Terrible Signature Solar / EG4 18Kpv Experience - Returning and Replaced with Sol-Ark 15k

[cs1234]

Yeah I agree, I'm actually concerned more with my messages with members because they are so personal and I crack a lot of jokes. I should probably censor myself more and not be so personal here. Especially considering I don't have rules in place.

This has more to do with me than signature solar. I should have posted this as a new thread to discuss this. I've never even considered this before.

Generally speaking, the relationship you have with your members here and your youtube fanbase is different than SignatureSolars relationship with it's customers. They didn't buy anything from you that you OWE them warrantied support on or a refund. If somebody has a problem with you, publicly or privately, they are free to go elsewhere and they aren't out anything owed to them directly.

It would be in relatively bad taste to take your private messages and share them with the internet/forum in general. Not illegal by any means, but in bad taste. An exception would be if there were some sort of he said / she said argument taking place publicly and the private messages were the only evidence of the truth.

 

[Watts Happening]

Are those the logs from the unit or from the utility? Can you hook it up again and put a meter on it and post a photo here. Or post a video would be even better.

The very boring looking data is from the utility, it's a CSV they provide, same power company you use down in Vegas. The other screenshot shows EG4 info and is from the inverter.

I'm not at all against hooking the thing up, shooting photos and videos etc, but it's packaged and supposed to be picked up tomorrow. If I take this thing back out of the box again, I'm not sending it back lol. Call me crazy, but I don't think Signature Solar wants to donate this unit to me of all people to snag some photos and videos for the internet. I can however pull whatever logs are available to me via their website. The below information I believe to be as factual as anyone could possibly ask for:

The unit did indeed backfeed the grid, more than one time. The most recent and documented data has been provided over a short ~1 hour window after Ty updated the firmware. It averaged about a 200w backfeed which is exactly what the app says, as well as the logs from the inverter. Both Ty and Marcus agreed and apologized for this, and Marcus offered to pay any fees the utility company may leverage (an appreciated gesture).

Fortunately my meter only reads at 15 minute intervals, so over the course of 15 minutes as long as something in my house was drawing as much or more power than the inverter was back feeding, it was "hidden" from the utility. From the utility logs, my readings got very very small, and we were lucky enough to not have any way for them to see that it was a backfeed vs me just having my main shut off for an hour or something like that.

This part is less than fact, but close. I believe there are enough well documented cases of this inverter back feeding for me to not think this is an isolated incident, multiple threads, even @Quattrohead has seen this. This is furthering my opinion that it is a software issue and not a hardware one. With one firmware I saw zero backfeed (still had other issues but backfeed was resolved), with another firmware I saw immediate backfeed. Gilbert was well aware of this and specifically loaded a firmware that would not backfeed as the very first thing he did, it was as though it was his standard operating procedure.

I have to imagine there are people hard at work solving the issue first hand. Nothing more than a guess here, but based on an email received from Ty during that process, it may be worthwhile for you to install "11.10" firmware, set up some peak shaving and see what happens, this tells me it was a known issue:

"Hello Emory,

It seems that there was an issue with the peak shaving settings when using firmware 11.10 that caused this.
Tomorrow I am going to recreate this issue with the 10.10 firmware and see if it still persists.
If the 10.10 firmware will work for your configuration I would like to switch to it until we can resolve the issue with 11.10, I will update you on how this test goes so we can set up a time to perform the change.
In the meantime I have turned off the peak shaving setting causing the issue and adjusted it to where you will not export anymore.

Thank you."

 

[Watts Happening]

Generally speaking, the relationship you have with your members here and your youtube fanbase is different than SignatureSolars relationship with it's customers. They didn't buy anything from you that you OWE them warrantied support on or a refund. If somebody has a problem with you, publicly or privately, they are free to go elsewhere and they aren't out anything owed to them directly.

It would be in relatively bad taste to take your private messages and share them with the internet/forum in general. Not illegal by any means, but in bad taste. An exception would be if there were some sort of he said / she said argument taking place publicly and the private messages were the only evidence of the truth.

This is how I felt, I have no leg to stand on with regard to being some beacon of truth. They're just as believable as me, so I shared the evidence for better or worse.

