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Sol-Ark problems by David Poz.. anyone else?

I saw the first video and knew exactly how this was going to turn out. I knew he was just going to throw enough unbalanced load on it to keep tripping the unit. What he needed to do was simply balance his 120V loads so that they are not all on the same leg and creating a massive imbalance.

My Inverter has only tripped once and that was when I deliberately turned on almost everything in the house to get to 9.5KW. His first big issue was not moving his breakers around to distribute the high wattage 120V plugs evenly and the second is that he is running very old firmware that was very conservative. Before I updated mine it would cut out just about 9.5KW. After the update I tried back the same load and it did not trip out. My electric bill pre solar was 1600 KWh a month and KWh used per month has only gone up since we got solar and I have had zero problems.

Even his own test involves putting 4630W on L2 and only 2871W on L1 was flawed.. If he had plugged that second space heater into L1 the inverter would not have tripped and he could have even plugged in a third one into L1 without tripping the unit.
I started thinking that the fact that Growatt and Gyll sponsor his channel made it a bit suspicious but then when he would not tell people how or from whom he "borrowed" a $7K Inverter, I got even more suspicious.

Bottom line is that he probably needs a bigger inverter for his house than the Sol-Ark and number two is that he basically used a high end Inverter as nothing more than a simple battery Inverter. He did not demonstrate a single one of the many features that make the Sol-Ark so nice to own.
 
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On the one hand, (I'm US) my AIMS inverters work the same way - e.g. each 120v let is only 50% of max and I went to a fair amount of trouble to make sure my circuits were well balanced so I could get 80% of the capacity. So I don't fault SolArk for this.

One thing that @Engineer775 emphasizes is that SolArks are EMP hardened. Implying that off-grid diehards might survive an EMP attack with a running system. Is this true at all? or is more just a surge protector?
 
I saw the first video and knew exactly how this was going to turn out. I knew he was just going to throw enough imbalanced load on it to keep tripping the unit. What he needed to do was simply balance his 120V loads so that they are not all on the same leg and creating a massive imbalance.

My Inverter has only tripped once and that was when I deliberately turned on almost everything in the house to get to 9.5KW. His first big issue was not moving his breakers around to distribute the high wattage 120V plugs evenly and the second is that he is running very old firmware that was very conservative. Before I updated mine it would cut out just about 9.5KW. After the update I tried back the same load and it did not trip out. My electric bill pre solar was 1600 KWh a month and it has only gone up since we got solar and I have had zero problems.

Even his own test involves putting 4630W on L2 and only 2871W on L1 was flawed.. If he had plugged that second space heater into L1 the inverter would not have tripped and he could have even plugged in a third one into L1 without tripping the unit.
I started thinking that the fact that Growatt and Gyll sponsor his channel made it a bit suspicious but then when he would not tell people how or from whom he "borrowed" a $7K Inverter, I got even more suspicious.

Bottom line is that he probably needs a bigger inverter for his house than the Sol-Ark and number two is that he basically used a high end Inverter as nothing more than a simple battery Inverter. He did not demonstrate a single one of the many features that make the Sol-Ark so nice to own.
Seemed to me that he was running basic loads.. legs only being 2000w out of balance isn’t much at all. As he said they were just running what they normally do with the sma and growatts. It can’t be denied that he can run his home without worrying to much about legs being out of balance when using the much cheaper growatts with an AT. For the high price of Solarks they should have a built in AT and 4500w on one leg shouldn’t shut it down. I agree though the SolArk has many other features/capabilities that the growatts don’t have. I believe he also said that. But for the load test the growatts won..
 
On the one hand, (I'm US) my AIMS inverters work the same way - e.g. each 120v let is only 50% of max and I went to a fair amount of trouble to make sure my circuits were well balanced so I could get 80% of the capacity. So I don't fault SolArk for this.

One thing that @Engineer775 emphasizes is that SolArks are EMP hardened. Implying that off-grid diehards might survive an EMP attack with a running system. Is this true at all? or is more just a surge protector?
It is only partially true..

I suspect the EMP they are talking about is the conductive component.. from either a nuclear (E1 pulse) or from a solar CME (E3 pulse).. and most likely the run of the mill lightening strike (E2).

