Sol-Ark 15K in Operation--my thoughts on install and communication

[byteharmony]

Hi All,

Last Friday, I put my Sol-Ark 15K into production. This was a retrofit into an existing 18kw grid-tied system. For now, I exclusively AC-coupled, but will reconfigure once my garage gets to a more palatable temperature to DC-couple the Sol-Ark with ~12kw of my capacity. I also got the 15K talking via MODBUS RTU. Here are my thoughts on installation/operation and some notes on speaking MODBUS.

View attachment 105985

INSTALLATION:
As mentioned, I AC-coupled for now, but will adapt in the future to allow myself the ability to preferentially choose what system I will use for PV inversion. With the 200-amp contactor, I ran my entire household through the 15K. This is teamed up with 5x SOK SK48v100 Rack Mount LiFePO4 batteries from the guys at CurrentConnected.

• I mounted the Sol-Ark (all 138 lbs of her) ~6" over a 12"x12"x60" wire trough. I paper-traced the knockouts and transferred those down to punch out. I used EMT with set screw connectors. Even with ample 1-1/2" knockouts and (currently) no PV wire connected, the connection area gets tight. The ground and neutral bars need either crimped on ring connectors or lugs (what I used) to land those. This makes the right-hand side of the unit pretty congested. Sol-Ark went with a 1" knockout instead of 1-1/2" for the communications, so plan ahead if you don't have a partial stick of that laying around.
• Some issues:
  • The manual (as discussed at length here on the forum) is not well done. Upon first flipping the disconnect, you're kinda left at a loss for what to expect from the unit, especially when your loads don't immediately turn on.
  • The protective film on the screen is amazingly hard to remove!
  • The plastic cover to keep your conductive little fingers from getting where they shouldn't be does not have a large enough cutout for the battery breakers. That means you can't secure it flush and it bows out right around those breakers. How do you miss that??
  • If you use 4/0 battery cable like me, getting both through the toroids was a little difficult.
  • Adding the WiFi/Ethernet dongle and setting up the app is cumbersome at best. The app asks for your address and phone number and that's a big ole nope from me, especially noting that I had to allow previously blocked connections to/from China through my firewall to get the dongle to work.
  • Updating firmware for the Sol-Ark was painless, but it's a weird process. You request it from their site and a nice support engineer reviews that request and pushes that firmware to you. I checked the box for automatic updates during that process before I realized that when the firmware update is applied, the inverter restarts and cuts power to your loads!
  • The fan is louder than I expected. It also comes on randomly in my hot garage even though it is not performing any meaningful DC-to-AC conversion. It doesn't come on in the morning when the garage is cooler.
• My SOK batteries are awesome. They immediately communicated with the Sol-Ark with no fuss. Straight ethernet cable and one settings change, and you're speaking CanBus. As you can see in my picture, the battery lugs are not only prominently presented, but also uncovered. An errant brush with a shovel or weedeater shaft, and some sparkies will ensue. I've 3D-printed off some battery lug covers, but still tweaking a few dimensions on those.
• Overall, it's impressive what this hunk of electronics they call the 15K can do. Failover to battery involves the slightest flicker from your lights. Anything with capacitors will not even realize the power is no longer coming from the grid. It successfully started (albeit with some strain) my 4-ton upstairs A/C while running the downstairs heatpump and the rest of the house. Impressive indeed. Grid-tying was painless, although the 5-minute countdown from my Sunny Boys will get annoying.

COMMUNICATION:

• The PVPro app is better than I expected, but as mentioned several times before, being so reliant on the PRC for data/apps is a big turnoff. Politics aside, I'd rather have faith that even my seemingly innocuous data is staying safe. Yes, there is only a 5-minute refresh rate, but more on that in a second.
• With a lithium battery in place, you can speak MODBUS RTU over half-duplex RS-485. Since I already had a WattNode Modbus in my main panel, I can easily daisy chain the Sol-Ark with my WattNode and let the datalogger poll both of them. The Sol-Ark supposedly cannot change its address to anything other than 1 unless in a parallel application. Using the Modbus document posted on these forums, I was able to rapidly communicate and pull data from the Sol-Ark.
• Most parameters update every second, however, totals seem to update every 5 minutes which may tie to the app update interval.
• The Sol-Ark totals differ slightly from my SMA and WattNode readings. I've verified the SMA and WattNode to being damn-near revenue grade, so I'm thinking accuracy isn't the highest with the Sol-Ark, but time will tell when I get my analytics and dashboard built.

