F03 fault when starting on only battery (no PV on) so there may be some bad hardward at work here. Hoping it doesn’t come down to that but we will be leaving Mexico to return to US in a couple of days and so I have to figure things out in while I am here in case I will need to take any defective part when I leave.
Feeling very foolish as I seemed to have taken a system that was running perfectly and now only half works (the other inverter is doing fine) by wanting to monitor the whole system! It just doesn’t seem right that turning off one inverter would cause all this trouble.
Any ideas about things I can do or what to check inside the inverter? Thanks in advance!
Sorry for very long post but it always seems better to give you guys as much information as possible.
So today I shut down the inverter #2 (PV input, battery and AC load) and plugged in the second cable from solar assistant. Originally, I think I turned on the battery switch and then the solar and it turned itself on right away without me pressing the cold start button. I got a F32 warning (“DC/DC overcurrent”) and then all the buttons were not responsive anymore (e.g. I cant turn on the inverter with the left pointing arrow). Manual says to restart inverter. I shut everything off and did that again and this time started by switching on the battery (left PV off) and then pressing the cold start button on the side of inverter and it gives me fault code 3 (“BUS soft start time out”, more ominous as it says possible cause is “internal components failed”). I turned everything off again and turned on battery switch. Since the inverter doesn’t start unless I press the cold start button on side when only the battery switch is on (ie PV off) and doing that before produced the F3 fault code I decided to turn on battery switch, wait a minute, and then turned on PV which immediately started it up and I get F32 again. So I am left with two different fault codes no matter what order I switch things on. I didn’t want to try just starting it with the PV because I thought maybe the inverter is supposed to be on first. As I stopped to think about things I do seem to remember seeing F32 flash up on that particular inverter a couple of times on the day before I started to add the new cable during that same time of day the day before. It literally was there for just a split second so didn’t give it another thought. I was also started thinking that maybe I turned on the PV first and that was a problem but these inverters can run without battery so not sure why that would damage it.
Initially I was thinking that maybe there was too much power coming in from PV as it was high noon and full sun and maybe it saw the full brunt of the PV before it was turned on completely. Hoping that I didn’t burn anything up inside the inverter with what I had done previously, I waited until dark when there was no PV input and switched on the battery on and PV on (in that order) and pressed cold start and within about 30 seconds it gets a F03 fault.
I searched the internet to see if there was anything posted about these errors and found one post about something similar for fault F32 and it seems like he ended up needing to replace the main board (?) after talking with Mpp solar (they sent him one). Another post indicated that sometimes the inverter will default back to grid settings (it was set up for off-grid before this happened) and maybe hooking up a computer to it with the software can switch it back to off-grid. My installer has the software on his computer so I could ask him to come out and try that if that has worked for others. Of course, this doesnt address the F03 fault when starting on only battery (no PV on) so there may be some bad hardward at work here. Hoping it doesn’t come down to that but we will be leaving Mexico to return to US in a couple of days and so I have to figure things out in while I am here in case I will need to take any defective part when I leave.
Feeling very foolish as I seemed to have taken a system that was running perfectly and now only half works (the other inverter is doing fine) by wanting to monitor the whole system! It just doesn’t seem right that turning off one inverter would cause all this trouble.
Any ideas about things I can do or what to check inside the inverter? Thanks in advance!
Sorry for very long post but it always seems better to give you guys as much information as possible.
