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..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.
It is only partially true..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?
All good and fair points... Even my SMA Sunny Islands would have to be balanced if I approached their limits.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.
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!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..
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.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.
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.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.
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
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.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.
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!
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.Its a great machine, its over priced but there is no competition.
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.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.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.
He should have started the video with a full disclosure since you are selling a competing product and you are also his sponsor.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 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?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.
Well while your here trying to do a solid for David it's always a good idea to plug your own products. ?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).
Somehow based on Sol-Arks response I kind of doubt that.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
How do your preload an inverter that was sold 9 months ago with the latest firmware?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.
People already sent him info. I would rather see someone who actually has no skin in the game do a proper review.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.
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.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