Let me know if you guys have any questions or want to see anything else. Appreciate all the advice I got on here before embarking on this install. I've still more things to play with, but so far I'm pretty happy with what I've done.

AMAZING REVIEW! The best one I've seen (perhaps @Will Prowse will do that follow up 15k video to his first work bench one and it will be amazing, perhaps he can just do your setup . My installation is going to look very similar to yours. Batteries far right feeding Sol ark 15k left feeding new 200 AMP panel middle (Wire size for sol ark grid 100 AMP service is just the right length so I can take the grid input to the sol ark and re route it into the new panel should the sol ark fail and need a trip to the warranty center) feeding the old existing wiring 125 A split panel.

Agree 15 k manual could be better. One thing I need right now that I'm sure I could ask support for but should be on the internet is the size of the conduit going into every sol ark hole. I think it's already answered but just to confirm:
2" EMT everywhere but COM which is 1".

Also I always see people using EMT, why not use PVC? It's cheaper? Especially if we are going to run a separate ground wire anyway? Or should we skip it?

I see mixed review, 6 AWG for ground vs 8 AWG (I'll use stranded) (actually, attached 12k manual says use 8 awg) why?

Neutral size, you can see 6 AWG for 12k, no recommendation in the 15k manual?

 

[Danke]

AMAZING REVIEW! The best one I've seen (perhaps @Will Prowse will do that follow up 15k video to his first work bench one and it will be amazing, perhaps he can just do your setup . My installation is going to look very similar to yours. Batteries far right feeding Sol ark 15k left feeding new 200 AMP panel middle (Wire size for sol ark grid 100 AMP service is just the right length so I can take the grid input to the sol ark and re route it into the new panel should the sol ark fail and need a trip to the warranty center) feeding the old existing wiring 125 A split panel.

Agree 15 k manual could be better. One thing I need right now that I'm sure I could ask support for but should be on the internet is the size of the conduit going into every sol ark hole. I think it's already answered but just to confirm:
2" EMT everywhere but COM which is 1".

Also I always see people using EMT, why not use PVC? It's cheaper? Especially if we are going to run a separate ground wire anyway? Or should we skip it?

I see mixed review, 6 AWG for ground vs 8 AWG (I'll use stranded) (actually, attached 12k manual says use 8 awg) why?

Neutral size, you can see 6 AWG for 12k, no recommendation in the 15k manual?

6 x 1 1/2” ports, 1 x 1” port

Could probably expand openings. Many probably use EMT because of DC wires.

I plan on using 4 AWG for ground. 000 copper for L1 & L2 and 00 copper for neutral.

 

[byteharmony]

@Wet1 @400bird @Hedges

Okay, I shut my solar off this morning on a bright, crisp day on the homestead...went inside and turned dryers and ovens on to draw my batteries down and subsequently charge them back to 100%. I had my Campbell Scientific logger polling all 5 batteries at 30 second intervals capturing several parameters from the BMS(s).

First, here is the setup:

View attachment 115602

Now to the charts. I pulled the batteries down to 60% and charged them back using solar at ~175Amps as I'm only using one of the SolArk's battery terminals at present.

Here are my starting capacities:

Battery 1	102.91Ah
Battery 2	103.92Ah
Battery 3	103.46Ah
Battery 4	103.73Ah
Battery 5	102.42Ah
TOTAL	516.44Ah

As expected, voltage across packs remained very consistent:View attachment 115592
A little difference starts showing up in current as battery 2 and battery 4 are at a higher magnitude than the other three:
View attachment 115595
But we're talking an amp or two overall. So, looking at an overall drawdown:
View attachment 115596
This plot shows the Battery 2 clearly did the most work with the other 4 closely lumped together until the last 15ah or so of charging.