But no way would it be protected from a radiative pulse.. The radiative component of a nuclear EMP can not be stopped because it couples directly into semiconductors at the component level.. and while the Sol-Ark has a metal enclosure, it is not nearly tight enough to stop a sub-millimeter wave on the order of 30 to 50 kV... I just don't see that happening.

The problem with products claiming EMP protection is that its like claiming something is waterproof.. And if you notice, products that claim they are waterproof will usually come with some specifications like "1 meter for 30 minutes" or something of that nature.. but with the EMP, they do not list any specs, or they list some odd-ball mil spec that is 400 pages long and near impossible to locate.

The short answer is that any product that claims to be EMP protected is referencing the conductive component of the EMP. Both nuclear and solar produce conductive pulses, but nuclear also produces a radiative pulse, and short of a Faraday cage, there's no stopping that.
 
I saw the first video and knew exactly how this was going to turn out. I knew he was just going to throw enough imbalanced load on it to keep tripping the unit. What he needed to do was simply balance his 120V loads so that they are not all on the same leg and creating a massive imbalance.

My Inverter has only tripped once and that was when I deliberately turned on almost everything in the house to get to 9.5KW. His first big issue was not moving his breakers around to distribute the high wattage 120V plugs evenly and the second is that he is running very old firmware that was very conservative. Before I updated mine it would cut out just about 9.5KW. After the update I tried back the same load and it did not trip out. My electric bill pre solar was 1600 KWh a month and it has only gone up since we got solar and I have had zero problems.

Even his own test involves putting 4630W on L2 and only 2871W on L1 was flawed.. If he had plugged that second space heater into L1 the inverter would not have tripped and he could have even plugged in a third one into L1 without tripping the unit.
I started thinking that the fact that Growatt and Gyll sponsor his channel made it a bit suspicious but then when he would not tell people how or from whom he "borrowed" a $7K Inverter, I got even more suspicious.

Bottom line is that he probably needs a bigger inverter for his house than the Sol-Ark and number two is that he basically used a high end Inverter as nothing more than a simple battery Inverter. He did not demonstrate a single one of the many features that make the Sol-Ark so nice to own.
All good and fair points... Even my SMA Sunny Islands would have to be balanced if I approached their limits.
 
Seemed to me that he was running basic loads.. legs only being 2000w out of balance isn’t much at all. As he said they were just running what they normally do with the sma and growatts. It can’t be denied that he can run his home without worrying to much about legs being out of balance when using the much cheaper growatts with an AT. For the high price of Solarks they should have a built in AT and 4500w on one leg shouldn’t shut it down. I agree though the SolArk has many other features/capabilities that the growatts don’t have. I believe he also said that. But for the load test the growatts won..
What he is doing with the two Growatts is only possible because he is running them through a transformer which basically allows both Inverters to balance the power on a single leg. So yes he can get more power out of any one leg but that is an Apples to Oranges comparison!

If he was being truly objective he could have also run the Sol-Ark with that same Transformer he is using on the Growatt and would have had more power available on each leg.
The problem would be solved but his efficiency levels would drop. Also while going on about what he thinks is the Sol-Arks 70W idle power consumption he fails to mention the Growatts are using 160W of Idle power, that's 3.8Kw of power per day! Not mentioning that to me that is also a big bias flag.

The shutdown was not caused totally by him going to 4630W but by him also putting the Sol-Ark into a totally unbalance mode by using almost half that amount of power on the other leg. He was actually told before hand in comment section of the first video that if he exceeded a 1600W Imbalance while going past 4500W on one leg that the Sol-Ark would shutdown. Instead of heeding that warning, he actually used it to create a shutdown.

At any point in time during his month long problems at home with shutdowns he could have called Sol-Ark like a normal objective reviewer and they would have told him that a firmware update would have solved most of his problems and at the same time they would have looked at his loads graphs and told him to switch the breaker on the Toaster and Electric Stove to opposite legs.

Also one interesting point that a commenter made is that if you look at the 5:40 mark you can see that he has a yellow warning light that he drawing 154.99 Amps, so he is exceeding the maximum amperage he set for the battery pack. Coincidentally this happens just before it trips but he says nothing about it in the video.
I suspect that he did not even go into the Menu and set the maximum allowed battery draw. He left it at 150A so the unit might have also tripped because he exceeded the setting.
 
