Solis Hybrid - charge battery using Night rate

Nuphor · 07-04-2022 9:43am

I don't see a "Self Use" option on my RHI-3.6K-48ES, installed about 2 years ago. I presume it's because of out of date firmware (surprising, it was only installed 2 years ago). Reached out to support to see what my options are.

HandsomeRover · 14-04-2022 8:15pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118885811#Comment_118885811

I took a closer look at the setup there earlier.

The working string of 8 panels (DC1 on the inverter, PV1 on the Solis app/webpage) was reading 273V at the automatic switch. Cloudy and showery all day.

The other string of 8 panels (DC2 or PV2) was reading just 1V at the automatic switch. My problem is on the roof.

Ideally I'd like to halve the problem, ie figure out which string of 8 has the problem. All 16 panels are in a single line.

Any suggestions on how to do this easily and safely? I have a clamp meter but its AC rated, but it did accurately read the DC current to a car battery from a charger, so not sure if this will help me.

If I release the clamps between panels is it easy to manoevre them out of the way to inspect the connections?

Any inspection would be done with inverter off, PV isolated and after sundown.

bullit_dodger · 14-04-2022 8:21pm

Have you optimizers on the panels? If not you should be able to do it easily enough, with the help of a 2nd person.

Just shade 1/2 a panel or so with a long brush or something and the power should drop off (or not) on that string. If it doesn't then you know it's the other string.

HandsomeRover · 14-04-2022 10:19pm

Lovely simple solution!

I don't know if I have optimisers - I'm only getting to grips with what's up there as I'm not long in the place and the previous owner had this installed.

Ideally I'd like to get a camera under a few of the panels and see the model/spec etc.

I'm assuming the circuit diagram is something like this...

I'd be grateful if you point out any discrepancies you see..

reklamos · 15-04-2022 11:14am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118891236#Comment_118891236

The battery power up sequence is not correct. As you have 2 of them and they are interconnected, the powerup is controled from master battery(the top one in your case). Turn both batteries on with the switch rocker switch than on the master press and hold red SW button. You will see the lights on the master will light up and then the same will happen on slave batteries. When all of them do that, only then you release the red button.

reklamos · 15-04-2022 11:32am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118928178#Comment_118928178

I think potentialy there could be couple issues: 1. bad connection, bad mppt string, bad pannel(same as bad connection).

When you have sun and also with battery charged(otherwise your inverter won't start). Have one string connected to one MPPT and then move it to other. Do the same with other string. This will show if it is on onverter side or not. POWER OFF your system when working on it.

If inverter is good you will also identify which PV string is bad and then can trace cables. It could be that the connection is bad just where the cables leave the panels to house. It could be that there is a bad connection between the panels but you will need to get on the roof to check that. Before getting on the roof just get a good torch, shine under panels and visualy inspect you may see it right away. Since your MC4 connecter was not seeting properly it could be also the same issue on the roof.

BTW: your inverter is G4 same as mine

HandsomeRover · 15-04-2022 12:16pm

Thanks very much for the advice on the battery power up method.

It's raining at the minute so probably won't get an opportunity to switch inputs today but I'll give it a go at some stage.

I'll also try the shading of a panel to try identify the problem string (it may not ultimately be the string) but at least if the inverter is ok then I'm honing in on it.

Much appreciated...

I'll keep you updated.

HandsomeRover · 15-04-2022 12:20pm

By the way..

When I'm on the roof fiddling with connections with my multimeter with everything OFF, the panels will be generating in my hand.. I'm a path to ground.. how do you avoid issues? Cover them up?

HandsomeRover · 15-04-2022 10:33pm

I draped a bath towel over panel #9 of 16 (so the second string) and there was no change in the generated figure over 15 minutes.

Moved the towel to panel #6 (the first string) and the figure dropped by half. Removed the towel and the figures restored.

At least now I know what string is what and where to start looking if I get up on the roof.

con747 · 16-04-2022 12:09am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118933113#Comment_118933113

Not sure if has any relevance to your problem but after a recent install I noticed 1 string wasn't working and the installer came and said there was a problem with a faulty fireman switch causing it. Now on the day I was juggling 2 companies doing different work trying to keep an eye on what they were doing so not exactly sure where he found the issue. I do know it was either in the attic or at the system which I have at ground level, so he didn't go near the panels on the roof.