 

[Will Prowse]

I hope they apologize or something. And offer fast returns if there's an issue next time. I'll talk to them.

 

[Will Prowse]

I love the 18K and I wish I had a defective unit on hand to measure what's going on. Frustrates me to no end. There are 600+ 18K units in the field right now and I haven't heard anyone mention this problem exactly. The other issues I've been told about this week seem to be none issues entirely. I think luxpower shouldn't have released firmware that wasn't ready. That's messed up.

I hope signature solar responds here or gets some kind of resolution going.

 

[Will Prowse]

We've covered the back feeding of the 18k, I don't think there are any further questions on that side, correct?

Attached is data from the Sol-Ark, no backfeed recorded, I've also connected a meter and had zero appreciable backfeed, I've tried surges and things like that and I can barely get my meter to register at all.

No I have further questions I'm still waiting on evidence for the back feeding from the 18K verified with the meter. Do you have that that you can post?

 

[Will Prowse]

This thread has lots of messages for customer service issues, but I am trying to find out if my inverter at home will backfeed. I still have zero evidence of that. Can someone post proof that their unit is backfeeding?

 

[Watts Happening]

I love the 18K and I wish I had a defective unit on hand to measure what's going on. Frustrates me to no end. There are 600+ 18K units in the field right now and I haven't heard anyone mention this problem exactly. The other issues I've been told about this week seem to be none issues entirely. I think luxpower shouldn't have released firmware that wasn't ready. That's messed up.

I hope signature solar responds here or gets some kind of resolution going.

I don't have links but people have absolutely talked about back feeding issues on the forums, no doubt about that

No I have further questions I'm still waiting on evidence for the back feeding from the 18K verified with the meter. Do you have that that you can post?

If a screenshot of their app, a screenshot of their logs and not one but two of their employees saying they saw the problem, called each other to talk about it and offered to pay any associated fees with the back feeding doesn't suffice, I guess we're dead in the water.

Another member of the forum in this very thread posted the following. I understand wanting to verify things with meters, but I think on this one you're just going to have to either accept it as true.

Yeah that's about the same amount of power that mine was back feeding to the grid with possibly the same or similar firmware. It is not a lot and maybe most power companies wouldn't notice it but nevertheless you didn't like it and I don't like it.

Again, best solution I have is to load the 11.10 firmware on your inverter, make settings changes that tell it not to backfeed, and see what happens. I'd love to tell you exactly what settings were in place, but I didn't make those changes, Ty did. I have sincere doubts Ty is going to program your inverter for you the exact same way he did mine in an effort to prove their inverter back feeds.

I've shown what I can show, I can't do anything more to prove it and quite frankly, I have no more skin left in the game. The inverter is boxed up on a pallet and will be picked up tomorrow. Taking it out and setting up a test stand this afternoon for no net benefit really is beyond the scope of what I'm willing to do. I want to help everyone in every way I can, but at this point I'd rather spend time with my family than prove a device I'm returning did what I've shown it did. Hopefully you'll all understand.

It's not going back in this box to spite them, I was shortsighted when it arrived and I believe the following day was trash day so it went out. Little bit of trimming the foam and this one worked out well. Packaged as per their instructions.

 

[windsurfer]

I am confused. Op bought a unit that didn't work correctly. He worked diligently with SS to resolve the problem, but they took lots of time and made things worse, so he requested a refund. All is good... Then Will jumped in to defend SS demanding data to support claims while SS's customer service representitive made personal attacks on the OP, falsely claiming they were a competitor.

Something is very wrong with SS' business model and at appears that their customer service is so broken that it should result in immediate termination of the employee who made personal attacks on a customer in a public forum.

 

[cs1234]

I am confused. Op bought a unit that didn't work correctly. He worked diligently with SS to resolve the problem, but they took lots of time and made things worse, so he requested a refund. All is good... Then Will jumped in to defend SS demanding data to support claims while SS's customer service representitive made personal attacks on the OP, falsely claiming they were a competitor.

Something is very wrong with SS' business model and at appears that their customer service is so broken that it should result in immediate termination of the employee who made personal attacks on a customer in a public forum.

What if one of the "employees" is the Director of Research Development and Repair and the other one is the owner of the company? Can't just fire them in that case.