So in summary:

Batt	Starting Capacity	Drawdown
Battery 1	102.91Ah	40.04Ah
Battery 2	103.92Ah	41.61Ah
Battery 3	103.46Ah	39.97Ah
Battery 4	103.73Ah	40.23Ah
Battery 5	102.42Ah	40.29Ah
TOTAL	516.44Ah	Min:39.97 Max: 41.61 Diff: 1.64Ah

Observations:

• Battery 3 contributed the least despite it being only 2 jumpers away from the leads
• Only 1.64Ah difference in packs
• The SolArk's 200Amp battery breakers work fantastically
• The BMS's don't appear to coordinate current between batteries other than in pre-charge scenarios
• My 4/0 jumpers between batteries don't appear to be a big bottleneck
• The difference probably isn't enough to get me to change the battery cable configuration.

Thank you so much for posting this. It will be years before I'll have the gear you do so I really appreciate it. Your work and attention to detail brings me back to my college days in the labs.

Have you done these tests with the + and - on battery 1 and 5?

I've been struggling to understand why people do that instead of your approach on battery 2 and 4. I would love to see how the results differ.

 

[byteharmony]

• The fan is louder than I expected. It also comes on randomly in my hot garage even though it is not performing any meaningful DC-to-AC conversion. It doesn't come on in the morning when the garage is cooler.

What do you think about adding thermocoupled larger diameter fans to the sol ark (maybe on the top? I don't have my sol ark yet to know what good options are). The idea here would be that you could control those fans and replace them cheaper than the built in sol ark fans. The noise really has me concerned as I will spend quite a bit of time near it.

 

[myles]

What do you think about adding thermocoupled larger diameter fans to the sol ark (maybe on the top? I don't have my sol ark yet to know what good options are). The idea here would be that you could control those fans and replace them cheaper than the built in sol ark fans. The noise really has me concerned as I will spend quite a bit of time near it.

They are noisy if your going to spend alot of time around it especially when using it loaded up! I have one of these as well, but its in my mechanical room with closed door. Whats worse though is It also makes a high pitch noise that would drive me bonkers if I was going to work close to it. Because I'm in and out of the room i like the noise knowing that everything is working but, I'd highly suggest not installing this in an area where you will be working alot, its worth keeping it out of the way, but not so far out of the way that you can't check on it often enough! :D

 

[GooseF16]

Hi All,

Last Friday, I put my Sol-Ark 15K into production. This was a retrofit into an existing 18kw grid-tied system. For now, I exclusively AC-coupled, but will reconfigure once my garage gets to a more palatable temperature to DC-couple the Sol-Ark with ~12kw of my capacity. I also got the 15K talking via MODBUS RTU. Here are my thoughts on installation/operation and some notes on speaking MODBUS.

View attachment 105985

INSTALLATION:
As mentioned, I AC-coupled for now, but will adapt in the future to allow myself the ability to preferentially choose what system I will use for PV inversion. With the 200-amp contactor, I ran my entire household through the 15K. This is teamed up with 5x SOK SK48v100 Rack Mount LiFePO4 batteries from the guys at CurrentConnected.

