SUNSYNK-3.6K-SG04LP1 ECCO and Seplos Mason 280L BMS V3 issue

[DangerousDave]

Hi newbie here, looking for some help. I’m building my own grid-tied Solar system with battery storage in the Uk. After much research I chose to use:

2 x Sunsynk Ecco 3.6kW SG04LP1 inverters. These will work in parallel and gives me 4 solar strings to us.

1 x SEPLOS Mason 280L and x16 Grade A EVE LF280K Battery (making 14,4 Kwh).

19 x 420W Jinko Tiger Neo TOPCon N-Type 54cell All Black Monocrystalline solar panels in three strings (not installed yet).

I built the battery, no issues but, when not connected, I hit the reset button, it momentarily boots-up but then shuts-down with a zero SOC warning. Supplier says this is normal and it will remain running once fully charged.

I got the inverters on-line (AC connected), they came with a message to contact Sunysnk for a Firmware update, which I did and they updated them quickly (within 24hrs) but gave no details other than it has been updated. At this point I have no Solar and was planning to use the inverter to charge the battery at night on a cheaper tariff and run the house (as far as possible) from the battery. To begin with I thought I would work with a single inverter and the battery and worry about parallel inverters later.

I also purchased a USB to R425 cable and installed BMS Studio from Seplos on my Laptop.

I then hooked-up the battery and connected the CAN BUS cable but nothing. It seemed a chicken-and-egg situation in that the inverter cannot see the battery as the battery BMS isn't running? So I hooked in a bench PSU to the battery, it sprung into life and into run-mode and happily charged (slowly) from the bench PSU. I was also able to login via BMS Studio and all seems to be working fine. I was able to change the battery capacity from the default 200AH to 280AH as built. I changed the BMS protocol to 'PYLON_CAN protocol. I have the latest Seplos BMS with the auto-balance board and the maximum cell volt difference is 4mV which I think is Ok. The inverter now has comm's with the battery and seems happy, it can see the voltage, SOC etc and this shows on the inverter display, After a while the inverter cut-in and started to charge the battery at 40A (which is currently the charge-rate set in the inverter), This was fine and after a couple of hours or so the battery SOC indicated 100%. At this point the battery-shut down (i.e. no run LED) but appears to be in a sleep-mode but still has comms with the inverter (which indicates 100% SOC) and it still displays data on BMS Studio, so would seem the inverter is in standby but the BMS is still communicating with the inverter. If I look at the ‘LI BMS’ page on the inverter I see all the usual battery info read via the CAN BUS.

So I now set my inverter to use the battery to supply load to the house but nothing - the battery remains in "sleep" mode. I have tried endless settings on the Inverter and I am convinced I have it set properly to charge at night and discharge through the day but the inverter just won't activate the battery and use power from it. Also, if I simply turn-off the AC to the inverter, it should now stay up and run from the battery but nothing, the inverter shuts down and at this point the battery also shuts down.

I can't seem to get round this? Also if I restart the inverter (i.e. restore AC power) it won't reconnect to the battery (even if I press the BMS reset button) as the BMS will not go into run mode. The only way I get them talking to each-other is to use the bench PSU to produce a voltage that wakes the BMS. Once they are talking, I can remove this voltage and the two will stay up (as the inverter seems to trickle charge the battery) but the battery never supplies load.

I had thought now that the battery is fully charged, when pressing the reset button it would wake-up and go into run mode and be ready to discharge but (if not connected to the bench PSU) it won't wake or power-up simply by powering-up the inverter, so the inverter flags an error and states “no battery”.

Looking at BMS Studio (for anomalies) I see that 'Total discharge capacity" is '0' so perhaps the battery is telling the inverter there is no power that can be supplied? I believe this may be because the BMS has not had a chance to self-calibrate? But how can I discharge the battery if it won’t connect? As far as I can see there isn't any way in BMS Studio to manually set a capacity? Also looking at the Real-Time Data Messages, they state (every second): “Mode: Turn off, Alarm: None, Current (A) 0, Remaining capacity: 277.76, Total Capacity: 280, Total discharge capacity 0, SOC(%) 99.2”. So again, I think the Inverter reads this as saying there is no capacity in the battery so the BMS keeps the battery in the shutdown (sleeping) state?