They should just reply to all correspondence with a . It works for some other companies.

 

[BuffaloTrace]

I am confused. Op bought a unit that didn't work correctly. He worked diligently with SS to resolve the problem, but they took lots of time and made things worse, so he requested a refund. All is good... Then Will jumped in to defend SS demanding data to support claims while SS's customer service representitive made personal attacks on the OP, falsely claiming they were a competitor.

A request (demand) for meter readings not a defense in support of anything. With all the different recording technology these days it's a super simple and easy request. Taking quick snapshots with extremely common cameras as backup evidence is so easy these days there's almost no reason not to do it for everything important.

 

[cs1234]

A request (demand) for meter readings not a defense in support of anything. With all the different recording technology these days it's a super simple and easy request. Taking quick snapshots with extremely common cameras as backup evidence is so easy these days there's almost no reason not to do it for everything important.

In @Watts Happening 's defense.. He was trusting the readings coming directly from the unit.. as were SS themselves. Plus it was doing it randomly, when he wasn't looking or around. He would have to have hooked up a clamp meter or another CT based reader like an Emporia to log it. I'm not sure how into troubleshooting backfeeding he is and what kind of load monitoring hardware he already had.

 

[Will Prowse]

I am confused. Op bought a unit that didn't work correctly. He worked diligently with SS to resolve the problem, but they took lots of time and made things worse, so he requested a refund. All is good... Then Will jumped in to defend SS demanding data to support claims while SS's customer service representitive made personal attacks on the OP, falsely claiming they were a competitor.

Something is very wrong with SS' business model and at appears that their customer service is so broken that it should result in immediate termination of the employee who made personal attacks on a customer in a public forum.

Defend SS? How the hell do you get that idea from my posts? I'm the one that has to make a video about all this being said here, and I have no data to support anything. What world do you live in? I'm tired of people complaining all day about things and not backing them up with videos or pictures or anything. I still don't have any utility saying that an 18K back fed them. How am I defending signature solar here when I'm the one that has to bash on them? Are you joking me right now? What I can't stand is everybody going on and on about things that absolutely do not matter. I am here to figure out the problems and share them with my videos, that's it. All I get is pages and pages of text but no proof of anything. And then Ghost writer will go on a tangent that has absolutely nothing to do with anything. And she was caught lying like a week ago on another thread. And you're thinking that I'm here to support signature solar? I'm the one that's going to make the video talking about all of this to everyone, not you and not anybody else here. This drives me nuts. How about we get some people showing some evidence in some videos so that we can share this with the world. What I need is actual evidence of what's going on. I don't care about what the customer service and support said. I need to see meter readings and I need to see videos and pictures of it. And I need a utility that can tell me that they were being back fed by this meter. Till then I can't do anything for anybody. How does anyone not see oww my system here works. If I don't have evidence I can't do anything.

 

[Will Prowse]

In @Watts Happening 's defense.. He was trusting the readings coming directly from the unit.. as were SS themselves. Plus it was doing it randomly, when he wasn't looking or around. He would have to have hooked up a clamp meter or another CT based reader like an Emporia to log it. I'm not sure how into troubleshooting backfeeding he is and what kind of load monitoring hardware he already had.

Yeah exactly I want to have someone take that unit and connect it to the grid like I've said like five times in this thread now and it keeps getting ignored, take a video take a picture, Post it on the forum so it can help me and others so I can make videos so that people can see it. It's a very simple concept and it seems like everyone's not understanding how to do it.

 

[Will Prowse]

A request (demand) for meter readings not a defense in support of anything. With all the different recording technology these days it's a super simple and easy request. Taking quick snapshots with extremely common cameras as backup evidence is so easy these days there's almost no reason not to do it for everything important.

Yes it is a defense because I can put it in my video and show it as proof that it is backfeeding when it shouldn't. I still don't have that. So I can't do my job because if I don't have evidence and I assert a claim that cannot be substantiated, I will get into trouble. And I have to share this information with everybody in my videos. Very simple concept here.

Can someone please put that unit on a table connect it to grid put a meter on it like a clamp meter from fluke, and take a picture of the readings. Or proof that the utility is being backfed when it shouldn't be.