• I mounted the Sol-Ark (all 138 lbs of her) ~6" over a 12"x12"x60" wire trough. I paper-traced the knockouts and transferred those down to punch out. I used EMT with set screw connectors. Even with ample 1-1/2" knockouts and (currently) no PV wire connected, the connection area gets tight. The ground and neutral bars need either crimped on ring connectors or lugs (what I used) to land those. This makes the right-hand side of the unit pretty congested. Sol-Ark went with a 1" knockout instead of 1-1/2" for the communications, so plan ahead if you don't have a partial stick of that laying around.
• Some issues:
  • The manual (as discussed at length here on the forum) is not well done. Upon first flipping the disconnect, you're kinda left at a loss for what to expect from the unit, especially when your loads don't immediately turn on.
  • The protective film on the screen is amazingly hard to remove!
  • The plastic cover to keep your conductive little fingers from getting where they shouldn't be does not have a large enough cutout for the battery breakers. That means you can't secure it flush and it bows out right around those breakers. How do you miss that??
  • If you use 4/0 battery cable like me, getting both through the toroids was a little difficult.
  • Adding the WiFi/Ethernet dongle and setting up the app is cumbersome at best. The app asks for your address and phone number and that's a big ole nope from me, especially noting that I had to allow previously blocked connections to/from China through my firewall to get the dongle to work.
  • Updating firmware for the Sol-Ark was painless, but it's a weird process. You request it from their site and a nice support engineer reviews that request and pushes that firmware to you. I checked the box for automatic updates during that process before I realized that when the firmware update is applied, the inverter restarts and cuts power to your loads!
  • The fan is louder than I expected. It also comes on randomly in my hot garage even though it is not performing any meaningful DC-to-AC conversion. It doesn't come on in the morning when the garage is cooler.
• My SOK batteries are awesome. They immediately communicated with the Sol-Ark with no fuss. Straight ethernet cable and one settings change, and you're speaking CanBus. As you can see in my picture, the battery lugs are not only prominently presented, but also uncovered. An errant brush with a shovel or weedeater shaft, and some sparkies will ensue. I've 3D-printed off some battery lug covers, but still tweaking a few dimensions on those.
• Overall, it's impressive what this hunk of electronics they call the 15K can do. Failover to battery involves the slightest flicker from your lights. Anything with capacitors will not even realize the power is no longer coming from the grid. It successfully started (albeit with some strain) my 4-ton upstairs A/C while running the downstairs heatpump and the rest of the house. Impressive indeed. Grid-tying was painless, although the 5-minute countdown from my Sunny Boys will get annoying.

COMMUNICATION:

• The PVPro app is better than I expected, but as mentioned several times before, being so reliant on the PRC for data/apps is a big turnoff. Politics aside, I'd rather have faith that even my seemingly innocuous data is staying safe. Yes, there is only a 5-minute refresh rate, but more on that in a second.
• With a lithium battery in place, you can speak MODBUS RTU over half-duplex RS-485. Since I already had a WattNode Modbus in my main panel, I can easily daisy chain the Sol-Ark with my WattNode and let the datalogger poll both of them. The Sol-Ark supposedly cannot change its address to anything other than 1 unless in a parallel application. Using the Modbus document posted on these forums, I was able to rapidly communicate and pull data from the Sol-Ark.
• Most parameters update every second, however, totals seem to update every 5 minutes which may tie to the app update interval.
• The Sol-Ark totals differ slightly from my SMA and WattNode readings. I've verified the SMA and WattNode to being damn-near revenue grade, so I'm thinking accuracy isn't the highest with the Sol-Ark, but time will tell when I get my analytics and dashboard built.

Let me know if you guys have any questions or want to see anything else. Appreciate all the advice I got on here before embarking on this install. I've still more things to play with, but so far I'm pretty happy with what I've done.

suggest to move the negative feed to the inverter to the lower battery for a diagonal feed

 

[GooseF16]

"balancing" by BMS would be equalizing voltage between cells within a single battery. You should be able to read cell voltages from it.

Diagonal corners should be perfect for two batteries, not exactly perfect for more. If yours discharge within a couple percent of each other, should be good enough. Was that in the flat part of the curve? I'd expect it to balance out SoC at the top and bottom knees (currents diverging as needed to maintain similar voltage).

I have often wondered if in a 4 to 6 batt setup if you ran it diagonally but put an additional line at the mid point what would happen.. I think it would work with these fused batts.. just thinking...(scary)..

 

[Shimmy]

6 x 1 1/2” ports, 1 x 1” port

Could probably expand openings. Many probably use EMT because of DC wires.

So the manual is incorrect? It lists 50mm openings for everything but comm and 35mm for comm.

I think I would be inclined to do an auxiliary ground and neutral bus in the gutter. Really a shame they didn't make the box a little longer to both allow rear conduit entry and better overall cable bending volume.