So I'm in the position that the battery is fully-charged but thinks it has zero capacity but I can't activate it to discharge so that it learns it's capacity. I have searched the web for answers, checked out the "Off-grid Garage" series of videos about Seplos batteries on YouTube but I can't find anything, so I am out of ideas? I may be wrong but I'm convinced the issue is with the battery rather than the inverter, I'm 99% sure I have the inverter set to discharge the battery but charge overnight and given that I can see comm's between them I would have thought this should happen?

I've also hooked-up the auxiliary (UPS) load to the inverter, this would supply power-out (island mode) should the main AC fail but again, if I kill the main AC feed the inverter just shuts-down and won't draw power from the battery.

One other thing that looks odd is, if I look at the battery screen on the inverter it shows< “ Battery voltage: 53.46V, Battery Current 0A, Battery temp 6.3C, SOC: 99%, SOH: 100%, Battery charge voltage: 57.6V, Charge current limit 0A, Discharge current limit 0A”. So again, if the discharge current limit is zero then does that not mean there is no capacity to discharge? BMS Studio shows the “Max discharge current” as being 180A which is not what the inverter is stating?

Does anyone have a working Sunsynk inverter to Seplos BMS V3 (latest 0.5 firmware) working and what was their experience in getting them to work together?

In particular, if you have a Seplos battery using the latest V3 BMS (firmware 0.5) should the battery stay awake in run-mode when charged but with the DC disconnected (i.e. no external voltage)?

Any help much appreciated?

 

[SeaGal]

Does anyone have a working Sunsynk inverter to Seplos BMS V3 (latest 0.5 firmware) working and what was their experience in getting them to work together?

@houseofancients is definitely the Sunsynk + Seplos guru around here...

Here's a link he posted previously for the installer training course for sunsynk - that may be of use?

Deye Grid Settings

I could not figure this out, nor does my supplier. Any idea what these alphabets mean and what should be the values for a 240 single phase grid? TIA!

diysolarforum.com

 

[houseofancients]

@houseofancients is definitely the Sunsynk + Seplos guru around here...

Here's a link he posted previously for the installer training course for sunsynk - that may be of use?

Deye Grid Settings

I could not figure this out, nor does my supplier. Any idea what these alphabets mean and what should be the values for a 240 single phase grid? TIA!

diysolarforum.com

This is the V3 version of the BMS, which is an entirely different beast altogether..
Been a bit busy today, will do a proper read tonight

 

[houseofancients]

Hi newbie here, looking for some help. I’m building my own grid-tied Solar system with battery storage in the Uk. After much research I chose to use:

2 x Sunsynk Ecco 3.6kW SG04LP1 inverters. These will work in parallel and gives me 4 solar strings to us.

1 x SEPLOS Mason 280L and x16 Grade A EVE LF280K Battery (making 14,4 Kwh).

19 x 420W Jinko Tiger Neo TOPCon N-Type 54cell All Black Monocrystalline solar panels in three strings (not installed yet).

I built the battery, no issues but, when not connected, I hit the reset button, it momentarily boots-up but then shuts-down with a zero SOC warning. Supplier says this is normal and it will remain running once fully charged.

I got the inverters on-line (AC connected), they came with a message to contact Sunysnk for a Firmware update, which I did and they updated them quickly (within 24hrs) but gave no details other than it has been updated. At this point I have no Solar and was planning to use the inverter to charge the battery at night on a cheaper tariff and run the house (as far as possible) from the battery. To begin with I thought I would work with a single inverter and the battery and worry about parallel inverters later.

I also purchased a USB to R425 cable and installed BMS Studio from Seplos on my Laptop.

I then hooked-up the battery and connected the CAN BUS cable but nothing. It seemed a chicken-and-egg situation in that the inverter cannot see the battery as the battery BMS isn't running? So I hooked in a bench PSU to the battery, it sprung into life and into run-mode and happily charged (slowly) from the bench PSU. I was also able to login via BMS Studio and all seems to be working fine. I was able to change the battery capacity from the default 200AH to 280AH as built. I changed the BMS protocol to 'PYLON_CAN protocol. I have the latest Seplos BMS with the auto-balance board and the maximum cell volt difference is 4mV which I think is Ok. The inverter now has comm's with the battery and seems happy, it can see the voltage, SOC etc and this shows on the inverter display, After a while the inverter cut-in and started to charge the battery at 40A (which is currently the charge-rate set in the inverter), This was fine and after a couple of hours or so the battery SOC indicated 100%. At this point the battery-shut down (i.e. no run LED) but appears to be in a sleep-mode but still has comms with the inverter (which indicates 100% SOC) and it still displays data on BMS Studio, so would seem the inverter is in standby but the BMS is still communicating with the inverter. If I look at the ‘LI BMS’ page on the inverter I see all the usual battery info read via the CAN BUS.

