Power up review PowMR (SRNE) POW-LVM3K-24V-H

[Mattb4]

Spent the last two days (July 11&12th) in replacing my original near 1 year old #1 EAsun 3kw-U AIO with a new similar (PowMR label but just another SRNE) rated one. It has a higher PV voltage range (up to 450vDC) and 80a charge versus the 60a charge. My original #1 EAsun unit is now a spare. I bought and received the new PowMr back in beginning of July for $481 with tax and shipped.

As a quick review of the PowMr. While looking the same, and having much the same setup, the PowMr has some additional features and settings beyond the EAsun unit. It allows battery communication for one and it also features a hybrid setting. This hybrid setting allows PV to charge battery, perhaps operate batteryless and then supply AC out alongside AC grid to load while the AIO is in UTI mode. Supposedly while not sending power back to the grid. However I never intend to make use of it because even a small grid back feed could cause me trouble with my CO-OP.

There are a few other differences that makes it a whole different AIO. Such as it has 27.5a inverter output vs the 25a of the EAsun. and it weighs in at 8kg vs 6.8kg. It like the EAsun preceding it can be accessed using the SRNE monitor program on a computer. Actually it was good I checked this since I found I had goofed up and selected the wrong battery type. I thought I had selected liFePO4 8 series but instead I had selected Ternary lithium 8. It sure never hurts to double and triple check all things. Than go back and recheck.

I had it wired in enough to do the settings and some output on July 11th. Seems to be a better MPPT inside than the EAsun. Though a bit hard to know since the day remained quite cloudy so my real test of things happens today (Sunny day). This morning I spent getting all my PV wires upgraded to a better quality Temco PV 10awg. The melange of mismatched old wire is now in my wire bin.

Should be interesting how it all turns out.

 

[Mattb4]

One thing I am noticing from the PowMr is a lower reading for PV amps (consequently a lower reported PV wattage) than my clamp on DC ammeter indicates. My previous AIO's were off also but not as much. The voltage via DMM and AIO however closely track. Difference has been as high as 150w less between what the AIO reads for watts and what I calculate watts should be based on voltage and clamp on amp reading. Could be the placement in the AIO of the coil that measures incoming amps is not good.

Does not hurt to under report incoming power for me but it could confuse someone wondering why their PV array was producing less than expected. On my previous AIO I installed a shunt and meter on the PV side to have a more accurate readout but had to leave it off this PowMr because it was only a 100vDC maximum and I am running over 176Voc now.

ETA: With having the batteries fully charged by 1pm even with running my main room A/C I can not keep enough load on to do a full bore test. I could switch my hot water tank on but then I would have to run the A/C from utility since I can not carry both at once. Presently 98F outside with a heat index of 105F. So I would rather have the A/C set as cold as reasonable to eat PV power instead of using the Co-Op power.

 

[Codehack_0101]

Nice setup. Keep updating as I am interested to see how this project progresses. I have my eye on the PowMr 8200 solar inverter. Out the door price looks to be around $531 with wifi dongle directly from their site during their summer sale. My plan is to wire it to up to my 48v bank for the purpose of charging my tesla at 230v AC. Where did you purchase your PowMr? Do you have any experience with PowMr support? Thanks in advance.

 

[Mattb4]

I got the PowMr on Ebay. I see the price took a big jump downwards It now shows it for $384 instead of the $450 I paid. Wish I had known. https://www.ebay.com/itm/304614558762

I have no experience with PowMr support and hopefully will never need to have any. They claim a 2 year warranty period on their official website.

Sorted through the old PV wire and tossing any of it that I bought many years ago Chinese brand and also any that was 4mm (12awg) rated. Seems a shame to throw out copper wire but not practical to recycle it where I live.

 

[Rednecktek]

I've dealt with PowMr's support and sales via email quite a few times. The engrish wasn't horrible but they always got back to me within a day or two barring weekends slowing things down on occasion.

I'm curious to see how the unit performs and how well it handles heavy surge.

 

[Mattb4]

Good day for more testing even though it started this morning with a thunder and lightning storm. Got just about an inch of rain. But by 10am the sun was out and things got steamy. Supposed to get up to 105-110F Heat index today. My batteries were down to 26v to start. I turned on my 8000 btu A/C and ran various items. At one point I was carrying 1500w from an induction cook top on high and the A/C cycled on. The draw at that time showed ~2400w with no signs the starting surge was a problem.

As the PV incoming watts from my 2 arrays rose to around 1600w I turned on an additional 5000 btu A/C in the back room just to keep from fully charging the battery before 1pm. That brought up the loading an additional 500w or so.

The discrepancy in PV watts seems to be linearly as I notice that while reading 900w at 2pm on the AIO my DMM voltage times my DC amp meter indicates 1100w incoming.