 

[redleg]

Hi All,

Last Friday, I put my Sol-Ark 15K into production. This was a retrofit into an existing 18kw grid-tied system. For now, I exclusively AC-coupled, but will reconfigure once my garage gets to a more palatable temperature to DC-couple the Sol-Ark with ~12kw of my capacity. I also got the 15K talking via MODBUS RTU. Here are my thoughts on installation/operation and some notes on speaking MODBUS.

View attachment 105985

INSTALLATION:
As mentioned, I AC-coupled for now, but will adapt in the future to allow myself the ability to preferentially choose what system I will use for PV inversion. With the 200-amp contactor, I ran my entire household through the 15K. This is teamed up with 5x SOK SK48v100 Rack Mount LiFePO4 batteries from the guys at CurrentConnected.

• I mounted the Sol-Ark (all 138 lbs of her) ~6" over a 12"x12"x60" wire trough. I paper-traced the knockouts and transferred those down to punch out. I used EMT with set screw connectors. Even with ample 1-1/2" knockouts and (currently) no PV wire connected, the connection area gets tight. The ground and neutral bars need either crimped on ring connectors or lugs (what I used) to land those. This makes the right-hand side of the unit pretty congested. Sol-Ark went with a 1" knockout instead of 1-1/2" for the communications, so plan ahead if you don't have a partial stick of that laying around.
• Some issues:
  • The manual (as discussed at length here on the forum) is not well done. Upon first flipping the disconnect, you're kinda left at a loss for what to expect from the unit, especially when your loads don't immediately turn on.
  • The protective film on the screen is amazingly hard to remove!
  • The plastic cover to keep your conductive little fingers from getting where they shouldn't be does not have a large enough cutout for the battery breakers. That means you can't secure it flush and it bows out right around those breakers. How do you miss that??
  • If you use 4/0 battery cable like me, getting both through the toroids was a little difficult.
  • Adding the WiFi/Ethernet dongle and setting up the app is cumbersome at best. The app asks for your address and phone number and that's a big ole nope from me, especially noting that I had to allow previously blocked connections to/from China through my firewall to get the dongle to work.
  • Updating firmware for the Sol-Ark was painless, but it's a weird process. You request it from their site and a nice support engineer reviews that request and pushes that firmware to you. I checked the box for automatic updates during that process before I realized that when the firmware update is applied, the inverter restarts and cuts power to your loads!
  • The fan is louder than I expected. It also comes on randomly in my hot garage even though it is not performing any meaningful DC-to-AC conversion. It doesn't come on in the morning when the garage is cooler.
• My SOK batteries are awesome. They immediately communicated with the Sol-Ark with no fuss. Straight ethernet cable and one settings change, and you're speaking CanBus. As you can see in my picture, the battery lugs are not only prominently presented, but also uncovered. An errant brush with a shovel or weedeater shaft, and some sparkies will ensue. I've 3D-printed off some battery lug covers, but still tweaking a few dimensions on those.
• Overall, it's impressive what this hunk of electronics they call the 15K can do. Failover to battery involves the slightest flicker from your lights. Anything with capacitors will not even realize the power is no longer coming from the grid. It successfully started (albeit with some strain) my 4-ton upstairs A/C while running the downstairs heatpump and the rest of the house. Impressive indeed. Grid-tying was painless, although the 5-minute countdown from my Sunny Boys will get annoying.

COMMUNICATION:

• The PVPro app is better than I expected, but as mentioned several times before, being so reliant on the PRC for data/apps is a big turnoff. Politics aside, I'd rather have faith that even my seemingly innocuous data is staying safe. Yes, there is only a 5-minute refresh rate, but more on that in a second.
• With a lithium battery in place, you can speak MODBUS RTU over half-duplex RS-485. Since I already had a WattNode Modbus in my main panel, I can easily daisy chain the Sol-Ark with my WattNode and let the datalogger poll both of them. The Sol-Ark supposedly cannot change its address to anything other than 1 unless in a parallel application. Using the Modbus document posted on these forums, I was able to rapidly communicate and pull data from the Sol-Ark.
• Most parameters update every second, however, totals seem to update every 5 minutes which may tie to the app update interval.
• The Sol-Ark totals differ slightly from my SMA and WattNode readings. I've verified the SMA and WattNode to being damn-near revenue grade, so I'm thinking accuracy isn't the highest with the Sol-Ark, but time will tell when I get my analytics and dashboard built.

