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New Growatt parallel faults

Cornwallav8r

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Nov 24, 2021
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Had some defective SPF5000ES units replaced with all new, due to internal shorting screws the manufacturer failed to remove. All fresh starting last week. 4 units in parallel. Have been operating one alone, each separately over the past week, they each run perfectly fine, and I've never overloaded one so far. 4 units is probably overkill, it seems, but that's fine, I like a reserve. But when I try and operate in parallel, despite confirming all wiring is correct, and settings on all 4 are identical, they'll start (any different pair, happens to all) for a few minutes, operate fine, share the load equally, then fault and shut off. Tried 5 or 6 times this past week. Generally a shutdown and restart singly will allow functionality alone again. This morning changed some settings due to some of the errors they've thrown on fault, and now got a 09 bus start failure on both, now they're both trash. Won't restart. Getting thoroughly pissed at this China trash. I made a huge mistake putting all my eggs in one basket, almost $4k spent on useless undependable garbage. Wife is sick and tired of the shutdowns, and my golden retrievers get nervous and bark to leave the house every time I go into that room.

I suspect there's a hardware fault in these units. I'm operating on a third unit presently, just fine, at about 30% load. I've never exceeded about 90% load as far as I'm aware, I can watch the output graphs on the ShineServer app (another piece of shit software that is more buggy than useful, always showing errant information-another discussion entirely).

Has anybody else had any luck at all getting these units to play nice together?
 
This sound horrible.
The units must be good, because you tested all of them separate.
Did you make pictures when you put them in parallel ?
Is it possible that you did not connect them in the right way ?
Maybe forgot/misconnect the current sharing cables, or the communication cables ?
Or forget to set the parallel function in the menu?
Or started them in the same time? One must be started first as the master, others later.
 
Right, there's something about parallel operation inoperable here. Thanks for the thoughts, but no, the settings have been gone through so many times, I have it all pretty much memorized. All settings same, parallel operation set correctly in all, wiring exactly correct, all phases match between units. Started correctly, one always comes in as master, the other as SL1,2,3. They'll work for awhile mostly fine, even in parallel, but even then there are weird problems. One accepts PV solar, at around 1500W, while the adjacent one with exactly the same size array, will only feed 16 watts or so, despite showing correct 380vdc input. All while battery can be recharged, sitting at 75% or so, receiving no charging from the errant one. Then randomly, 10 or 20 or 60 minutes later without warning the lights go out and fault lights lit. Now 2 are completely dead.
Monitoring software is crap, despite proper network setup. Just bad software. Illogical layout, errant data shown, the capability to change inverter settings remotely doesn't really work most of the time, it'll say changes successful, then come back in with China defaults like 230v, 50Hz, etc. which doesn't match any setting the units had since first day. There are clearly a lot of unpublished "features" creating problems with sensible operation. The Changlish manual doesn't help the situation. Communicating with a Growatt engineer on the issues is about exactly the same as the manual - worthless. They don't understand the problem, really don't care, and blame the customer.
By the way, I got back to Growatt with proof that my previous units were destroyed due to their errant grounding screw left in the units without notifying the customer of the issue. They said "It not our problem". "We no offer support, you go back to who you bought them from". No decent
American company would pull this crap. We really need to bring our manufacturing back stateside, this is getting absolutely ridiculous. Growatt gets minus 53 stars, if we are rating companies.
 
I have no idea why they sell this unit in the USA market (other than the alluring 450v PV input), although I suppose if you just stay away from the 120v aspect, you should be fine.

Can you show us how yours are wired?
 
Exactly why i do not like unsupported equipment made by anybody, I spent one time, bought it, paid for it once, still works fine.
 
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