I seriously don't care about signature solar and all this because they shouldn't even be contacted. Luxpower is to blame here. If you have a sol ark issue, you call sol ark support. If you have an EG4 issue, No one calls luxpower even though their sticker is on the front of the box. I'm tired of everybody trying to use signature solar to do all this stuff and I just don't care about them because they are a distributor. I'm also tired of ghostwriter going on and on about China and all this other stuff when she was caught lying like a week ago. What I need in this thread is actual evidence so I can do my job. The whole point of this form is so that I can help people see the problems, and I'm still not seeing the issue here. It's just a bunch of drama with customer service and support issues that I personally don't even care about.

 

[Will Prowse]

What if one of the "employees" is the Director of Research Development and Repair and the other one is the owner of the company? Can't just fire them in that case.

They should just reply to all correspondence with a . It works for some other companies.

Well if they're selling a product that illegally back feeds the grid, And someone can prove it, then their business won't be around for very long now will it? They will be fired because the market will deny them sales. I do not live in a communist country so if a company does a bad job then they will fail.

 

[Will Prowse]

A request (demand) for meter readings not a defense in support of anything. With all the different recording technology these days it's a super simple and easy request. Taking quick snapshots with extremely common cameras as backup evidence is so easy these days there's almost no reason not to do it for everything important.

Exactly! Imagine if I made videos and I just would guess how much current is going through a conductor or I trusted what was on the screen. Everyone here would think I'm an absolute lunatic. But it seems fine here in the forum. What we need is an actual meter on those conductors so I can actually see how much is being back fed. Whenever I post capacity test I show you the meter in the video. I show you the results of my capacity measurement device. If I'm doing an SOC curve I post that in my video is well. Imagine if I didn't?

 

[Will Prowse]

I don't have links but people have absolutely talked about back feeding issues on the forums, no doubt about that


If a screenshot of their app, a screenshot of their logs and not one but two of their employees saying they saw the problem, called each other to talk about it and offered to pay any associated fees with the back feeding doesn't suffice, I guess we're dead in the water.

Another member of the forum in this very thread posted the following. I understand wanting to verify things with meters, but I think on this one you're just going to have to either accept it as true.


Again, best solution I have is to load the 11.10 firmware on your inverter, make settings changes that tell it not to backfeed, and see what happens. I'd love to tell you exactly what settings were in place, but I didn't make those changes, Ty did. I have sincere doubts Ty is going to program your inverter for you the exact same way he did mine in an effort to prove their inverter back feeds.

I've shown what I can show, I can't do anything more to prove it and quite frankly, I have no more skin left in the game. The inverter is boxed up on a pallet and will be picked up tomorrow. Taking it out and setting up a test stand this afternoon for no net benefit really is beyond the scope of what I'm willing to do. I want to help everyone in every way I can, but at this point I'd rather spend time with my family than prove a device I'm returning did what I've shown it did. Hopefully you'll all understand.

It's not going back in this box to spite them, I was shortsighted when it arrived and I believe the following day was trash day so it went out. Little bit of trimming the foam and this one worked out well. Packaged as per their instructions.

View attachment 161898

You have a whole night to use that defective device and you're not going to use this as an opportunity to give me evidence to make videos on this? Are you joking me? And the time it took for you to write out that I could have that on my desk right now with a NEMA 1450 connected to it. Those straps in that tape are not hard to remove and I can do that in about 5 minutes. Connect it to the grid and show us it backfeeding with a meter on the conductors or I can't do anything. If I have evidence I can make a video and share it with the world. I don't trust the software or the CTs or the device. I want to see an actual meter on the conductor that is supplying it. And there's multiple types of firmware which I don't have access to so what am I supposed to say about that? I personally cannot conclude anything about firmware that I've never tested. So what I need you to do is hook it up in about 10 minutes and show it back feeding, and make a video or picture or something of it doing it so we can see it. A video on YouTube would be fantastic

 

[cs1234]

We could set up a gofundme and buy the unit off @Watts Happening and send it to Will. I'll chip in a $100. I'm a big spender. ?

 

[Will Prowse]

I don't have links but people have absolutely talked about back feeding issues on the forums, no doubt about that


If a screenshot of their app, a screenshot of their logs and not one but two of their employees saying they saw the problem, called each other to talk about it and offered to pay any associated fees with the back feeding doesn't suffice, I guess we're dead in the water.

