Sol-Ark 12K and EG4LL battery communications

[Snowynorth]

In this day and age, all of the communication protocols from all of the manufacturers, should be streamlined right from the get go. All the inverters and batteries have comm ports, they just don't communicate? Shouldn't firmware be designed to communicate before hitting the market, not a scramble after? I shake my head. You solar savvy people must too. Lord help us if we ever get the big solar flare, and have to go back to analog.

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

Will this update be for the lifepower4 batteries as well?

The LL and LifePower4 batteries operate under different communication protocols. I'll have to find out if it will only apply to one or both of the batteries.

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

In this day and age, all of the communication protocols from all of the manufacturers, should be streamlined right from the get go. All the inverters and batteries have comm ports, they just don't communicate? Shouldn't firmware be designed to communicate before hitting the market, not a scramble after? I shake my head. You solar savvy people must too. Lord help us if we ever get the big solar flare, and have to go back to analog.

I wish. Unfortunately every manufacturer 'knows best' and builds their communication on whatever protocol they feel like. I'm sure at some point in the future there will be a standard but I'm not holding my breath on how soon that happens.

 

[HighTechLab]

I wish. Unfortunately every manufacturer 'knows best' and builds their communication on whatever protocol they feel like. I'm sure at some point in the future there will be a standard but I'm not holding my breath on how soon that happens.

I agree, Richard. CANBUS & RS485 are 2 (3 with GND) wire signals...So just about everyone uses a connector with 3 or more pins and uses whichever pins they want. As you and everyone will see when I release the communication videos on Victron / MPP Solar / Growatt, they didn't follow Sol-Ark / SMA's lead on how to wire the RJ45 plug...

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

I agree, Richard. CANBUS & RS485 are 2 (3 with GND) wire signals...So just about everyone uses a connector with 3 or more pins and uses whichever pins they want. As you and everyone will see when I release the communication videos on Victron / MPP Solar / Growatt, they didn't follow Sol-Ark / SMA's lead on how to wire the RJ45 plug...

Agreed - I just think it would be nice if everyone got on the same page in the industry and just all adopted a standard. It really reminds me of like the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray back in the early 2000's, when lots of large scale companies were going in different directions and eventually one of them won out.

The issue specifically with our 2 different batteries is that growatt communicates on a specific channel and one is programmed to allow comms on that channel for battery comms between the PC and battery and the other isn't, so it comes down to changing dipswitches. A headache, I know, but hindsight is 20/20.

 

[timselectric]

Agreed - I just think it would be nice if everyone got on the same page in the industry and just all adopted a standard. It really reminds me of like the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray back in the early 2000's, when lots of large scale companies were going in different directions and eventually one of them won out.

The issue specifically with our 2 different batteries is that growatt communicates on a specific channel and one is programmed to allow comms on that channel for battery comms between the PC and battery and the other isn't, so it comes down to changing dipswitches. A headache, I know, but hindsight is 20/20.

I was comparing it further back in time, to VHS and Beta Max. lol

 

[Snowynorth]

I wish. Unfortunately every manufacturer 'knows best' and builds their communication on whatever protocol they feel like. I'm sure at some point in the future there will be a standard but I'm not holding my breath on how soon that happens.

I'm sorry Richard but I strongly disagree that every manufacturer "knows best" with regards to everything solar. The solar installers and end users who pay the bills, know best with what they want. Sure they are the engineering brains who design and build this stuff. They are also the brains that "must" and should have already (long ago) streamlined things like communication. It is no fault of distributors, but it is incumbent on all distributers to demand certain things from manufacturers, and to inform consumers up front, with regards to the negatives.

Installers and DIYers should not have to spend many hours trying to research battery compatibility with inverters. Or spend many more hours trying to figure out how to make them communicate after spending their hard earned money. That just does not make sense.

Maybe in the interim, every inverter, and every battery with communication should state, up front, on the sellers website.
"If you buy this inverter or this battery, and want communication you can not do it with x batteries, or x inverters."

Here is my take. We are all here and everywhere on the net communicating instantly with each other all around the world. We are using a wide variety of devices, built by an enormous number of manufacturers. Our little cheap devices can do a huge number of tasks. I think that might have been a bit more complicated to achieve than having an inverter and battery work properly together. And both built without all the glitches I keep reading about.