ETA: While everyone is probably hammering the utility company for A/C needs at the moment I am not using a watt of utility power.

 

[Mattb4]

Got woke up early morning 3AM from the crash of thunder and ongoing flash of lightning. Went back to sleep till my usual wake up at 5AM. Not really fully awake though as I did the morning routine of stumble to the kitchen and turn on the coffee maker. It seemed unusually quiet though and it struck me my A/C was not running. So I go and check and there is no power indication. Did the lightning fry it? Checked the circuit breaker panel and nothing seemed amiss. Suddenly the driveway alarm goes off and I see flashing lights coming down the road. It is my utility CO-OP service truck and it dawns on me I wonder if the grid is down. Sure enough when I walk out in the rain to talk to him he tells me that he is just out driving the lines.

Before he can leave he gets a call from someone telling him that they were going to energize the line. A minute later I see led indication of my security cameras power supply blink on. It is mounted on the power pole and fed by the grid.

My AIO's and batteries worked fine (and thus most everything else) but the A/C I had transferred to utility overnight. My thinking when I am barely awake has not yet incorporated that grid down no longer means power off for me.

ETA: One other thing I notice on this. At some point in the PV charging battery and running the inverter the display panel shows a new connection arrow line of going strait from the PV to inverter and bypassing the battery. This arrow is not on my old unit that simply shows a disconnect from PV to battery when battery is charged.

Addition: I have decided to add in a meter and shunt to the PV input side so that I do not have to constantly use my DMM and DC clamp on anytime I want to have an accurate indication of incoming PV power. Took some searching to find one that would handle the voltage and was not designed to guess battery capacity. I am going to get fancy and put it into a box and even use a 12vDC wall wart 500ma PS I have on hand to provide external voltage to maintain the delivered kwh readout.

 

[fafrd]

Spent the last two days (July 11&12th) in replacing my original near 1 year old #1 EAsun 3kw-U AIO with a new similar (PowMR label but just another SRNE) rated one. It has a higher PV voltage range (up to 450vDC) and 80a charge versus the 60a charge.

How do you know that your PowerMr and EAsun are rebadged inverters manufactured by SNRE?

My original #1 EAsun unit is now a spare. I bought and received the new PowMr back in beginning of July for $481 with tax and shipped.

As a quick review of the PowMr. While looking the same, and having much the same setup, the PowMr has some additional features and settings beyond the EAsun unit. It allows battery communication for one and it also features a hybrid setting. This hybrid setting allows PV to charge battery, perhaps operate batteryless and then supply AC out alongside AC grid to load while the AIO is in UTI mode. Supposedly while not sending power back to the grid. However I never intend to make use of it because even a small grid back feed could cause me trouble with my CO-OP.

There are a few other differences that makes it a whole different AIO. Such as it has 27.5a inverter output vs the 25a of the EAsun. and it weighs in at 8kg vs 6.8kg. It like the EAsun preceding it can be accessed using the SRNE monitor program on a computer. Actually it was good I checked this since I found I had goofed up and selected the wrong battery type. I thought I had selected liFePO4 8 series but instead I had selected Ternary lithium 8. It sure never hurts to double and triple check all things. Than go back and recheck.

I had it wired in enough to do the settings and some output on July 11th. Seems to be a better MPPT inside than the EAsun. Though a bit hard to know since the day remained quite cloudy so my real test of things happens today (Sunny day). This morning I spent getting all my PV wires upgraded to a better quality Temco PV 10awg. The melange of mismatched old wire is now in my wire bin.

Should be interesting how it all turns out.

 

[Mattb4]

How do you know that your PowerMr and EAsun are rebadged inverters manufactured by SNRE?

Board numbers. Not to mention identical operation settings and manuals for the units. Plus as I already mentioned you can run SRNE monitor program with them. Can not recall exactly where I read it but SRNE has a license to use Voltronic patents and design to build these units.

 

[fafrd]

Board numbers. Not to mention identical operation settings and manuals for the units. Plus as I already mentioned you can run SRNE monitor program with them. Can not recall exactly where I read it but SRNE has a license to use Voltronic patents and design to build these units.

So SRNE is a manufacturer, probably with some relationship to Voltronic but independent of them that manufactures some of the inverters being rebadged by PowerMr, Easun, Y&H, Sunpal, and no doubt others probably including Midnight Solar DIY inverters.

I got an email from Sunpal announcing their new 8/10K split phase inverters attaching a UL1741 certification that referenced SRNE as the manufacturer, so that’s how I figured out they were rebadging those.

 

[Mattb4]

Their full name is SRNE Solar: https://www.srnesolar.com/ handy if you know the board number of a re-badged inverter and want to find a manual on it.