So I now set my inverter to use the battery to supply load to the house but nothing - the battery remains in "sleep" mode. I have tried endless settings on the Inverter and I am convinced I have it set properly to charge at night and discharge through the day but the inverter just won't activate the battery and use power from it. Also, if I simply turn-off the AC to the inverter, it should now stay up and run from the battery but nothing, the inverter shuts down and at this point the battery also shuts down.

I can't seem to get round this? Also if I restart the inverter (i.e. restore AC power) it won't reconnect to the battery (even if I press the BMS reset button) as the BMS will not go into run mode. The only way I get them talking to each-other is to use the bench PSU to produce a voltage that wakes the BMS. Once they are talking, I can remove this voltage and the two will stay up (as the inverter seems to trickle charge the battery) but the battery never supplies load.

I had thought now that the battery is fully charged, when pressing the reset button it would wake-up and go into run mode and be ready to discharge but (if not connected to the bench PSU) it won't wake or power-up simply by powering-up the inverter, so the inverter flags an error and states “no battery”.

Looking at BMS Studio (for anomalies) I see that 'Total discharge capacity" is '0' so perhaps the battery is telling the inverter there is no power that can be supplied? I believe this may be because the BMS has not had a chance to self-calibrate? But how can I discharge the battery if it won’t connect? As far as I can see there isn't any way in BMS Studio to manually set a capacity? Also looking at the Real-Time Data Messages, they state (every second): “Mode: Turn off, Alarm: None, Current (A) 0, Remaining capacity: 277.76, Total Capacity: 280, Total discharge capacity 0, SOC(%) 99.2”. So again, I think the Inverter reads this as saying there is no capacity in the battery so the BMS keeps the battery in the shutdown (sleeping) state?

So I'm in the position that the battery is fully-charged but thinks it has zero capacity but I can't activate it to discharge so that it learns it's capacity. I have searched the web for answers, checked out the "Off-grid Garage" series of videos about Seplos batteries on YouTube but I can't find anything, so I am out of ideas? I may be wrong but I'm convinced the issue is with the battery rather than the inverter, I'm 99% sure I have the inverter set to discharge the battery but charge overnight and given that I can see comm's between them I would have thought this should happen?

I've also hooked-up the auxiliary (UPS) load to the inverter, this would supply power-out (island mode) should the main AC fail but again, if I kill the main AC feed the inverter just shuts-down and won't draw power from the battery.

One other thing that looks odd is, if I look at the battery screen on the inverter it shows< “ Battery voltage: 53.46V, Battery Current 0A, Battery temp 6.3C, SOC: 99%, SOH: 100%, Battery charge voltage: 57.6V, Charge current limit 0A, Discharge current limit 0A”. So again, if the discharge current limit is zero then does that not mean there is no capacity to discharge? BMS Studio shows the “Max discharge current” as being 180A which is not what the inverter is stating?

Does anyone have a working Sunsynk inverter to Seplos BMS V3 (latest 0.5 firmware) working and what was their experience in getting them to work together?

In particular, if you have a Seplos battery using the latest V3 BMS (firmware 0.5) should the battery stay awake in run-mode when charged but with the DC disconnected (i.e. no external voltage)?

Any help much appreciated?

Can you take a picture of how you connected the BMS in your case ?

And show the TOU, battery settings and li config pages from the inverter pls

 

[DangerousDave]

Thank you SeaGal and @houseofancients. I've attached photo's of the actual BMS though it's hard to get decent photos now that I have the busbars connected and torqued-up, if you want more detailed ones I can always dismantle it a bit more. Also photos of the relevant Inverter settings. I've also included some screen-shots from BMS Studio. As it is, the BMS seems to be in sleep-mode. The green "run" LED will blink about every two minutes. It seems to be drawing a minimal amount of current occasionally like it is topping-up the battery but otherwise is dormant.
I did also setting it as a "dumb" AGM battery thinking I would at least get a discharge to help calibrate it but still nothing as there isn't any output from the BMS, even if I try setting "Forced Output=ON" or forcing "Discharging FET's On=ON" from within BMS Studio. It accepts the commands but the "Discharge FET On" indicator remains off and the BMS itself does not enter "Run" mode.