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It is only partially true..

I suspect the EMP they are talking about is the conductive component.. from either a nuclear (E1 pulse) or from a solar CME (E3 pulse).. and most likely the run of the mill lightening strike (E2).

But no way would it be protected from a radiative pulse.. The radiative component of a nuclear EMP can not be stopped because it couples directly into semiconductors at the component level.. and while the Sol-Ark has a metal enclosure, it is not nearly tight enough to stop a sub-millimeter wave on the order of 30 to 50 kV... I just don't see that happening.

The problem with products claiming EMP protection is that its like claiming something is waterproof.. And if you notice, products that claim they are waterproof will usually come with some specifications like "1 meter for 30 minutes" or something of that nature.. but with the EMP, they do not list any specs, or they list some odd-ball mil spec that is 400 pages long and near impossible to locate.

The short answer is that any product that claims to be EMP protected is referencing the conductive component of the EMP. Both nuclear and solar produce conductive pulses, but nuclear also produces a radiative pulse, and short of a Faraday cage, there's no stopping that.
I agree and one big gripe I have with Sol-Ark is that they like people to believe that the Normal 12K unit is fully EMP hardened and it is not! You have to spend an additional $1400 to get the fully EMP hardened version.

As for the radiation, I think if your Inverter is fried due to that it is the least of your problems :cool: ;)
 
A while ago Dave Poz admitted he does not know much about this stuff. It does not look like things have changed much. I still watch his videos but he offers no analytical help but I am sure he gets views and revenue from doing this.
Yes I like his jovial attitude but it's kind of ridiculous to watch a Video on a technical subject when the guy making the video admits he has no technical knowledge whatsoever and did not even bother to stay at a Holiday Inn:p.

That is one of the reasons why I like Will's videos, he actually knows what he is doing.
 
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I agree and one big gripe I have with Sol-Ark is that they like people to believe that the Normal 12K unit is fully EMP hardened and it is not! You have to spend an additional $1400 to get the fully EMP hardened version.

As for the radiation, I think if your Inverter is fried due to that it is the least of your problems :cool: ;)

When speaking of EMP, the radiative component is not ionizing radiation, its just a high amplitude electromagnetic field in the air.. like a really strong radio wave.. so strong that it causes significant electron flow through even small and short conductors.

Radiation is classified into two categories 1) Ionizing radiation = bad 2) non-ionizing radiation = harmless.

Ionizing radiation is any electromagnetic wave with enough energy to strip an electron from its atomic nucleus.. this is why its called "ionizing".. it turns a perfectly happy atom into one that is short of an electron.. Kind of like a person who isn't playing with a full deck of cards.. LOL.. =not safe to be around.

Non-ionizing radiation, at the fundamental level, is the same as ionizing radiation, only with much less power. Your flashlight emits non-ionizing radiation, your body radiates infrared energy which is non-ionizing.. your microwave, fm radio transmitter, etc....

Ionizing radiation doesn't start until the nano-meter scale in the UVC range.. this is why germicidal UV lights are effective.. they strip electrons from proteins causing them to break down and kill the viruses..

Ionizing radiation can also be non-electromagnetic and come in the form of actual particles.. Alpha, beta and Neutron particles can cause serious problems.. and they are far worse because they aren't just a radio wave, they are a physical particle like a bullet. Alpha isn't so bad so long as you don't eat or drink it.. Beta is kind of bad, but Neutron will mess you right up and is almost impossible to shield against.. the lead apron may as well be a bed sheet..
Luckily, neutrons aren't happy on their own and quickly decay into a proton and an electron in about 10 minutes.

Also, when it comes to the ionizing radiation we associate with anything nuclear related, a power plant melting down is 1000 times worse than a nuclear weapon.
The radiation from nuclear weapons has a very short half life.. you could safely walk around in the blast area within a month or so.. and outside of that area, like down wind a few miles, most of the radiation is gone within 24 hours.. 90% of it is gone with 12 hours and it is safe to walk away.

But when a nuclear power plant melts down, the area will be uninhabitable for a few thousand years... This is due to the different types of isotopes created and released... While both processes are nuclear, they don't really have much in common.
 
