Sol-Ark 15K Setting Help Please

[SunDave]

If I ever re-do my busbar, I'll look into Victron or an equivalent. The busbar that came with the battery box is nickel plated brass (I'm 90% sure anyhow). I would rather have copper. It is supposedly rated for 300 amps, but I'm not sure I would trust it up to that. I keep my max draw set lower for now to be safe.

 

[Tsolar]

Your biggest problem is you need some kind of buss bar to connect each of those 10 batteries to some large cables to the inverters. Right now you have the one large cable from the inverters, then every battery after the first one is daisy chained with a little #6 cable, which is good for about 60amps continuous, 100a over a long period is going to get that #6 pretty hot. What you have going on is a 200a cable feeding a 60a cable.

I will commend you, one thing you have done properly is connect your main positive and negative cable to opposite batteries, this is great, it ensures that you charge/discharge each battery with equal amps!

Your best bet would be to get some battery cabinet/server rack, with a bus bar built in. Just like EG4 sells, and all the other serious server rack battery companies. You really should have just bought the 6 batteries in a cabinet package deal that EG4 sells. If your into DIY projects you can buy tin plated copper bar stock on amazon in all kinds of different sizes, do some research on what size bar can handle how many amps. But you have to build everything yourself, a way to mount it, a way to attatch all your battery cables, it comes as a plain piece of tin plated copper bar stock.

Each battery should connect to a bus bar, then each inverter should also connect to the buss bar, with 4/0 cable minimum, if you are using those "Y" splitter bus bars the other guy posted, or 2/0 cables if you just hook each battery breaker on the inverter up individually.

Where do your battery cables split and go to each inverter in your current setup?

Also I cant see any neutral wires in your Grid and Load connections in the inverters? Maybe they are just hiding in there behind the 2 hot wires, hard to tell from the pics.

Edit: just looked again, where are the "donuts" (chokes I believe) that come with the inverters. Instructions say to run your battery cables thru these donuts. I hope they are down in the gutter. If not, I suggest you go back and read the instructions, there is probably a lot of other things you missed, if you missed that step.

Somehow this install looks very professional yet very DIY at the same time. Did you have an electrician install the gutter and pipe and hang the inverters?

 

[mwk1000]

I used a pair of BlueSea 1000 amp power bar direct connect each of 4 batteries , and direct connect each breaker in my single 15K. good grade wire rated to 350 amps - overkill but allways cool to the touch !!!

 

[ClydesRanch]

Settings look ok from what I can see. I would turn off the time of use crap until you get the rest of it figured out. Kinda a long shot, but I have seen this behavior when someone forgets to turn the inverter on, blue ring side button, for some reason the inverter will act and look like its on, and then randomly shut down and turn back on, but this was with grid power hooked up. Also looks like you have battery comms all wired up but dont have the BMS Lithium option checked on the battery page, and are using Voltage Control? I prefer to use voltage control, but having all the comms wired up could maybe be causing problems.

Do you not have monitoring setup on this system? That could help you troubleshoot a lot and figure out where power is coming from and going to.

Not trying to be a dick, but your battery wiring sucks, sorry, hard truth. This could end up causing a huge problem, melted terminals, batteries, or worse, a fire. Id be curious to see how its hooked up to the inverters. But it looks like one set of maybe 4/0 cables coming from the bank, when you have the potential of 4 battery input breakers between the two solarks. If this is the case, then your main cables are good for about 200A, and you have the solark set to charge at 275a, then with the tiny 6awg cables between batteries, you will be melting those things in a hurry if you charge much over 100a for very long. If you charge the bank with 275a for 10 minutes, those 6awg cables will get boiling hot, along with the terminals on the batteries. Im not sure on the solarks, with 2 of them, if it would output 275a total, or 275a each, if each, then you are in for some real trouble!!! Those 6awg jumbers are designed to hook up to a bus bar, not jump a pack of 10 batteries together, they are supposed to handle the current of ONE battery, not NINE other batteries down the line. Im guessing you probably have the inverters daisy chained together too. I would run a seperate feed from each inverter to the bank. The rest of your install looks nice, atleast from the outside!

More description of your system will always help.

Also, turn your TEMPCO setting to 0, for lithium batteries.

Tsolar, we finally got the wiring sorted out. Installed fuses and busbars. Here's the photo. Other good news. Changed the time of use settings and our April electric bill was $70 on a 6500 square foot home. And most of that was fees and taxes. So we are getting there. Now working on making sure the generator backup works when grid is unavailable. I really appreciate your help and pushing me to dig in to get this right and safe.

 

[ClydesRanch]

Settings look ok from what I can see. I would turn off the time of use crap until you get the rest of it figured out. Kinda a long shot, but I have seen this behavior when someone forgets to turn the inverter on, blue ring side button, for some reason the inverter will act and look like its on, and then randomly shut down and turn back on, but this was with grid power hooked up. Also looks like you have battery comms all wired up but dont have the BMS Lithium option checked on the battery page, and are using Voltage Control? I prefer to use voltage control, but having all the comms wired up could maybe be causing problems.

Do you not have monitoring setup on this system? That could help you troubleshoot a lot and figure out where power is coming from and going to.

Not trying to be a dick, but your battery wiring sucks, sorry, hard truth. This could end up causing a huge problem, melted terminals, batteries, or worse, a fire. Id be curious to see how its hooked up to the inverters. But it looks like one set of maybe 4/0 cables coming from the bank, when you have the potential of 4 battery input breakers between the two solarks. If this is the case, then your main cables are good for about 200A, and you have the solark set to charge at 275a, then with the tiny 6awg cables between batteries, you will be melting those things in a hurry if you charge much over 100a for very long. If you charge the bank with 275a for 10 minutes, those 6awg cables will get boiling hot, along with the terminals on the batteries. Im not sure on the solarks, with 2 of them, if it would output 275a total, or 275a each, if each, then you are in for some real trouble!!! Those 6awg jumbers are designed to hook up to a bus bar, not jump a pack of 10 batteries together, they are supposed to handle the current of ONE battery, not NINE other batteries down the line. Im guessing you probably have the inverters daisy chained together too. I would run a seperate feed from each inverter to the bank. The rest of your install looks nice, atleast from the outside!

More description of your system will always help.

Also, turn your TEMPCO setting to 0, for lithium batteries.