 

[houseofancients]

So :

Your inverter is setup correctly
Comms is setup correctly, comms is working
BMS setup may need tweaking :
Seems both max charge and discharge current are set to 0 .
BMS comms this to the inverter, as show on li screen, and trumps and settings done on the inverter

Furthermore I would high recommend to lower the max voltage from 57.6 to 56.8 or lower ( depending on your liking)

As I am much less familiar with the 3.0 BMS ( after my initial testing I abandoned it and sold it), I would highly suggest to use Andy's values to start with, and go from there

BMS Comparison - Google Drive

docs.google.com

Use table entries under seplos 3.0

 

[DangerousDave]

Thank you for your prompt reply and advice and confirming my Inverter settings Ok. I had a look at Andy's videos and his table on the various BMS. It does contain any configurable values as such, just observations about the the BMS abilities. I have again tried tweaking just about every conceivable value in the BMS but it just refuses to give any output. I also tried "tricking" it by setting the battery to be AGM in the inverter and waking-up the BMS with my bench PSU (with the DC isolator to the Inverter open) at this point the BMS discharge FET's are on, the Invertor states there is 180A available for output there is 50 odd volts on the battery terminals but as soon as close the DC breaker, the voltage collapses, there's no current, the BMS immediately shuts down (no alarms) and goes back to sleep mode. Starting to think the BMS is faulty, I've been in contact with the supplier, Fogstar who in turn are speaking to Seplos themselves. I might see if I can get a BMS board swap. It all seems very weird and is very frustrating! I used to work as an electrical engineer and now work in telecoms so I have worked on many electrical and and control systems over the years and but I never thought solar would be as difficult as this! At this point it doesn't matter, I only wanted to practice with the system. I'm waiting on a smart meter being installed in a few weeks and then the plan was to switch to a cheap overnight EV tariff (I do have an EV) and charge the battery overnight as well and use the power from it through the day. I don't have my solar panels installed yet (waiting on the weather improving!) but then in the summer I'll reverse the regime and (as far as possible) charge the battery via solar and use battery power overnight hopefully getting my grid consumption as close as possible to zero. I'll see what Fogstar say, they have been quite helpful so far. I'll will update this thread with my progress.

 

[SeaGal]

Sounds like a good plan. With similar background to you it's always very difficult to pin-point a faulty part without being able to swap it with a known working one. Look forward to the updates.

 

[Kennyrodgers]

Just wondering if you got this figured out yet...
I just had a Sunsynk inverter fitted and am trying to figure out which BMS to go with for my diy battery
Cheers.

 

[MisterB1959]

I have a Sunsynk 5kw ECO and a Seplos 280L (14.3kw eve calls) - my seplos has v2 BMS and its working perfectly. just about to add a second 280l if i ever get round to assembling it as life has been 'busy', BUT i ordered it with another V2 BMS as i understand the V3 isnt compatible with the V2 BMS.

happy to share any (limited!!) knowledge i have, even if its just screen shots !!

my initial major problem was that i had the CT clamp on the wrong cable, took me four days to realise and at one stage i was beginning to doubt whether DIY batteries were a good idea, however after help from @SeaGal and @houseofancients i finally got there !!

so, just check the CT clamp if you havent already .... did you top balance all the cells before assembly or are you hoping the active balancer will sort it out? i chose to top balance, took me a couple of weeks, but its been faultless for over six months now,

I am also in the process of adding a PHEV into the mix and as soon as She Who Must Shop (SWMS) arrives back, i will plug it in and get it set up ........ then i can access the low tariff for my storage heaters, battery and PHEV and try to store enough power for the whole day at a much more favourable rate !

 

[SeaGal]

am also in the process of adding a PHEV into the mix and as soon as She Who Must Shop (SWMS) arrives back, i will plug it in and get it set up

So... your next project, should you chose to accept it, is bi-directional charging on the PHEV to add another 15kWh or so to your capacity

 

[MisterB1959]

So... your next project, should you chose to accept it, is bi-directional charging on the PHEV to add another 15kWh or so to your capacity

Babysteps LOL. though i assume there is no benefit as SWMS uses the car every day and range isnt great on battery, so we will prob not try that for quite some time.

just pleased that ive now got it all hooked up and hopefully ready to charge ! ive just checked my bills for January and i could have saved at least £150 by moving all our 'night time' use into the cheaper rate which is 2 hours longer aswell!

i will know tomorrow if its all gone to plan, though keep yourself braced for if the plan doesnt work !

