Solis inverter settings

mjatkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123979036#Comment_123979036

Currently have a 16Kwh Seplos on a Solis 5K and it gets from 11% (Plyontech) to 100% in 3.5hrs, inverter set at 100A.

So current wise it never starts at 100A dips down a bit then up before it tapers off as the battery reaches 100% soc.

Maybe open a TT with Solis and get them to check it out.

micks_address

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123981135#Comment_123981135

I have looked at the cloud API integration and I'm pretty sure it allows control also via ha

ptogher14

I'll try the API integration and see how I get on. It would be good to have some control, particularly around charge times and current limit.

There are some knowledgeable folk on here, has any one attempted the hard wired approach?

mustyrocks

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123981388#Comment_123981388

Curious as to why you and others are pushing the amps up when charging? is it because of the cheap rate window you have? I have a Green Solutions E10 12.8 battery on the 5K Solis which charges from 20 to 100% on 50amps in 4 hours if not quicker. Just curious why the additional amperage?

mustyrocks

Hi All,

My 5k Solis Inverter has had a software update and added some new settings on the charge time screen. There is now a SOC % field defaulted to 50%. What does this field mean? Charge to 50%, start at 50%? I don't know what to set.

I want to the battery to charge from whatever percentage it is at to 100% each night.

Thanks in advance.

mjatkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123981929#Comment_123981929

Hi, yeah but you are only charging from 20% (2Kwh-ish) to 100% (10Kwh-ish) at 50a (2.5Kw) for say 4 hours is 10Kwh but you only need 8Kwh-ish to fully charge your battery, hence you get it done in less than the 4 hours.

If you took it down to say 5-6% soc (which you should to get the pay back on it) it would a take good bit longer (or use higher charge current), to reach 100% soc.

Thanks

mustyrocks

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123982281#Comment_123982281

Fair enough. Is your battery within spec to go to 5%? if so all good. Most suppliers recommend a lower amp over a longer period in cold weather to keep the battery warm and not impact battery life.

My E10 is rated to go to 5% but I keep it at 20% as its recommended. I have had it at 10% and it still charged in less than 4 hours at 50amps.

I was curious so appreciate your feedback as I am exploring the best settings too.

mjatkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123982326#Comment_123982326

As many of the guys on here will tell you the battery is there to work and earn its keep, fill it to the max, empty it to the min. I was like you with the installers saying oh don't discharge below 20% as it shortens the life of the battery. The difference in discharging to 20% or 5-6% over 5+ years will make very little difference to how long the battery lasts or performs in terms of SOH decline.

In terms of temperature the more the current going in or out the warmer the battery will be.

A lot of us on Boards are on Energia or Pinergy EV plans, cheap rate 5-8 cent between 2-5am or 2-6am, fill the batteries, use it to run the house when needed during the day, then dump any remaining back into the grid at 18.5 to 25 cent per Kw.

Its better than mining Bitcoin. (maybe)

Thanks

mustyrocks

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123982862#Comment_123982862

Thanks for the feedback. Makes a lot of sense. I think the installers point on the lower amps was a longer charge time with lower amps keeps the battery warmer long versus hotter for a shorter time. But I know I have lots of experimenting to do too.

Cheers for the guidance.

on_the_roots

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123965849#Comment_123965849

In theory yes, but in practice this is nothing to do with the actual internal temperatures.

Solis did a pretty crap job on this. The de-rating doesn't happen based on temperature feedback but on charging amp settings. If anything 91-100A is set for charging it will de-rate, no matter the temperature.

If I set charging @90A it will be a steady 90A, no de-rating. After 4 hours the core temperature (IGBT) is higher than it is at the moment the de-rate happens if I had set charging at @100A. It doesn't make any sense.

micks_address

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123983165#Comment_123983165

What does 90 amps translate to in terms of kwh going to a battery?

Midlakelands

Hi @mustyrocks referring to your earlier comment on firmware, I mentioned that firmware change earlier in the thread. I think solis are doing it to give flexibility (i guess) so you could perhaps charge in the spring up to a lower capacity during a reduced rate just to have enough until the sun fully kicks in? (I'm just speculating here) or maybe discharge down to say 50% in the evening just to sell back some to the grid. Haven't actually tried it yet.

FYI there's apparently a force charge registry which resets after 5 minutes which you can use to override it all in case say you want your home assistant to drive the charge/discharge sessions. the 5 min timeout is so that if its not refreshed say because the home assistant died the inverter won't be left in an undesirable state.

ECO_Mental

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123983177#Comment_123983177

About 4.68 kW at 52 Volts

conor_mc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123981388#Comment_123981388

Tried out 90 amps then 75 amps, no difference on the 90 (15 mins before derate) but got 1 hour of 75a before it derated. I raised a ticket with Solis last night and got new firmware installed this morning at about 5am, so I'll track tonight and see if I can get a solid 2-3 hours at 75 amps first, then step it back towards 100.

Was a bit nervous about raising the ticket as I'm running an unsupported GobelPower battery under the "undefined" battery type, but I specifically logged the ticket as an inverter issue rather than a battery issue and they didn't ask about it. When I raised a previous battery charging ticket, they asked and responded that it was unsupported and offered no further assistance.

ptogher14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123981768#Comment_123981768

Hi Mick,

Was this the Solis cloud control integration or the solis sensor integration?

micks_address

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123986108#Comment_123986108

I went with solis sensor

ptogher14

I guessed it was the api control given you had mentioned you had some control. I have raised a ticket with solis support requesting the api key so I'll run with that one now

mjatkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123984695#Comment_123984695

Guys, Solis are one of the worst companies I've ever tried to work with, all they are looking to do is close support tickets and push the problem from their equipment to things like batteries when in most cases the issue is their inverters.