Another member of the forum in this very thread posted the following. I understand wanting to verify things with meters, but I think on this one you're just going to have to either accept it as true.


Again, best solution I have is to load the 11.10 firmware on your inverter, make settings changes that tell it not to backfeed, and see what happens. I'd love to tell you exactly what settings were in place, but I didn't make those changes, Ty did. I have sincere doubts Ty is going to program your inverter for you the exact same way he did mine in an effort to prove their inverter back feeds.

I've shown what I can show, I can't do anything more to prove it and quite frankly, I have no more skin left in the game. The inverter is boxed up on a pallet and will be picked up tomorrow. Taking it out and setting up a test stand this afternoon for no net benefit really is beyond the scope of what I'm willing to do. I want to help everyone in every way I can, but at this point I'd rather spend time with my family than prove a device I'm returning did what I've shown it did. Hopefully you'll all understand.

It's not going back in this box to spite them, I was shortsighted when it arrived and I believe the following day was trash day so it went out. Little bit of trimming the foam and this one worked out well. Packaged as per their instructions.

View attachment 161898

And no I do not accept things as true without evidence. My entire business and YouTube channel would completely crumble if I were to assert claims without being substantiated. How hard is that to understand? All I have on this is that the firmware release by lux power is a joke, And they should have a single finalized firmware that has been tested for weeks before release. And the second point I have is that signature Solar was not able to diagnose the problem fast enough. That's all I've got so far. All of the other back feed issues seem to have been fixed or misunderstood. It seems like Sol ark does the same thing as well if you put a meter on both of them. That's what everyone that actually has the units hooked up to the grid is measuring and telling me. So until someone has evidence stating that they are wrong, this entire post doesn't really help me except for a complain about customer service in the next video.

 

[Will Prowse]

We could set up a gofundme and buy the unit off @Watts Happening and send it to Will. I'll chip in a $100. I'm a big spender. ?

Or he could take 10 minutes out of his day and run some cables. If he's doing install work this guy can easily hook this thing up in a couple minutes, it's not hard to do. If a CEC listed device is back feeding the grid when it shouldn't, And we have proof of it, my video will get tons of views. I am searching the internet for problems like these if I can get some evidence of it.

 

[cs1234]

I understand your frustration Will, but @Watts Happening is not @Will Prowse . I'm sure he's good at whatever he does, as you are at what you do. He's just a disenchanted customer that took the time to let us know about it. I wish he liked tinkering to that degree, and was able to do what you're asking, but short of getting that unit sent to you, by either asking SS nicely or us buying it.. we are just going to have to wait around for a while and see if another one crops up.

 

[Will Prowse]

Think about how hard it would be to connect it to the grid real quick and run it overnight with one battery and a meter. One picture or video is all it takes. What also would be cool is to see if the CTs are reporting the same current that the screen shows. Because if it is not then that means that the data being logged is completely incorrect. That is one of the first things that I test when I'm not getting the right numbers. Especially with the 8K and all the issues I had for weeks. Some of the CTs were damaged in shipping. So that was one of the first things I tested on the CTs that arrived in good shape.

 

[Will Prowse]

I understand your frustration Will, but @Watts Happening is not @Will Prowse . I'm sure he's good at whatever he does, as you are at what you do. He's just a disenchanted customer that took the time to let us know about it. I wish he liked tinkering to that degree, and was able to do what you're asking, but short of getting that unit sent to you, by either asking SS nicely or us buying it.. we are just going to have to wait around for a while and see if another one crops up.

I think I'll just get signature solar to send it to me because I need another unit. But I want the defective firmware. I need to see exactly how much it's backfeeding and get it on video.

 

[Will Prowse]

When I was having issues with the 8K I would put the camera right in the screen, share the error codes, the loads attached, the circumstances, everything. Or the process for updating the firmware and what it showed on my screen and what happened when it was bricked. If I just made a video of my face talking saying yeah it broke, how useful would that actually be to others?

Watt's happening has that unit right in front of them and can easily throw that thing onto the grid and show us the current. That way I can have evidence before signature solar gets a hold of it.