 

[Kennyrodgers]

I have a Sunsynk 5kw ECO and a Seplos 280L (14.3kw eve calls) - my seplos has v2 BMS and its working perfectly. just about to add a second 280l if i ever get round to assembling it as life has been 'busy', BUT i ordered it with another V2 BMS as i understand the V3 isnt compatible with the V2 BMS.

happy to share any (limited!!) knowledge i have, even if its just screen shots !!

my initial major problem was that i had the CT clamp on the wrong cable, took me four days to realise and at one stage i was beginning to doubt whether DIY batteries were a good idea, however after help from @SeaGal and @houseofancients i finally got there !!

so, just check the CT clamp if you havent already .... did you top balance all the cells before assembly or are you hoping the active balancer will sort it out? i chose to top balance, took me a couple of weeks, but its been faultless for over six months now,

I am also in the process of adding a PHEV into the mix and as soon as She Who Must Shop (SWMS) arrives back, i will plug it in and get it set up ........ then i can access the low tariff for my storage heaters, battery and PHEV and try to store enough power for the whole day at a much more favourable rate !

Appreciate you posting this as i was very close to pulling the trigger on a V3....I've ordered my cells from EEL Batteries today along with a V2 BMS...I got 4 cells off them last October for my motorhome, shipping was 30 days....Shipping is now 50 to 60 days, ( bummer) I'm guessing because they'll be sailing around Africa now instead of taking the short cut.
Cheers.

 

[MisterB1959]

So... your next project, should you chose to accept it, is bi-directional charging on the PHEV to add another 15kWh or so to your capacity

spooky ...... Octopus have just made an announcement regarding the very same thing ...... - my issue would be that SWMS wouldnt get her twice daily fix for free (well, free for her as i pay the leccy bill !) if i started using 'her' car battery to keep the lights on!!

 

[kitweuk]

@DangerousDave I am wondering if you managed to resolve your issues as I am looking to use a similar set up with Sunsynk Ecco hybrid inverter and Fogstar battery pack?

 

[DangerousDave]

Hi @kitweuk and @Kennyrodgers (and all). Yes all pretty much resolved. I finally got my battery to work, unfortunately it was one of these things where I "tweaked" a lot of settings and it all sprung into life but I'm not 100% sure what setting it was that fixed it! I think though it was a combination of the wrong settings on the inverter and the battery (which was all down to my own lacking in knowledge). When I say "almost", I having been using the battery for a couple of weeks now, I'm not 100% convinced I'm getting full capacity. I've not been able to charge it past 98% and it seems to die at 30% or so. Again, I'm sure that's down to my lack of skills and I need to spend some time getting to the bottom of this. Overall I'm fairly impressed with the Seplos battery. I've been running it as if I have an EV tariff, i.e. charge up overnight and discharge through the day. (I don't have an EV Tariff yet as waiting on a smart meter being installed). The battery easily copes with this and it all works pretty slickly. The V3 BMS board seems to work fine and (to my eyes) the built in balance board works great taking the cell voltage difference down to about 3mV (which I believe is good). I got my Seplos kit with Grade 'A' 280 cells (giving 14.3kWh) from Fogstar back in January for just over £2K when they were running a winter deal. It seems to me that you would pay that that for single 5kWh "branded" battery, so this does make for very good value. I ordered the rack-mount version but Fogstar sent me the vertical kit by mistake. In the end I'm glad they did as the vertical kit fits me needs much better, it sits neatly against my garage wall, is on decent quality wheels so you can move it about a bit. The actual kit and instructions were flawless and anyone with decent DIY skills could assemble it (though ideally you should have a torque wrench to clamp-up the batteries and bus-bars). There's no fan or anything on the unit (to get clogged-up) so I see no reason it why it won't last and I think it looks good. I would recommend you get the RS825 to USB interface cable and the BMS Studio software from the Seplos site as there will be parameters you would want to tweak in the BMS. In my view the interface cable from battery to Inverter isn't that complex in that a straight Ethernet cable will do, the CANBUS interface only needs 2 cores straight through to work. I've now got my 2 x 3.6Kw Sunsynk Inverters working in parallel. I went for two smaller instead of one larger Inverter so that I now have 4 solar strings to work with. The disadvantage is the the Sunsynk monitoring web-site and application see this as two different systems (i.e. doesn't aggregate together) so you have to work-out manually what your totals are. Currently I have 6 x 420W panels on my garage roof, even now (in Scotland) on half decent sunny(ish) days these are fully recharging the battery and running the house through most of the day. Another issue I had was my kit supplier provided me with a 100A MCB to use as the battery isolator but this has proved to be too small. My inverters can handle 7.2kW in total (and peak a bit higher) meaning a battery current of 138.5A (at 52V). The battery can easily handle this but the breaker does occasionally trip. I'm about to replace this with a 150A one. I'm also planning to set the battery maximum output to be say 140A so that the BMS soft-trips and self resets (If overloaded) , rather than the breaker tripping which needs a manual reset. On that issue, I have an EV and a Zappi charger. I chose this as so I could use the Eco function and only charge from solar. What they don't make clear is this will only (properly) work on an AC coupled battery (like a Tesla power wall) where you can put a CT clamp on the battery. Otherwise, it will see excess power from your solar system (once the house load is at zero) and start to charge the car but, in my system, this excess could be coming from my solar battery, which I don't really want, i.e. a 15kWh solar battery isn't going to much charge a 60kWhr car battery and could leave my Solar battery flat meaning excess costs by using peak cost grid power to run my house (once on my EV tariff). I'm sure I'll get round these challenges. I'm hoping that (in the better solar months) I can slow charge daily or at least limit the charge to the EV to say 3kWh per day which will be free solar derived. We don't do a high milage in the EV and normally just charge once a week. I am planning to add a full-update here of what I've learned once I'm happy all is fully working but happy to answer any questions about Sunsynk and Seplos based on what I've learned.