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Yes I like his jovial attitude but it's kind of ridiculous to watch a video on a technical subject while the guy admits he has no technical knowledge. That is one of the reasons why I like Will's videos, he actually knows what he is doing.
robby: I'm with you on this. What bothers me even more is the amount of videos online where people do dangerous things, and laugh it off. With David Poz, it is the dangerous work habits, carrying his little girl around on his back while working with power tools and batteries, etc.

I generally don't place any value on anyone's opinion who is being paid to endorse something.
 
What he is doing with the two Growatts is only possible because he is running them through a transformer which basically allows both Inverters to fully power a single leg. So yes he can get 10KW out of any one leg but that is an Apples to Oranges comparison!

Technically, the Mid Point Transformer is only good for 5kw. I suppose if you had 2 of them he could get full capacity on 1 leg.

I see both sides of the story in this thread. Personally, I think the Sol-Ark is way overpriced for the capabilities of it. If it was $3500 instead, we wouldn't be worrying about this discussion.
 
Sol-Ark responded..

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Its not in name directed at poz, but man is it.. They go through and address all his complaints and slam him for not reading the manual..

Personally I see it nice to see some criticism.. Its a great machine, its over priced but there is no competition.
 
Poz has some great videos…

Mostly showcasing his energy and machinist skills.

Will has far more electrical skill and far better teaching of the subject.

I watch many you tubers, including Poz, and he is what he is. I certainly wouldn’t purchase something based solely on one of his reviews…

Cough cough, BYD … cough…
 
A Skybox at $3500 serves my needs very well. I actually paid $6000 for mine and felt it was a better value than the SolArk, in my opinion.
I will have a look. I was just reading about the radian a couple days ago. I did not dig in on the skybox. I will have to see how the compare.

When say they is competition, that is wrong really. There is no competing product that is quite as flexible and easy to setup from what I have seen... Still trying to find one if there is!
 
A Skybox at $3500 serves my needs very well. I actually paid $6000 for mine and felt it was a better value than the SolArk, in my opinion.
Did some digging on the skybox. At first I was thinking it might work. Then I see pricing. I am seeing $3500 USD for a Skybox. X2 to match the Sol-Ark. So pricing is pretty close. Spec wise they seem fairly similar. Two skybox's would take up a lot of room though.

I will keep reading about them but I don't think they will work for me.

Cheers
 
Guys,
-We lent the Solark to David for his off-grid review (if anybody was wondering) Many of our customers wanted to see a head-to-head day 1 out of the box DIY comparison of the exact 2 options David showed.
-We do not see videos before release and we do not want to tip scales ever, if there is a better option our job is to carry it.
-The batteries don't trip until 100A each, so 600A for his 6 stack, so they didn't trip, the batteries warn at over 3 hour discharge because long term use at that rate is pushing the battery life

David was trying to do what his channel does best: let normal people know what to expect upfront if they bought either option: the $2200 growatt + transformer stack or the $6500-7000 non-emp Solark.
It appears to us that he just tried his house on one option and then the other and had an opinion, that should be expected.
His video was an out-of-the box application review, not a complete review of the whole Solark product.
The Solark has a much longer warranty, is more efficient (but hey, panels are cheap these days) and will probably last longer but we can say that the Growatt is relatively cheap ($300) to rebuild if it is out of the 2 year warranty from our Texas repair shop and the failure rate has been under 1.5% so far. not everyone can drop all that extra money on a unit with features they don't need. Growatt is not yet UL compliant for jurisdictions that require that, (most off grid is unregulated and a lot is outside of the USA entirely).

We have no beef with Solark, our batteries are being coded to work with them and should be announced soon. Many Solark dealers use our batteries and they say it helps them sell more Solark Systems, heck we may carry them someday :)

We applaud Solark for releasing the new firmware info, maybe in the future it will be preloaded, We have seen some Solark customers buy transformers from us and fix David's kind of issue, maybe in the future you will get one included for free from Solark. We would expect that future Solarks will keep getting better and better as they always have.

The bottom line here is that these videos are good for the DIY community and they make the manufacturers focus on customer experience and value if they do their job and compete.
Send David any off-grid relevant info to this and maybe he'll have time for a follow up that helps beginners even more. the hate here is undeserved.

