diy solar

diy solar

Sunny island 6048

maxx123

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Nov 27, 2019
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Curious if anyone has played around with these units since DC solar went bankrupt in the spring and flooded ebay with them.
most youtube is corporate crap. best way to wire them with midnite classic 250 also a deal on ebay. thanks to DC solar
 
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I grabbed a few, good German product, bad German interface. SMA used to sell a "webbox" for it so you could view stats and such online, no longer sells it. You will be making room in your mind for that damn manual and the quick menu access stuff. If you want to use the SMA's with any lio* you should get a BMS from REC, or Batrium. SMA has a newer Sunny Island out now. https://www.sma.de/en/products/battery-inverters/sunny-island-44m-60h-80h.html

get bus bars for your DC and just connect battery, solar charger, SMA's and away you go.
 
I first bought a power jack 60000w/15000w inverter. it had a whopping 8 pages half were Chinese girls in bikini, for 600us. After that, you know why ETL UL and CSA are there. . the sma was 235 pages. no girls, true german product over-engineered and leave nothing in detail for the consumer. like there cars for service. what a well-built machine. SMA 08 hate to ask what that goes for> I preferred $1500 for the 6048. along with really poor packaging and ups to drag it around. beat the hell out of it, built like a tank, weight 160lbs like the BYD batteries.
The latest update claims it accepts lithium batteries even has byd in its thumbs up.
 
$1500 is a good price, I bet these cost SMA over a $1000 to build. Lost of good name brand components.

Unless you have a BMS that can talk CAN to the SMA you will not be using the lithium setting. That is just for external BMS. SMA never needed a firmware change to work with lithium as you could always change the charge settings.
 
I do know the midnite 250 classic work with the SMA 6048 as shown on their site, Picasso I am impressed with your knowledge in regards to SMA.
When i bought these units I purchased 2 for running 220v seems only 110v per unit. my concern doing 2 is the power consumption. is there any way to run 110v/220v off a single unit. get rid of the slave
 
You can get a small transformer to go 120v to 240V. Depends how big the 240v load is you need to power. Setting up the SMA's in 240v is one of the more easy things to do with them. Just set one as master and one slave and your done.
 
The new Sunny Island in the link above are for the European Market. For US I believe the SI-6048 (and SI-4548) are still the latest ones.

Picasso,

Is it possible to connect a Sunny Island to a DIY LiFePo4 Battery Bank on an AC Couple Setup? I already have a Sunny Boy in my grid tie setup. When you say "SMA never needed a firmware change to work with lithium as you could always change the charge settings". Are you referring to an external charger like the Midnite Solar or the internal Sunny Boy Charger?

I bought two SI-6048 (I guess they also came from DC Solar) for a 240V Split Phase setup and I am looking for battery options. Currently considering FLA or AGM. Not lithium because I thought the Sunny Island would not work with a DIY Lithium. Is that true?
 
The Euro one is the new one, SMA is just blowing out the rest of the 6048-US stockpile. We will see it next year in the US.

If you have a Sunny Boy yes it will charge your Sunny Islands. by default it will do a 3 stage lvl of charge. example min/med/max with max being the full output from your Sunny Boy. The Sunny Boy needs an rs485 ($100) card to talk to the master Sunny Island however if you want finer charge control, has to be ordered via a real SMA dealer as mod#'s and such need to match. When your batts are full the Sunny Island will raise the frequency of the line voltage, the Sunny boy will see this and start going to sleep for 5mins. with the rs485 card the Sunny Boy wont sleep like that and will throttle its output much better example 1-10 for charge lvl's. I've used my system in this setup but moved my panels off the Sunny Boy to another system for winter.

The firmware update SMA did for lith* just lets the Sunny Island talk to a BMS. The BMS reports charge lvl and if its ok to discharge or charge.

Sunny Island works great with Lith*. Just make sure to use a BMS that can talk the the Sunny Island when used with Sunny Boys. see http://www.rec-bms.com/BMSSMA.html or https://support.batrium.com/article...sunny-island-inverter-charger-with-a-watchmon


Edit: I should add I have never used a Sunny boy and Sunny Island in a real GRID connection. only Off-grid so I'm not to sure how your grid connected Sunny boy will react. You would need to get an installer code I think to change the current grid behavior of your Sunny Boy as this needs to be set in the first few hours of startup.
 
