crossy
Solar Addict
Not actually any smoke but a bit of a tale of woe.
Our 5kW Sofar HYD5000 hybrid inverter is just over a year old and has generally performed as expected.
Over the past few months we've been getting the occasional "unrecoverBusOVP" error (bus over-voltage), it would go weeks with none and then do it two or three times in a day. The problem is that in order to recover you have to power down the inverter, wait a minute or so, then power up. Not an issue if I'm home but a bind (and lost generation) if I'm not.
I tried telling it that it lived in a 230V country (Australia - Thailand outside Bangkok is 220V) in case the country parameters changed the bus voltage limits, no real difference.
So I contacted Sofar Service by email and got a very nice lady "Sherry". She monitored the inverter over the net and determined that, as a first step, the firmware should be updated from the existing V2.5 to the latest V3.51.
At this point things started to go awry
Sherry attempted to do an OTA (Over The Air) update, unfortunately this failed and left the inverter in a non-working state "Software Error"
She then sent me the firmware with instructions on how to do the update locally. Pretty simple, load the files on to a micro-SD card, insert in the inverter and push a few buttons.
After a false start with a duff SD card the firmware update started.
And then stopped!
After 30 minutes of inaction I asked her how long it should take, "not 30 minutes" was the response, "turn it off and try again".
So I did, but the beast refused to do anything other than put on the LCD backlight
A couple of re-tries and back to Sherry. She tried to contact it over the net "Can you hear me, Major Tom???"
So, in less than 24 hours we've gone from a working inverter with an annoying quirk to a 45,000 Baht brick hanging on the wall
Bu99er!
Sofar inverters have a 5 year warranty. If there's no local repair facility it's an exchange warranty, they ship you a refurb or new unit and you ship the dead one back. At least they're not asking to ship the dead unit back first!
So a new unit will be on its way soon (2 weeks delivery apparently). I'm not sure if I will end up paying for shipping the dead one back but I'm pretty sure I will end up paying duty/VAT on the replacement unit.
Until it arrives, we are running at 60% of our total solar capacity (this is why I often recommend using two smaller units rather than one big one be it inverters or aircons).
What to take away from this?
Not much other than the fact that any firmware update, be it your phone, router or inverter does stand the chance of bricking the unit, go in with eyes open!
Our 5kW Sofar HYD5000 hybrid inverter is just over a year old and has generally performed as expected.
Over the past few months we've been getting the occasional "unrecoverBusOVP" error (bus over-voltage), it would go weeks with none and then do it two or three times in a day. The problem is that in order to recover you have to power down the inverter, wait a minute or so, then power up. Not an issue if I'm home but a bind (and lost generation) if I'm not.
I tried telling it that it lived in a 230V country (Australia - Thailand outside Bangkok is 220V) in case the country parameters changed the bus voltage limits, no real difference.
So I contacted Sofar Service by email and got a very nice lady "Sherry". She monitored the inverter over the net and determined that, as a first step, the firmware should be updated from the existing V2.5 to the latest V3.51.
At this point things started to go awry
Sherry attempted to do an OTA (Over The Air) update, unfortunately this failed and left the inverter in a non-working state "Software Error"
She then sent me the firmware with instructions on how to do the update locally. Pretty simple, load the files on to a micro-SD card, insert in the inverter and push a few buttons.
After a false start with a duff SD card the firmware update started.
And then stopped!
After 30 minutes of inaction I asked her how long it should take, "not 30 minutes" was the response, "turn it off and try again".
So I did, but the beast refused to do anything other than put on the LCD backlight
A couple of re-tries and back to Sherry. She tried to contact it over the net "Can you hear me, Major Tom???"
So, in less than 24 hours we've gone from a working inverter with an annoying quirk to a 45,000 Baht brick hanging on the wall
Bu99er!
Sofar inverters have a 5 year warranty. If there's no local repair facility it's an exchange warranty, they ship you a refurb or new unit and you ship the dead one back. At least they're not asking to ship the dead unit back first!
So a new unit will be on its way soon (2 weeks delivery apparently). I'm not sure if I will end up paying for shipping the dead one back but I'm pretty sure I will end up paying duty/VAT on the replacement unit.
Until it arrives, we are running at 60% of our total solar capacity (this is why I often recommend using two smaller units rather than one big one be it inverters or aircons).
What to take away from this?
Not much other than the fact that any firmware update, be it your phone, router or inverter does stand the chance of bricking the unit, go in with eyes open!
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