 

[MisterB1959]

spooky ...... Octopus have just made an announcement regarding the very same thing ...... - my issue would be that SWMS wouldnt get her twice daily fix for free (well, free for her as i pay the leccy bill !) if i started using 'her' car battery to keep the lights on!!

@SeaGal

re your comments on V2G - it appears as though the Mitsubishi Outlander has this already built in and its ready to go .... i think i will look into this in a bit more detail, unless you have any other knowledge about how it all works ..... i especially like the bit about charging the car for free ....?

The required charger price (Quaser wallbox) seems to be quite expensive, on ebay there is one for £2000 !!!! i could buy another battery for that kind of money - its costing around £1 per night to charge the outlander, so thats 2000 nights, around 5 and a half years of 'free charging before the wallbox has paid for itself ...

unless of course the 'free' charging being offered will also charge up my storage batteries at the same time (as the V2G tariff isnt compatible with intelligent octopus) .....but then it states that i would be limited to 333Kw per month - which equates to 11Kw per night, so it just wouldnt work out viable in my case with (soon to be) 28.6kw of home storage battery, needing charging every night.

 

[Kennyrodgers]

@DangerousDave
Many thanks for the reply and apologies for missing it...I'll need to doublecheck my notifications in here...
Great news then and well done for getting it all to play nicely together...My battery wait is very frustrating but it'll be worth it in the end.
Thanks again.

 

[MisterB1959]

I have a Sunsynk 5kw ECO and a Seplos 280L (14.3kw eve calls) -

I am also in the process of adding a PHEV into the mix and as soon as She Who Must Shop (SWMS) arrives back, i will plug it in and get it set up ........ then i can access the low tariff for my storage heaters, battery and PHEV and try to store enough power for the whole day at a much more favourable rate !

All set up and working now, though i have an issue with the Ohme unit, but at least i am on the Intelligent Octopus rate - just need to add my extra battery AND get the Ohme working properly now ...... spoke to Ohme helpdesk and it appears it is showing as not connected even though it has been. Octopus did their test (i assume) and changed me onto IO rate - took about 20 minutes, which required the car being plugged in, im just wondering if it was something to do with their 'setting up', though i think its unlikely .....

 

[SeaGal]

The required charger price (Quaser wallbox) seems to be quite expensive, on ebay there is one for £2000 !!!! i could buy another battery for that kind of money - its costing around £1 per night to charge the outlander, so thats 2000 nights, around 5 and a half years of 'free charging before the wallbox has paid for itself ..

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, that the technology is not commonly available and hence very expensive.

I don't know about the Overlander, but if it's a PHEV, rather than BEV, then presumably the battery is not that large. Hence the gains of having 60kWh+ storage of a BEV wouldn't apply and would make it less likely to have a sensible ROI. Do you know what size the battery is and what current/power it can deliver back to the house?