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Yes. If you want to change the mode of the Sunny Boy you need a Grid Guard Code. (I am not sure if this is free or not). The Sunny Boy mode is set after 10 hours of use. I think that using the communications card (RS485) the Sunny Island place the Suunny Boy into Off Grid Mode during a power failure. That way it can throttle its output when the batteries are close to full.

Have you use the Sunny Boys with Lith* batteries using one of those external BMS? I am debating if going with Floded Lead Acid or AGM. I was not aware that using an external BMS with a DIY Lith* was an option for the US Version of the Sunny Island.
 
Yes I use Nissan Leaf cells in a 14s8p, 2X Sunny Islands for 240volt off grid. Had a Sunny Boy on it but didnt have a mount for panels yet so I moved the solar to my China all in one unit it for winter. Damn winter came early for us.
 
Ohh Cool!. Using a Sunny Island with Lithium sounds more complicated that using Lithium with an Outback Radiant in DC Couple and Charge Controller. Which BMS are you using for the Nissan Leaf Battery Pack?
 
You can still DC charge a Sunny Island system with an external MPPT and make it simple. I have both REC and Batrium, REC is active for the Sunny Islands because I like the external display it has and Batrium I use for blanacing and testing cells because of its high balance capability. I also have a Outback Radian and VFXR(A). My Radian is a none (A) model so the voltage is not wide enough for lith*. I have 4 active systems on my 100 acre property and no power lines for 25 miles. The Sunny Boy is damn handy for its 2000watts output when you want to take the battery system offline or do other work so well worth the headache to me.
 
Sunny islands are the best but you have to set everything up properly (load disconnect relay is a big one) if the cutoff voltage was lower on them i would have 4 of them especially at this price they cost us almost $4k from our vendors.
I have a grid gard code. Offgrid you dont need the rs485 (you just need to tighten the Frequency window on the sunny boy and put it in offgrid mode)
Ive seen it throttle the sunnyboy to 23watts LOL

Grid tie is more complicated and you need the cards on the master sunny island and the sunny boy/s to communicate that its going from gridtie to offgrid to the sunny boy. Ive setup 6 or 7 sunny island ac coupled system and they are the best of the best compared to everything else imo
Ive also done an equal number of radians
And only 2 schnider systems.
 
Solar Tech,

I was having second thoughts about purchasing the dual Sunny Island for the 240V Split Phase setup. Main reason is that I have seen the Radians Web interface and the Mate 3 and it looks very nice. Not sure if SMA has something similar for the Sunny Island. But I also heard Sunny Boys are the best for AC Couple because they were design to work with the Sunny Boys and they control the Sunny Boys very nice.

Since I have a Sunny Boy I decided to go that route. Also because I got them at 50% off. I have not installed mine yet. I still need to purchase the batteries. What battery type are you using with the Sunny Boys? FLA, AGM or other? Any recommendations for a grid tied backup setup.
 
I did the same buy 2 sunny island 6048 to get 240v, do I actually need both to get 240v,? running both at around 6000w total seems a waste and the battery size I heard has to be huge. someone said at least 20k. nothing like building a system to just have enough power to run the inverters. maybe a night light :cool:
 
maxx123,

You do need two Sunny Island to get 240V unless you use an autotransformer that will allow to get 240V split phase from a single Sunny Island. If you have 2 just use the two in split phase master and slave setup and forget about the transformer. Having 2 is not really a waste you will only use the power that you need, the rated power is just reserve in case you need it.

How will you charge the Sunny Island batteries? Via AC Coupling with a Sunny Boy or using an external MPPT controller? If you use any of those 2 options the battery bank does not have to be huge. That is true for other inverters in AC Coupling but not the Sunny Island combines with a Sunny Boy as they can throttle the Sunny Boy output (in an off grid or backup setup) to protect the batteries. Other inverters are not very smart when connected via AC Coupling.
 
using 2 midnight classic 250 from the same sell out of dc solar bankruptcy
 
Depending on how many PV modules you have you may only need one Midnight Classic charger. Remember the battery bank is shared between the two Sunny Islands. You do not need two separate battery banks.
 
20 sunpower 327w 60v was going to run 2 banks of batteries per inverter/controller. that means i would have to have a panel well balanced in power too much work. so 1 bank of batteries divided to what ever each unit needs.
I started this in May. after collecting 150- 38120 running those in 15s 48v only 8ah x 10 80ah total heard not enough ah so bought 2 BYD to bring it up to 220AH + 80AH I know SI asks how may ah if I have 220ah battery pack and 80ah battery pack? will they work on the same bus bar..

do have a deal on extra 15S 48v 60amp bms separate Daly
 
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