I am not trying to be critical of you or any other distributer. I have been researching and trying to learn long enough to see that you folks are trying to put out glitch fires on a regular basis. It must get quite frustrating. I think it is high time to start a dealer member organization, just like other resellers, then start by demanding the manufacturers to get their stuff in order. There is way to much shady stuff going on from across the pond in the world of solar. Just my opinion. Please don't flame me.

Solar is not a toy and not cheap. It is expensive, and has become a need for many not just an option for grid back up. It needs to work without glitches. The computers inside all this stuff are not new to the world, just reconfigured to do a few tasks.

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

1: I'm sorry Richard but I strongly disagree that every manufacturer "knows best" with regards to everything solar.

2: Installers and DIYers should not have to spend many hours trying to research battery compatibility with inverters. Or spend many more hours trying to figure out how to make them communicate after spending their hard earned money. That just does not make sense.

3: Maybe in the interim, every inverter, and every battery with communication should state, up front, on the sellers website.
"If you buy this inverter or this battery, and want communication you can not do it with x batteries, or x inverters."

4. Here is my take. We are all here and everywhere on the net communicating instantly with each other all around the world. We are using a wide variety of devices, built by an enormous number of manufacturers. Our little cheap devices can do a huge number of tasks. I think that might have been a bit more complicated to achieve, then having, an inverter and battery work properly together. And both built without all the glitches I keep reading about.

5: I am not trying to be critical of you or any other distributer. I have been researching and trying to learn long enough to see that you folks are trying to put out glitch fires on a regular basis. It must get quite frustrating. I think it is high time to start a dealer member organization, just like other resellers, then start by demanding the manufacturers to get their stuff in order. There is way to much shady stuff going on from across the pond in the world of solar. Just my opinion. Please don't flame me.

1: I think you missed my sarcasm I indicated with the 'knows best' being in quotes.
2: The whole point of DIY is that you are saving money by doing the research and labor yourself.
3: There is no possible way any manufacturer would be able to give a list of the thousands of brands and hundreds of thousands of products, with likely millions of firmware versions and say with 100% certainty they will or will not work. In the meantime, most companies who sell products (like the company I represent, Signature Solar) typically are selling you compatible products. Our EG4 batteries communicate with the Growatt line, which we also offer. If you buy my battery and have some other random inverter, do your research to find out if it works. There isn't a company in the world that has the resources or means to test every available product for you.
4: This problem literally exists in every industry. You think that microsoft office works on some random OS built by a person in his basement for himself? You are seeing the end product of 2 or 3 widely adopted operating systems that software is built for. I believe solar will get there eventually, but we are still in the first stages (like computers were when they had a different operating system and programming language at every company before standards were acheived) and will likely eventually end up the same way: with a few different widely adopted protocols that everyone uses. The fact of the matter is we aren't there yet.
5: I gladly accept constructive criticism. There are member organizations out there - they exist. They just have not been widely adopted and so really they don't accomplish much. Again - solar is in its infancy and that isn't going to change until we move towards having 1 or 2 main protocols. Unfortunately, that process will take time. If you get into solar now you can either A) DIY, spend the time to research and support your own system or B) Pay someone else a premium to do it for you.

 

[Snowynorth]

https://www.inspirecleanenergy.com/blog/clean-energy-101/who-discovered-solar-power

With do respect, and believe me I do respect those who are smart in every field, I have to disagree with solar being infant. Yes modern solar from the 1970s is a bit more infant then modern computers, but since solar uses the computers that paved the way in many aspects, I think they should have been able to figure it out by now.

Richard, I did actually catch your sarcasm. I liked it. I hope you caught my sarcasm relating to a list of non compatible.

Fyi. My older lap top, printer, and phone, all built by different manufacturers, have for many years and still are communicating very well together, and none have had regular glitches that required electrical engineers to figure out. All would have and will communicate with any number of other lap tops, phones, and printers as well. I bought them without any hours of research to determine whether they would work together or not. As a complete layman I was able to set them up together. Again I'm sure you folks must get frustrated.

Have a great day all.

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

https://www.inspirecleanenergy.com/blog/clean-energy-101/who-discovered-solar-power

With do respect, and believe me I do respect those who are smart in every field, I have to disagree with solar being infant. Yes modern solar from the 1970s is a bit more infant then modern computers, but since solar uses the computers that paved the way in many aspects, I think they should have been able to figure it out by now.

