diy solar

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Sol-Ark 15K All in One Inverter Released.

So I understand, you have both the negative and positive fused? I'm looking to hookup a sol-ark 15K to two Eg4 racks of batteries and I was just thinking about using 1x Lynx Distributor. Only hot is fused and it's technically double fused, but I presume it should work and simply things?
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Curious, what do you get from using the Lynx instead of the EG4 rack's built-in bus bars?
 
@Bits-N-Nibbles The bus bars are for connecting all the batteries in parallel within the rack. However when you're connecting 1200 amps of batteries to the Sol-Ark you should have a fused connection beside the breakers.

In my situation, I'm having (2X) 30kW racks of EG4 batteries, which means I will have two positive and two negative wires, one from each battery rack. So I could hook it up this way with no fuses and the load is not shared between each battery bank. This configuration could cause the Sol-Ark breaker to trip cause it can pull I think a maximum of about 275 amps, but each breaker is only 200, so it would trip.

1669861759369.png


But if I use the lynx it's configured this way with fuses and the postive and negative conductors are shared between both breakers on the Sol-Ark.

1669861914632.png
This configuration would allow me to parallel up to 4 racks of batteries. (notice the positions on the left are still open for two more positive and negative conductors).
 
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I like that. One small suggestion coming from the Sol-A?rk I would land one set of cables on each end of the Lynx so that the power is evenly spread across the bus. Probably doesnt matter but I just think you would be feeding your bus from the Sol Ark a little more even. But either way I think this is a very good way to do what you want to do.
 
Two questions
1.0 what battery empty or battery shut down voltage do people use to prevent the sol-ark from driving battery SOC to zero? I've set battery empty at 50 volts and battery shut down at 50.6 volts for my 16 cell battery. Should I invert those settings?
The inverter continues to draw current from the battery after the shutdown voltages and it drives the battery so low that the BMS needs to step in and disable discharge. Is there any way to prevent this? Of course this only happens with bad PV days which are common in the area that I live in


2 if I set the JK BMS turn off voltage to 2.5 volts and the BMS turns itself off does this then prevent the solar from recharging the the battery or even with the jk BMS off will it accept charge until it exceeds the low voltage and turn itself back on automatically.
 
Two questions
1.0 what battery empty or battery shut down voltage do people use to prevent the sol-ark from driving battery SOC to zero? I've set battery empty at 50 volts and battery shut down at 50.6 volts for my 16 cell battery. Should I invert those settings?
The inverter continues to draw current from the battery after the shutdown voltages and it drives the battery so low that the BMS needs to step in and disable discharge. Is there any way to prevent this? Of course this only happens with bad PV days which are common in the area that I live in


2 if I set the JK BMS turn off voltage to 2.5 volts and the BMS turns itself off does this then prevent the solar from recharging the the battery or even with the jk BMS off will it accept charge until it exceeds the low voltage and turn itself back on automatically.
I don't have the equipment to test, but typically you would get those numbers to use from a manual or spec sheet for your batteries. Also if the batteries have communication abilities with Sol-Ark plugging them into the communication feature will basically auto-program the Sol-Ark for your batteries.

With regards to the BMS, it both tries to prevent overdraw and overcharge, but when an overdraw condition is triggered, it's my understanding that it shouldn't limit the ability for the battery to receive a charge. But you would have to test or check your documentation to confirm, however, this would be a really odd use case to prevent a battery from charging after it's BMS prevented an over-discharge event.
 
50V / 16s= 3.125V per cell.

Link has table and graph for 48V pack. 50V is around knee of the curve, so IR drop at higher current could make BMS vs. inverter voltage vary.
How about 48V vs. 46V? Far apart in voltage, but both at a couple percent SoC.

A device that measures amp-hours could work better, but only if re-zeroed (or "fulled") often enough to not have accumulated error.



2.5V/cell would be 40V

3V/cell or 48V is shown as 9%

Find chart/table for your battery, which may differ.
 
I don't have the equipment to test, but typically you would get those numbers to use from a manual or spec sheet for your batteries. Also if the batteries have communication abilities with Sol-Ark plugging them into the communication feature will basically auto-program the Sol-Ark for your batteries.

With regards to the BMS, it both tries to prevent overdraw and overcharge, but when an overdraw condition is triggered, it's my understanding that it shouldn't limit the ability for the battery to receive a charge. But you would have to test or check your documentation to confirm, however, this would be a really odd use case to prevent a battery from charging after it's BMS prevented an over-discharge event.
Hello
I have a home built battery with jk BMS. 32 eve cells. 1 BMS per group of 16. No canbus communication available. The BMS has a turn myself off feature if a single cell goes below a setpoint you program. This can prevent battery damage if you have a system set up say in a remote cabin with two weeks of snow and no solar to recharge the battery. I'm confident that the future turns the BMS off I just don't understand if the recovery is automatic or if once this feature shuts off the BMS manual intervention is required.

Hedges current higher V settings (50.6 and 50v ) still result in the battery going to 0% SOC. I don't understand how moving those parameters lower as you suggest can help? Am I missing something?
 