Large youtubers like David only succeed by telling the truth, if you ran a channel like him, you would get that in a tech space lies are just bad business all around because forums like these and other youtubers exist (Thanks Will!) Lots of critical comments are up on that video for anyone to see, David shows all of those because he is a fair guy.

The animosity is uncalled for, let's all have a good time and do our job by driving the conversation forward on all sides
 
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Guys,
-We lent the Solark to David for his off-grid review (if anybody was wondering) Many of our customers wanted to see a head-to-head day 1 out of the box DIY comparison of the exact 2 options David showed.
-We do not see videos before release and we do not want to tip scales ever, if there is a better option our job is to carry it.
-The batteries don't trip until 100A each, so 600A for his 6 stack, so they didn't trip, the batteries warn at over 3 hour discharge because long term use at that rate is pushing the battery life
He should have started the video with a full disclosure since you are selling a competing product and you are also his sponsor.
I saw no Head to Head comparison, what I saw was a Sol-Ark being crippled by a deliberate unbalanced load while just being used as a battery Inverter. If you wanted head to head comparison I would assume you would show the features of both Inverters which would then reveal why one cost a lot more than the other.

As for your statement about his battery bank capacity, that is irrelevant in this case and you should know that already.
The Sol-Ark has menu settings for the user to tell the Sol-Ark what is the maximum Amperage rate it can Charge and Discharge the battery pack that it is attached to.
It is obvious in his video that he had the setting much lower than what his bank size actually is. So of course if he tells the Sol-Ark not to use more than 100 Amps it will trip if he goes a bit past 100 Amps. It is also clear in the video that the indicator for maximum DC Amperage usage was flashing just before it tripped. Then Poz goes in and removes several of the viewer comments on that subject from the video.
David was trying to do what his channel does best: let normal people know what to expect upfront if they bought either option: the $2200 growatt + transformer stack or the $6500-7000 non-emp Solark.
It appears to us that he just tried his house on one option and then the other and had an opinion, that should be expected.
His video was an out-of-the box application review, not a complete review of the whole Solark product.
He had the Inverter hooked up and running for over a month and at the end of the day his review was simply one based on how well it handles an unbalanced load?
The Solark has a much longer warranty, is more efficient (but hey, panels are cheap these days) and will probably last longer but we can say that the Growatt is relatively cheap ($300) to rebuild if it is out of the 2 year warranty from our Texas repair shop and the failure rate has been under 1.5% so far. not everyone can drop all that extra money on a unit with features they don't need. Growatt is not yet UL compliant for jurisdictions that require that, (most off grid is unregulated and a lot is outside of the USA entirely).
Well while your here trying to do a solid for David it's always a good idea to plug your own products. ?
We have no beef with Solark, our batteries are being coded to work with them and should be announced soon. Many Solark dealers use our batteries and they say it helps them sell more Solark Systems, heck we may carry them someday :)
Somehow based on Sol-Arks response I kind of doubt that.
We applaud Solark for releasing the new firmware info, maybe in the future it will be preloaded, We have seen some Solark customers buy transformers from us and fix David's kind of issue, maybe in the future you will get one included for free from Solark. We would expect that future Solarks will keep getting better and better as they always have.
The bottom line here is that these videos are good for the DIY community and they make the manufacturers focus on customer experience and value if they do their job and compete.
How do your preload an inverter that was sold 9 months ago with the latest firmware?
David's problem could be fixed by not putting all the high wattage 120V loads on one leg! Do you guys not have your installers balance the load panel?

Send David any off-grid relevant info to this and maybe he'll have time for a follow up that helps beginners even more. the hate here is undeserved.
People already sent him info. I would rather see someone who actually has no skin in the game do a proper review.
Large youtubers like David only succeed by telling the truth, if you ran a channel like him, you would get that in a tech space lies are just bad business all around because forums like these and other youtubers exist (Thanks Will!) Lots of critical comments are up on that video for anyone to see, David shows all of those because he is a fair guy.

The animosity is uncalled for, let's all have a good time and do our job by driving the conversation forward on all sides
Yes, and him telling the Truth behind who requested the review and supplied him with the product would have prevented this mess. That is what Will Prowse does in every one of his Video's.
 
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