I would love to however with all the bad press these hybrids are getting; I haven’t made any purchases yet. I cringe at the idea that a company overseas might be able to change, turn on or turn off power. For those with links… why not turn off the link? On top of all this; how can ul approvals be issued with these types of issues? I might have answered my own question; we have the best government money can buy!!
Bad press? Please share. I'm curious to how a few negative experiences represent the product as a whole. As for myself and quite a few others, I have nothing but good things to say with all things considered - *especially the price*. Is a Sol-Ark 15k better? Probably. Does it justify 2-3x the cost? In my personal opinion, no. That's really the key here - nearly all the functionality of more expensive products at a fraction of the price. If you want something that has been tested, polished, well supported, and proven to be reliable, this is not for you. However, that also does not mean this is a bad product.
As for the "overseas company having the ability to change settings" argument - just wait until you learn about what else can be done to a wide variety of other internet connected devices... Jokes aside, there are a few things to unpack here:
For one, most legitimate companies will not modify your settings remotely unless there is a reason to. If you engage w/ support to fix a problem, ok, now there's a reason. Sure, there may be disagreement on 'how' to fix it, but there are many things at play here - internal processes, cultural differences, miscommunication/lack of explicit instructions (example - this inverter is powering a community hospital and CANNOT be interrupted!). They cannot see this, and may assume it's running on a test bench somewhere. How can a problem unique to one unit be fixed or diagnosed, if settings cannot be changed to observe behavior? I'm not at all justifying the action. However, we need to understand where they are coming from as well. As for my own inverter - still on original firmware, settings never remotely tweaked.
As for the wifi connectivity in general, I understand the risks based on theoretical possibilities of unexpected remote setting changes, but at the moment, they do not outweigh the benefit of having visibility to dashboards and data. If you do not have the same level of risk tolerance, unplug the dongle. It is personally not a concern to me, as any 'bad' changes won't affect safety in any material way, as external protections will kick in if/when needed. I'll cross that bridge if I get there, in the extremely unlikely event it ever happens.
UL approvals - take a minute to read up on what the purpose of UL is, and how the tests are run. First of all, let's determine what the "issues" are, and if they are even in scope of UL testing. Second, last I checked, nobody had their house burn down after proper installation of this particular inverter. If we're still talking about UL here, this means they succeeded. UL does not guarantee your device will work reliably, or be easy to use... but rather, in the event of catastrophic failure, it will not cause your house to burn down. Please don't spread FUD.