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Two questions
1.0 what battery empty or battery shut down voltage do people use to prevent the sol-ark from driving battery SOC to zero? I've set battery empty at 50 volts and battery shut down at 50.6 volts for my 16 cell battery. Should I invert those settings?
The inverter continues to draw current from the battery after the shutdown voltages and it drives the battery so low that the BMS needs to step in and disable discharge. Is there any way to prevent this? Of course this only happens with bad PV days which are common in the area that I live in


2 if I set the JK BMS turn off voltage to 2.5 volts and the BMS turns itself off does this then prevent the solar from recharging the the battery or even with the jk BMS off will it accept charge until it exceeds the low voltage and turn itself back on automatically.
Just an update , got feedback from Sol-ark on my issue, and the tech mentioned in passing that "IF" I was using the "time of day" feature to backfill load from the battery at night (I am) the low battery setting on that screen takes precedence over all other battery low/stop discharge settings. I had that at 49V for my 32 EVE cells with JK BMS and that was just too low. I reset that to 51.6V and now all is well, overnight, or on several days with zero PV available (common in my area this time of year).. the discharge of the battery terminates, and the BMS reports around 20% on each battery, which slowly drops due to the Sol-ark drawing a small amount of power at all times, and I stay away from BMS shutdown due to one cell low, and the Sol-Ark is in complete control of the battery. I still don't quite understand why two sets of identical cells purchased at the same time don't both reach 100%, one hits 100, the other 93%, but perhaps its just cycles , and I need more cycles on the most recently built battery.

So.. Hope this information helps others, Key point, if you are using the time of day feature on the Sol-ark, that low battery setting is the one in charge, and all the other low battery settings become irrelevant.

CPU
 
This is exactly why I switched to using the percentage instead of voltage for the Time of Day stats. Much more consistent.

As for your 100% and 93%, you have an imbalance of resistance to each pack. 1 Is charging faster than the other because the resistance to each pack is different. What voltage are you charging up to?
 
This is exactly why I switched to using the percentage instead of voltage for the Time of Day stats. Much more consistent.

As for your 100% and 93%, you have an imbalance of resistance to each pack. 1 Is charging faster than the other because the resistance to each pack is different. What voltage are you charging up to?
Hello the Sol-arc battery full voltages are as follows:

Battery 1 96% 54.27v
Battery 2 93% 54.31v

Per BMS but Sol-ark reports 99-100%

How exactly do you select battery % in time of day. My experience is the the Sol-ark SOC is always at least 10-30% off when compared to the battery BMS.

As of know with full sun and >2000w charge going in

Battery BMS reporting as follows
Battery 1 53.7 volts 51% charged 61.7 amps input
Battery too 53.8 volts 42% charged 51.5 amps input

Solark reports 54.39

So it appears I have one battery 0.1 volts higher voltage but BMS thinks SOC is less than the initially installed battery.

Note that battery one has 22 cycles and battery two only has three cycles so I'm hoping as the cycles grow the matching and the percent state of charge gets better
 
I know Generac doesn’t use 2 wire start but there is a workaround available. Engineer 775 on YouTube has done some Generac installs with the Sol Ark. One of his videos he completely eliminated the ATS and brought it in on the Gen leg. I have a Kohler 18k generator attached to my Sol Ark through an ATS on the grid leg.


In this configuration, I had a complete misunderstanding on how the Sol Ark works with the Generator and ATS. So the generator is completely isolated behind the ATS normally. Even if running it cannot pass power. The ATS is monitoring grid in an outage, the ATS will throw the contactor and now the gen is attached to the Sol Ark electrically. The Sol Ark will not immediately start the generator it will use solar and battery until they are exhausted to our setting of 30% SOC. At that time the Sol Ark will start the generator and charge the batteries and then shut down. About 1-1.5 hours for us. This cycle will repeat until power is restored and the ATS then reconnects to grid.

The point is the generator is going to be used in small increments to keep your batteries charged. It is not used primarily to power your loads as you are used to. This provides a significant reduction in fuel usage. During daylight, your solar will perform this so the generator will primarily be used at night when your batteries drop below 30% SOC.

It works well and saves us a lot of fuel usage instead of running 24/7 during a grid outage.

In this setup the Sol Ark uses a CT to monitor the grid leg and it can tell if the power coming down the grid leg is generator or utility power. When grid is restored the Sol Ark will see it and act accordingly.
I'm getting the advice that is' better to use the ATS on the grid-input as opposed to the generator input in the Sol-Ark. For the two-wire start, did you have to run that between the ATS and the Sol Ark, or did it go all the way back to the generator directly?
 
I'm getting the advice that is' better to use the ATS on the grid-input as opposed to the generator input in the Sol-Ark. For the two-wire start, did you have to run that between the ATS and the Sol Ark, or did it go all the way back to the generator directly?
You can grab the two wire start at either place. I cut mine in the ATS and left them hanging on the ATS side and then brought them into the Sol Ark.
 
Where'd you hear this? I spoke with support who could not confirm.

I find it very annoying that they will not publish any sort of changelog for their firmware updates.
I heard it from a Tech. Yes it is very annoying that they won't publish it. I have asked until I am blue in the face and Nada.
 
Maxing out the 15kW inverter limit:
20230208_112228.jpg
It seems to be a hard limit right at 15,000W, at least in Limited to Home mode. As the load fluctuated, the draw from the grid was always within 0.01kW of the load power minus 15kW.
 
For some reason I thought that each MPPT was limited to 6500W but it looks like that can be exceededScreenshot_20230210_130023_PV Pro.jpg
 
For some reason I thought that each MPPT was limited to 6500W but it looks like that can be exceeded
Or so you would think, 6400w*3MPPTs=19.2Kw (full rated PV output)
On my MPPT2, I have 7S2P 460w BlueSun bi-facials totaling 6440w. Except that they were doing almost 20% over in single digit weather (Fahrenheit).
IMG_20230211_082159.jpg
 

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Or so you would think, 6400w*3MPPTs=19.2Kw (full rated PV output)
On my MPPT2, I have 7S2P 460w BlueSun bi-facials totaling 6440w. Except that they were doing almost 20% over in single digit weather (Fahrenheit).
View attachment 134311
I hit over 8800W on a single MPPT last week so there must not be a wattage limit for individual inputs (other than the implied limit based on the voltage and amp limits).
 
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