 

[fafrd]

Their full name is SRNE Solar: https://www.srnesolar.com/ handy if you know the board number of a re-badged inverter and want to find a manual on it.

Know how to find manuals for SRNE (Solar) inverters but no idea how you link a board number to a database of inverter model numbers and manufacturers. Is SRNE Solar and the model number part of the ‘board number’?

 

[Mattb4]

With the wiring connection access cover off you should be able to see the Board and it will have a number printed on it for the SRNE model it is. For instance PowMr lists mine as a POW-LVM3K-24V-H as model number. But on the Board is HF2430S80-H While not having a database lookup it is not hard to find the HF models on the website.

One thing I note however is that this model number corresponds to an earlier SRNE AIO rated at 230vAc output and not the 120vAC. (SRNE was using S for 230v and U for 120v) Plus which they updated it to be a hybrid in the latest units. Darn stuff is always changing.

Incidentally for someone following this stuff my APP software edition is 6.74 and bootloader is 2.03.

 

[fafrd]

With the wiring connection access cover off you should be able to see the Board and it will have a number printed on it for the SRNE model it is. For instance PowMr lists mine as a POW-LVM3K-24V-H as model number. But on the Board is HF2430S80-H While not having a database lookup it is not hard to find the HF models on the website.

Well that makes it easy .

One thing I note however is that this model number corresponds to an earlier SRNE AIO rated at 230vAc output and not the 120vAC. (SRNE was using S for 230v and U for 120v) Plus which they updated it to be a hybrid in the latest units. Darn stuff is always changing.

Incidentally for someone following this stuff my APP software edition is 6.74 and bootloader is 2.03.

There is a lot of loose talk on the Forum about this or that inexpensive Chinese inverter being a Voltronic rebadge but I suspect many of those claims would not stand up to this level of sleuthing.

I’m not interested in ‘Voltronic-like’, I’m interested in the underlying manufacturer.

The MPP solar inverters seem to be exclusively Voltronic and many of those inverters are well-regarded.

Many of the rebadgers such as PowerMr will mix and match with abandon, so one model can be from one manufacturer and another model can be from another manufacturer.

The fact that SRNE manufactures and sells inverters is important and the fact that the Midnight Solar DIY inverters are rebadged SRNEs is a major vote of confidence in their underlying capability and quality.

So at this point, I’m pretty much set on getting an SRNE-manufactured 10kW split-phase inverter and the only question I’m still debating is buying direct from SRNE in China versus buying the Y&H rebadge through Amazon.

Buying direct from SRNE is preferable for customer support, firmware updates, and (probably) any warranty claims, but buying US stock from a rebadger through Amazon Prime is better for cost, any delivery issues or a defective product out of the box, and probably also for any warranty coverage during the warranty period claimed on Amazon’s website.

I’m not planning to use much of any advanced hybrid functionality (true off-grid only) so I’m not anticipating firmware updates to be a big concern which would be the primary factor causing me to prefer the buy-direct option.

So I’m leaning towards picking up the Y&H rebadge.

The PowerMr is probably another rebadge of the same inverter but the Y&H rebadge looks identical while the PowerMr offering has at least changed the covering mechanics (tall rectangle to circle - may just be cosmetic / paint).

That tiny question mark plus the fact that I have experience buying Y&H rebadges of other inverters (GTIL) which I’ve been happy with is steering me that direction.

I appreciate your help in allowing me to connect the dots.

SENEs capability and quality are well-proven by the fact that Midnight Solar has been selling their DIY series for almost 2 years now.

So the major risk I see is that associated with this new split-phase offering from SRNE which is a risk with any newly-introduced inverter design.

I’ve got 6-9 months before I’m installing so I’ll probably wait for a few more early-owner reports.

The one report already out there has been positive: https://diysolarforum.com/threads/srne-split-phase-hybrid-solar-lnverter-asf-series-10kw.54165/

[p.s. sorry to hijack your thread but it’s one of the few receding to SRNE rebadged inverters so it seemed like a good place lay out the context of their new split-phase offering and the various rebadged we are starting to see through Amazon including the one from PowerMr: https://www.amazon.com/PowMr-Invert...2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9zZWFyY2hfYXRm&psc=1]

 

[Johno1066]

I would consider getting a 6ooo watt inverterwith the 450 volt PVmax but they only seem to have 220 volt units, so I take a look at the 5000 watt unit, 110 volts OK but no PV max voltage. So everything you dont want is cheap. I have 2 EG4 3000 watt units and have been thinking about buying another as a spare but 1 6000 watt unit at $459 would really be good.