Let me know if you guys have any questions or want to see anything else. Appreciate all the advice I got on here before embarking on this install. I've still more things to play with, but so far I'm pretty happy with what I've done.

sounds great. now for my small old brain. when you did your steller load testing did you have your 15k connected to the grid? also were you getting any pv power? i love hearing load tests using heat pumps and big ACs . i have 2 two ton closed loop water furances and i dont know what inverter i need to run them

 

[kdub23]

sounds great. now for my small old brain. when you did your steller load testing did you have your 15k connected to the grid? also were you getting any pv power? i love hearing load tests using heat pumps and big ACs . i have 2 two ton closed loop water furances and i dont know what inverter i need to run them

Hey redleg,

15K was disconnected from grid. This was before I DC-coupled my panels, so no PV contribution since the AC-coupled inverters were in 1741 shutdown mode. Also this was dusk. So suffice to say, it was the inverter and the batteries only.

I’ve since installed a soft start, but with 117.5 inrush amps, the Sol-Ark started the 4-ton with only minor light dimming in the house. This was also with my 5-ton heat pump running, although since it’s a variable speed inverter based Lennox, it wasn’t pulling tremendous load at the time.

 

[Danke]

So the manual is incorrect? It lists 50mm openings for everything but comm and 35mm for comm.

I think I would be inclined to do an auxiliary ground and neutral bus in the gutter. Really a shame they didn't make the box a little longer to both allow rear conduit entry and better overall cable bending volume.

I was referring to Set Screw Connectors. I know 1 1/2” works, and I’m guessing 1” for the Comm hole, but I’m planning on just enlarging that hole to use 1 1/4” Set Screw Connector.

 

[redleg]

Hey redleg,

15K was disconnected from grid. This was before I DC-coupled my panels, so no PV contribution since the AC-coupled inverters were in 1741 shutdown mode. Also this was dusk. So suffice to say, it was the inverter and the batteries only.

I’ve since installed a soft start, but with 117.5 inrush amps, the Sol-Ark started the 4-ton with only minor light dimming in the house. This was also with my 5-ton heat pump running, although since it’s a variable speed inverter based Lennox, it wasn’t pulling tremendous load at the time.

Great review sounds like you have a keeper there.

 

[629658]

Hey redleg,

15K was disconnected from grid. This was before I DC-coupled my panels, so no PV contribution since the AC-coupled inverters were in 1741 shutdown mode. Also this was dusk. So suffice to say, it was the inverter and the batteries only.

I’ve since installed a soft start, but with 117.5 inrush amps, the Sol-Ark started the 4-ton with only minor light dimming in the house. This was also with my 5-ton heat pump running, although since it’s a variable speed inverter based Lennox, it wasn’t pulling tremendous load at the time.

I think we will see AIO’s in lots of homes with and without PV in the next 10 yrs. Even without PV they allow much more control of energy use. Add ESS and a genny and you have a backup power source like the powerwall with more features.

 

[beastman]

Hi All,

Last Friday, I put my Sol-Ark 15K into production. This was a retrofit into an existing 18kw grid-tied system. For now, I exclusively AC-coupled, but will reconfigure once my garage gets to a more palatable temperature to DC-couple the Sol-Ark with ~12kw of my capacity. I also got the 15K talking via MODBUS RTU. Here are my thoughts on installation/operation and some notes on speaking MODBUS.

View attachment 105985

INSTALLATION:
As mentioned, I AC-coupled for now, but will adapt in the future to allow myself the ability to preferentially choose what system I will use for PV inversion. With the 200-amp contactor, I ran my entire household through the 15K. This is teamed up with 5x SOK SK48v100 Rack Mount LiFePO4 batteries from the guys at CurrentConnected.