I've had two Solis inverters both failed and replaced, one of which is still not working correctly and yet Solis are insisting that the issue is with the battery BMS not their inverter.

Advice raising TT's just call out Pylontech as the battery type, saves any hassle with them trying to close TT because of "unsupported battery".

Your issue with charge current drop off I opened TT last year when I was trying to charge and discharge a 16Kwh battery in 9hr night rate window several times, in the end I gave up as it is impossible for them to keep a constant 100amp charge current for more than a 10-15mins, not sure why, maybe other manufacturers have similar issue?

mjatkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123986108#Comment_123986108

Pretty much all of the HA Solis integrations will allow you to control the inverter in terms of charge/discharge time windows and current etc.

But to make these changes you will have to (without automation) do it in real time while you are using HA.

Now with some very simple automation you can make these changes completly automated at what ever time based on what ever you want.

I use a very simple script that runs at 8pm every night and sets the discharge current to allow the battery soc reach 6% by around 2am just before charge window opens.

Works most of the time, I run a post check to see if the current has changed, if it hasn't just run the script again or change it manually in HA.

Thanks

ptogher14

Thanks mjatkey,

What integration are you using? I'm only really looking to control discharge/charge current and times and to run a simple automation.

My initial thought was to change the charge the current before the charging window to reflect the SOC, so you're nt always running everything near its limit.

However there seems to be two trails of thought on this. 1. Run the battery hard and maximise returns. 2. Take it easy on the battery in the hope of prolonging its life. At the moment I'm undecided on which route I want to take. I can see the logic in both.

Midlakelands

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123986652#Comment_123986652

Hi @mjatkey mind me asking which model you have now? I, like you, had to replace 2 inverters under warranty, and in fact moved to a newer model as the older one was not in stock. My old model was an RHI-6K-48ES and the newer one was the S5-EH1P6K-L.

In parallel I also changed my batteries and upgraded them. The old inverter was charging 100 amps for 15 minutes and then derating which I think is designed behaviour on that model Solis inverter side (They will say this eventually when you log calls with them) however the newer inverter is charging for me at about a steady 90 amps for 4 hours(granted on new bigger batteries).

Others here do not seem to be getting similar results so at this stage it's more like the luck of the draw between BMS and Solis Inverter. Pity we can't go for bigger models like 8Kw that have beefier amp charge/discharge rates and derate them to 6Kw grid return as I don't think this is really allowed under the ESB NC6 form even if your inverter has the software option to do this.

micks_address

Hi folks,

Trying to figure out the solis sensor setting to use in home assistant for house load. I'm using PowerFlow card plus.

The grid load in the solis app is showing 766 watts.. the solis plant total consumption power sensor in home assistant is show 927. It looks like that value includes maybe the backup circuit load? but even taking the backup circuit load off doesnt match the 766 value…

mustyrocks

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123983211#Comment_123983211

Thanks. I set it 100% for charge last night and worked perfectly.

mustyrocks

Hey Folks, I have set my E10 Battery to 10% SOC last few nights and set charge to start at 11pm. I have noticed that if it discharges down to 10% ahead of this, it tends to charge back up to 20% immediately (not in the charge window).

I have SOC overCharge % set to 10% and forcecharge set to 7%. Am I missing some setting that could be triggering the charge back to 20%?

Thanks

mjatkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123987348#Comment_123987348

Hi, both were S5-EH1P5K-L originally, now one is same but the other (the one still not working correctly) was swapped to a S5-EH1P6K-L.

Charge rate is not a big issue for me, it would be nice to get the 100amp's that they claim, but doesn't look like that will happen any when soon.

The issue I have with the second swap is that any discharge (load or timed) is seen as Backup and hence anything more than 3-4Kw discharge the inverter alarms with Backup overload, and has to be reset.

Same symptoms even with backup disabled and physically disconnected from inverter.

Solis have been working on it for a few weeks getting nowhere fast, I think they'll have to replace the inverter again.

Last thing they tried was swapping the meter and ct, no change.

Original installers who did the inverter swap refused to travel up from Dublin to Cavan as they are convinced its the inverter having never seen this sort of behaviour before.

Luckily our neighbour is a sparks albeit not familiar with solar kit but between us we swapped the meter and ct no probs but of course no change.

Luckily as the apartment is only used lightly (in terms of electrics) at weekends its not been a big issue which is why I'm not screaming down the phone every day to them.

Thanks

micks_address

Has anyone had the data logger refresh rate changed recently? I logged a support ticket but they said they no longer change from the default of 5 minutes.

Thanks,

Mick

conor_mc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989383#Comment_123989383

Concoct a problem that you’re investigating and they might do it. A good example seems to be the derating charge issue!

This worked for me when they first refused to change mine last year.

micks_address

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989545#Comment_123989545

Logged another ticket and said my installer said it was possible. Changed to 2 minutes. He suggested not going to 30 seconds as it makes the app unstable? Timeouts etc

Midlakelands

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123989274#Comment_123989274

I am definitely suspicious of the build quality/software of the S5 series. My second replacement one will only pull/push about 92 amps from the battery (solar + battery can go to the full 6kw output ). Not going to touch it as its "good enough" for my purposes but its a pity it cant reach its full potential.

Hurrache

Hi all,

Is it possible to set things up so that the home powers off the grid during a specific window, i.e. can I set the battery not to be used during the cheap EV charge window for example, and once that window is over switch back to battery/PV?

Secondly, had an alarm early in the morning in which the switch tripped for the PV and got a no grid warning although we were running off the grid from then on, second time it's happened this year. Any suggestions as to what to look for?