Will Solar Assistant work with 2 arrays?

[PWH]

I am setting up 2 arrays, a 4800w and 1800w and want to be able to track each array's production using Solar Assistant. One array is connected to an EG4 3000ex inverter which communicates with Solar Assistant. The other will be connected to a charge controller.

Would a Growatt or EG4 charge controller communicate with Solar Assistant via their BMS communication port?

Any other ideas on how to setup this system to communicate with Solar Assistant???

 

[timselectric]

Solar Assistant will only work with
1 type of AIO, at a time.
And
1 type of battery monitoring (BMSor shunt), at a time.

 

[timselectric]

Any other ideas on how to setup this system to communicate with Solar Assistant??

Use another 3000 ex

 

[Adam De Lay]

To my knowledge, SA doesn't work with any standalone SCC.

 

[PWH]

Use another 3000 ex

Thought about that but the voc on the 2nd array is below the inverter's requirement.

 

[timselectric]

Sadly, there are no other options.

 

[Crowz]

Well using SA to monitor multiple solar charge controllers is easy just expensive.

First you need one pi per charge controller so at least $60 per charge controller.

One victron smart shunt per charge controller. $135 or so.

Data cable per smart shunt $35 or diy it.

Something to run home assistant on which can be another pi.

Now have the SA pi's broadcast to the HA pi/computer. Setup the HA screen to show each SA pi's info and or to combine the info into a
total charged amount.

Bad expensive if you have a bunch of them but its doable.

It will be nice if SA decides to add this natively since it wouldn't be hard at all other than the horsepower load on the pi reading them.

I'm doing something like this now to monitor my epever 4215bn charge controllers on my 12v stuff. Still waiting on SA support for epever which is supposed to happen this year.

 

[dmkjr]

I actually talked to SA yesterday about this very thing. EG4 SCC doesn’t have a method to communicate, so even if SA supported it, it wouldn’t “talk”. The USB port can be used to communicate with your batteries but according to Signature Soler, the SCC with fight the output of the inverter and you will not get full production of one or both of your charging equipment.

 

[Crowz]

I actually talked to SA yesterday about this very thing. EG4 SCC doesn’t have a method to communicate, so even if SA supported it, it wouldn’t “talk”. The USB port can be used to communicate with your batteries but according to Signature Soler, the SCC with fight the output of the inverter and you will not get full production of one or both of your charging equipment.

The charging part isn't a real problem since you can have as many charge controllers on a battery bank as you want. They just charge up to what you have them set to.

If the battery bank can charge at 100 amps and you use 4 charge controllers its possible each controller will charge at 25 amps and you will still hit the 100 amp max.

Where this shines is when your using power from the banks during the day. The charge controllers will provide all the way up to whatever they are rated at if needed in that scenario.

I've been running multiple charge controllers on a single battery bank for years at my old house and it worked great. Solar assistant wasn't around then so the monitoring part wasn't an issue but multiple charge controllers is known good idea.

Back then its the only way you could charge large battery banks since no single charge controller could handle the job.

 

[dmkjr]

The charging part isn't a real problem since you can have as many charge controllers on a battery bank as you want. They just charge up to what you have them set to.

If the battery bank can charge at 100 amps and you use 4 charge controllers its possible each controller will charge at 25 amps and you will still hit the 100 amp max.

Where this shines is when your using power from the banks during the day. The charge controllers will provide all the way up to whatever they are rated at if needed in that scenario.

I've been running multiple charge controllers on a single battery bank for years at my old house and it worked great. Solar assistant wasn't around then so the monitoring part wasn't an issue but multiple charge controllers is known good idea.

Back then its the only way you could charge large battery banks since no single charge controller could handle the job.

I think what they were referring to, and what makes sense, is the MPPT output being lowered because it believed the batteries to be charged (higher voltage) because of sharing a bus bar. That makes sense as “charging” is from anything higher in voltage than the target accepting the voltage.

Disclaimer here, I’m an engineer, but def not an EE and I’m just learning the solar world. However, it made sense so I just bought another inverter that will communicate effectively.