• I mounted the Sol-Ark (all 138 lbs of her) ~6" over a 12"x12"x60" wire trough. I paper-traced the knockouts and transferred those down to punch out. I used EMT with set screw connectors. Even with ample 1-1/2" knockouts and (currently) no PV wire connected, the connection area gets tight. The ground and neutral bars need either crimped on ring connectors or lugs (what I used) to land those. This makes the right-hand side of the unit pretty congested. Sol-Ark went with a 1" knockout instead of 1-1/2" for the communications, so plan ahead if you don't have a partial stick of that laying around.
• Some issues:
  • The manual (as discussed at length here on the forum) is not well done. Upon first flipping the disconnect, you're kinda left at a loss for what to expect from the unit, especially when your loads don't immediately turn on.
  • The protective film on the screen is amazingly hard to remove!
  • The plastic cover to keep your conductive little fingers from getting where they shouldn't be does not have a large enough cutout for the battery breakers. That means you can't secure it flush and it bows out right around those breakers. How do you miss that??
  • If you use 4/0 battery cable like me, getting both through the toroids was a little difficult.
  • Adding the WiFi/Ethernet dongle and setting up the app is cumbersome at best. The app asks for your address and phone number and that's a big ole nope from me, especially noting that I had to allow previously blocked connections to/from China through my firewall to get the dongle to work.
  • Updating firmware for the Sol-Ark was painless, but it's a weird process. You request it from their site and a nice support engineer reviews that request and pushes that firmware to you. I checked the box for automatic updates during that process before I realized that when the firmware update is applied, the inverter restarts and cuts power to your loads!
  • The fan is louder than I expected. It also comes on randomly in my hot garage even though it is not performing any meaningful DC-to-AC conversion. It doesn't come on in the morning when the garage is cooler.
• My SOK batteries are awesome. They immediately communicated with the Sol-Ark with no fuss. Straight ethernet cable and one settings change, and you're speaking CanBus. As you can see in my picture, the battery lugs are not only prominently presented, but also uncovered. An errant brush with a shovel or weedeater shaft, and some sparkies will ensue. I've 3D-printed off some battery lug covers, but still tweaking a few dimensions on those.
• Overall, it's impressive what this hunk of electronics they call the 15K can do. Failover to battery involves the slightest flicker from your lights. Anything with capacitors will not even realize the power is no longer coming from the grid. It successfully started (albeit with some strain) my 4-ton upstairs A/C while running the downstairs heatpump and the rest of the house. Impressive indeed. Grid-tying was painless, although the 5-minute countdown from my Sunny Boys will get annoying.

COMMUNICATION:

• The PVPro app is better than I expected, but as mentioned several times before, being so reliant on the PRC for data/apps is a big turnoff. Politics aside, I'd rather have faith that even my seemingly innocuous data is staying safe. Yes, there is only a 5-minute refresh rate, but more on that in a second.
• With a lithium battery in place, you can speak MODBUS RTU over half-duplex RS-485. Since I already had a WattNode Modbus in my main panel, I can easily daisy chain the Sol-Ark with my WattNode and let the datalogger poll both of them. The Sol-Ark supposedly cannot change its address to anything other than 1 unless in a parallel application. Using the Modbus document posted on these forums, I was able to rapidly communicate and pull data from the Sol-Ark.
• Most parameters update every second, however, totals seem to update every 5 minutes which may tie to the app update interval.
• The Sol-Ark totals differ slightly from my SMA and WattNode readings. I've verified the SMA and WattNode to being damn-near revenue grade, so I'm thinking accuracy isn't the highest with the Sol-Ark, but time will tell when I get my analytics and dashboard built.

Let me know if you guys have any questions or want to see anything else. Appreciate all the advice I got on here before embarking on this install. I've still more things to play with, but so far I'm pretty happy with what I've done.

Beautiful install. I was curious what 12x12x60 wire trough you purchased. I too am installing a 15k solark and have 6 SOK batteries. It's in a 10x12 utility shed/pumphouse. So many options on the wire troughs and prices are all over the place. Thanks - Brock