Richard, I did actually catch your sarcasm. I liked it. I hope you caught my sarcasm relating to a list of non compatible.

Fyi. My older lap top, printer, and phone, all built by different manufacturers, have for many years and still are communicating very well together, and none have had regular glitches that required electrical engineers to figure out. All would have and will communicate with any number of other lap tops, phones, and printers as well. I bought them without any hours of research to determine whether they would work together or not. As a complete layman I was able to set them up together. Again I'm sure you folks must get frustrated.

Have a great day all.

But will your printer communicate with a punch card computer? Will it communicate with a microsoft windows 98 computer? How about a modified linux distribution from Bill working in his garage? That's the stage solar is at now - and when I say infancy, it really is just now getting to the 'home computer' stage vs having a computer the size of a room. It's only recently (within the last 5-10 years) that solar started showing up on houses as an actual financially stable decision, and not just a 'wow this looks cool' decision. Your example of a laptop, phone, and printer are where we will be before too long. But we aren't there yet, and until we are it's up to either the installer you pay a premium to or yourself if you DIY to make sure the stuff you put together will work.

 

[BenW]

we are releasing the solark firmware next week. it is fully tested for EG4LL

Battery firmware? Emailed Sol-Ark today and this is their reply:

"Right now we don't have any on-going test with the EG4 LL, we don't have any request from Signature Solar to test and get the close loop comms with the battery.
All tested batteries will appear in the battery integration guide that is posted in our web site.

 

[timselectric]

Battery firmware? Emailed Sol-Ark today and this is their reply:

"Right now we don't have any on-going test with the EG4 LL, we don't have any request from Signature Solar to test and get the close loop comms with the battery.
All tested batteries will appear in the battery integration guide that is posted in our web site.

Well, it appears that someone is mistaken.
Why does everything in our solar world, have to so complicated? lol

 

[Snowynorth]

But will your printer communicate with a punch card computer? Will it communicate with a microsoft windows 98 computer? How about a modified linux distribution from Bill working in his garage? That's the stage solar is at now - and when I say infancy, it really is just now getting to the 'home computer' stage vs having a computer the size of a room. It's only recently (within the last 5-10 years) that solar started showing up on houses as an actual financially stable decision, and not just a 'wow this looks cool' decision. Your example of a laptop, phone, and printer are where we will be before too long. But we aren't there yet, and until we are it's up to either the installer you pay a premium to or yourself if you DIY to make sure the stuff you put together will work.

I guess I could ask, will your battery communicate with my printer? It isn't supposed to. Solar batteries and inverters are supposed to.

 

[HighTechLab]

Battery firmware? Emailed Sol-Ark today and this is their reply:

"Right now we don't have any on-going test with the EG4 LL, we don't have any request from Signature Solar to test and get the close loop comms with the battery.
All tested batteries will appear in the battery integration guide that is posted in our web site.

ouch

 

[Horsefly]

I have a couple of thoughts that maybe are really questions.

First, regarding batteries talking to inverters. I understand that there are a few things that communications between batteries and inverters can help with. The battery (or rather, the BMS) can provide more accurate voltage and state of charge information to the inverter. I suppose it can also allow the BMS to control / regulate the charging current coming from the charger part of the inverter. Are there other things? I know others may disagree, but to me this communication is actually of marginal value to most solar installs. Besides, there are very few inverter / chargers that would know how to deal with such communications from the battery / BMS.

Second, RS485 is just a serial communications mechanism, like RS232. It doesn't mean anything unless there is an universally adopted standard for the messages that are communicated on it, and I can't tell that there is any such standard for batteries. I think this is kinda what @RichardfromSignatureSolar is saying. Instead, it seems like each inverter manufacturer needs to negotiate a "language" with every battery / BMS manufacturer. I use Schneider equipment, and I know right now for any battery to work "closed loop" with them, Schneider has to work directly with the battery manufacturer, who has to implement Schneider's proprietary Xanbus interface, and then Schneider has to "certify" them. Talk about a lack of standard.

As it is, it seems to me that until there is a standard, it is silly to expect every inverter/charger to talk to every battery/BMS. Maybe more importantly, I don't see such communications as being valuable enough to clamor for it.