 

[fafrd]

I would consider getting a 6ooo watt inverterwith the 450 volt PVmax but they only seem to have 220 volt units, so I take a look at the 5000 watt unit, 110 volts OK but no PV max voltage. So everything you dont want is cheap. I have 2 EG4 3000 watt units and have been thinking about buying another as a spare but 1 6000 watt unit at $459 would really be good.

That’s the tub, isn’t it? The AIOs supporting high-voltage strings are generally higher-power units.

I’ve got a 6S string with ~240Voc_max but only generating a maximum of 1300W peak and 9kWh daily.

I want to consume that energy powering fridges all night (and all day) but that’s only 300W average with a peak of no more than 3kW on one 120VAC leg.

I can find some budget 2-box solutions but have a strong preference for a single box (space limit).

 

[Mattb4]

I would consider getting a 6ooo watt inverterwith the 450 volt PVmax but they only seem to have 220 volt units, so I take a look at the 5000 watt unit, 110 volts OK but no PV max voltage. So everything you dont want is cheap. I have 2 EG4 3000 watt units and have been thinking about buying another as a spare but 1 6000 watt unit at $459 would really be good.

Doing a quick look but SRNE 5kw has 120v with a 500Voc https://www.srnesolar.com/product/3kw-5kw-off-grid-solar-inverter-high-pv-input-500vdc-hf48-h I see one on Aliexpress for $480 but additiaonal shipping. Likely can find it elsewhere also. I see PowMr has the POW-LVM5K-48V-N which also has the high voltage PV https://powmr.com/products/all-in-one-inverter-charger-5000w-110vac-48vdc

ETA: back to the review. I managed to hit +1300w from the 1600w array a few minutes ago. That is excellent (81%) for my array arrangement and mismatched panels. Some of it may be due to the slightly cooler day (85F) and some may be the cloud effect. The PowMr MPPT seems to not have the periodic 12 min drop to zero watts that was characteristic of the EAsun unit.

 

[fafrd]

Doing a quick look but SRNE ASF48100U200-H 5kw has 120v with a 500Voc https://www.srnesolar.com/product/3kw-5kw-off-grid-solar-inverter-high-pv-input-500vdc-hf48-h I see one on Aliexpress for $480 but additiaonal shipping. Likely can find it elsewhere also.

ETA: back to the review. I managed to hit +1300w from the 1600w array a few minutes ago. That is excellent (81%) for my array arrangement and mismatched panels. Some of it may be due to the slightly cooler day (85F) and some may be the cloud effect. The PowMr MPPT seems to not have the periodic 12 min drop to zero watts that was characteristic of the EAsun unit.

If I were buying that inverter I definitely by the Midnight Solar version: https://www.midnitesolar.com/productPhoto.php?product_ID=712&productCat_ID=57&sortOrder=1&act=p

Not only would the real technical support be worth something but whatever warranty Midnight Solar offers would actually be worth the paper it was printed on…

 

[BuffaloTrace]

@fafrd
You've been talking about that 10kw Y&H/SRNE inverter for awhile and I can tell it's consistently on your mind. You may as well do yourself and all of us a favor by getting one and setting it up. Can run a bunch of fun tests on it and make your own data out of it regardless of how well or poor it performs. I assume it will have ups and downs as any of these aios do. Either way I know you'd have fun with it and everyone would learn something from you as well.

 

[fafrd]

@fafrd
You've been talking about that 10kw Y&H/SRNE inverter for awhile and I can tell it's consistently on your mind. You may as well do yourself and all of us a favor by getting one and setting it up. Can run a bunch of fun tests on it and make your own data out of it regardless of how well or poor it performs. I assume it will have ups and downs as any of these aios do. Either way I know you'd have fun with it and everyone would learn something from you as well.

I certainly hear you and would be ready to do precisely that except for two issues;

1/ my current system is 24V and I’won’t be in a position to rebuild my 8S2P battery to 16S1P until next spring (or at best this winter).

So I won’t be in any position to test until then.

Losing 6-12 months of warranty coverage, to say nothing of wasting the 30-day return in case the unit is DOA seems stupid, so I figure I’ll just keep monitoring for any other early adopters in the meantime.

The one downside to this plan is that I could probably purchase the Y&H 10kW split-phase for under $1500 today (they are currently asking for ‘$1590 or best offer’) while prices may increase 9–12 months from now.

But especially when purchasing inexpensive power electronics coming from China, a 30-day no questions asked return policy is worth more than any price increase I could imagine (market is getting more and more competitive).

So if everything you’ve written in your above message remains valid 6-9 months from now is still valid, I’m there.

But in the meantime I’m afraid it’s ‘hurry up and wait’ (and monitor whatever any other early adopter’s report).

But it looks like a well-suited product to my needs at a very convertible price, so I’ll almost certainly be getting one unless red flags emerge…