I'm not trying to argue about any of this, as I really don't know. Do I not understand some great value in these connections? Is there a standard that everyone should be implementing? Am I missing something?

 

[Snowynorth]

I have a couple of thoughts that maybe are really questions.

First, regarding batteries talking to inverters. I understand that there are a few things that communications between batteries and inverters can help with. The battery (or rather, the BMS) can provide more accurate voltage and state of charge information to the inverter. I suppose it can also allow the BMS to control / regulate the charging current coming from the charger part of the inverter. Are there other things? I know others may disagree, but to me this communication is actually of marginal value to most solar installs. Besides, there are very few inverter / chargers that would know how to deal with such communications from the battery / BMS.

Second, RS485 is just a serial communications mechanism, like RS232. It doesn't mean anything unless there is an universally adopted standard for the messages that are communicated on it, and I can't tell that there is any such standard for batteries. I think this is kinda what @RichardfromSignatureSolar is saying. Instead, it seems like each inverter manufacturer needs to negotiate a "language" with every battery / BMS manufacturer. I use Schneider equipment, and I know right now for any battery to work "closed loop" with them, Schneider has to work directly with the battery manufacturer, who has to implement Schneider's proprietary Xanbus interface, and then Schneider has to "certify" them. Talk about a lack of standard.

As it is, it seems to me that until there is a standard, it is silly to expect every inverter/charger to talk to every battery/BMS. Maybe more importantly, I don't see such communications as being valuable enough to clamor for it.

I'm not trying to argue about any of this, as I really don't know. Do I not understand some great value in these connections? Is there a standard that everyone should be implementing? Am I missing something?

Communication is valuable to some, not to others. Communication is an asset to me. I just think with something that has become as high tech as solar components, with all the years of the components on the market, not having universal communication protocols is poor reflection on the Manufacturers at best. Here are the comm ports just don't bother plugging them in unless it's inverter x, and battery y. " Please make sure you spend many hours on the net to find out what goes with what" Manufacturer nonsense. The inverter/CC is the engine, the batteries are the fuel. These inverters and batteries didn't just show up on the market last week. The engine in my car is ok with any brand of gas. Not that I'm ok with the price of the gas.

 

[houseofancients]

there is a defacto standard : pylontech.

any battery that does pylontech over either canbus or rs485 should be able to talk to any inverter that support pylontech and has a canbus/rs485 port

 

[Horsefly]

there is a defacto standard : pylontech.

any battery that does pylontech over either canbus or rs485 should be able to talk to any inverter that support pylontech and has a canbus/rs485 port

Why is that the defacto standard? Pylontech is just one of lots of battery companies. I don't mean to challenge you, I just don't understand how they are THE one.

If I design a battery and only sell one of them, I could still say: "Any battery that does Horesefly over either canbus or RS485 should be able to talk to any inverter that supports Horsefly and has canbus / RS485."

 

[AleksK]

Why is that the defacto standard? Pylontech is just one of lots of battery companies. I don't mean to challenge you, I just don't understand how they are THE one.

If I design a battery and only sell one of them, I could still say: "Any battery that does Horesefly over either canbus or RS485 should be able to talk to any inverter that supports Horsefly and has canbus / RS485."

Same could be said for USB but it eventually won out over other standards, and that seems to be happening with pylontech but it's too early to say whether everyone will follow suit.

 

[Horsefly]

Communication is valuable to some, not to others. Communication is an asset to me. I just think with something that has become as high tech as solar components, with all the years of the components on the market, not having universal communication protocols is poor reflection on the Manufacturers at best. Here are the comm ports just don't bother plugging them in unless it's inverter x, and battery y. " Please make sure you spend many hours on the net to find out what goes with what" Manufacturer nonsense. The inverter/CC is the engine, the batteries are the fuel. These inverters and batteries didn't just show up on the market last week. The engine in my car is ok with any brand of gas. Not that I'm ok with the price of the gas.

But what do you want to be the result of these two devices communicating? You're saying it seems like they should communicate, but why?

LFP batteries have not - in relative terms - even been around for all that long. Lead acid batteries don't talk to anything, and yet solar power systems have been working for a long time. I'm not arguing for lead acid, obviously. But, unfortunately most inverters still work like they are using lead acid.