HandsomeRover · 16-04-2022 7:43pm

Interesting. I'll take a closer look at the fireman's switch.

I might also try disconnect the them at the input to the fireman's switch and measure the voltage again, see if the readings still hold. Or even swap them and see do they flip in the software.

Thanks for the steer.

up_north · 23-05-2022 12:34pm

Hi all. I hope you don’t mind someone from the UK posting here. This forum was top of my Google search results!

i’ve read through this post and although it hurts my head, I THINK I now have the answer to my query but would appreciate some confirmation.

Installer has recommended 3.8kw Solis RHI inverter with 5kw Puredrive battery.

I am on an electricity tariff which gives me much cheaper electricity between 8.30pm and 1.30am. From what I’ve read above, I think I can set the battery to charge during those hours. But I take it that charge time is only with regards to the grid charge time, so outside of those hours it will still charge from solar if available? I also don’t want it to discharge during those 5 hours.

Thanks.

bullit_dodger · 23-05-2022 1:18pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119101820#Comment_119101820

Posting from Blighty - all good!

Most inverters you can specify the charge and discharge periods, sometimes even telling it to have "cut off" figures. such as

"Discharge to 20% and then stop"

So to answer your question.....yeah, you can charge your battery (and not allow it to discharge) between 8:30pm and 1:30am no problem.

Aside: What is the spec you've been recommended. Battery sounds right at 5Kwhr for most people, but normally people would need 5kw or even 6Kw inverters unless you have a really small house load?

up_north · 23-05-2022 1:56pm

Thanks for your reply bullit_dodger

House is quite small. We use no more than 10kw/h per day (excluding car charging) and most of that is in the evening. The quoted system is for 10x4kw panels and 3.6 inverter. In UK, if the inverter is higher than 4kw (I think) you have to apply for special permission from the electricity supplier. So an inverter less than 4kw is fairly standard. My gut feeling is to opt for a bigger battery though.

Ian

reklamos · 23-05-2022 2:45pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119101820#Comment_119101820

On Solis if you set schedule to charge it for 5 hours, this is waht it will try do do and will not discharge. Yuo can also have multiple schedules set to that it charges for 5 hours than holds for another 5 and only discharges during the day.

bullit_dodger · 23-05-2022 3:41pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119102280#Comment_119102280

In Ireland the actual limit is 6Kw for the inverter, but you have to submit a form called NC6. In the UK you have a blanket "prior approval" for inverters up to 3.68Kw. I would however push your panels up to 4.4Kwp if you can, just 1 more panel (£200 or so). The inverter can handle 20% over no problem (in fact it's often recommended). The reason is that on the marginal days of March or Sept/Oct, that extra panel (10% in production) will make a difference.

up_north · 23-05-2022 5:34pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119102703#Comment_119102703

Thanks for that. Sounds like I’ll have no problem there.

up_north · 23-05-2022 5:41pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119103064#Comment_119103064

The installer has suggested 4kw panels so a bit above the inverter output.

I have asked him to also quote for a Solar Edge system to help minimise loss through shading. About 30% of the roof is in shade from neighbouring house till 9.30. The panels will be laid out as two rows of five and the shading will be right to left which means the two strings of 5 will need to be wired as L shapes but the panel in the short leg of the L won’t be in shade but would be affected by the other four in that string, hence who I want to consider Solar Edge.

yankinlk · 23-05-2022 6:35pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119103622#Comment_119103622

In shade until 930am? Don't bother. If its 930pm then yeah.

bullit_dodger · 23-05-2022 8:00pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119103861#Comment_119103861

Don't forget, it also depends on what time of the year. 9:30am when the sun comes up at 8am is nothing, but if the sun comes up at 6am, that potentially could be a fair bit of generation going astray. But in general, yankinlk is spot on. Weight carefully installing optimizer at €50 a pop on panels that you might (might) get an extra hour or two generation on a few sunny mornings a year.

4.4kwp on a 3.68Kw inverter is fine. Splash out on the extra panel for £200 and get the 11 panels

Trust me! (or the next person to reply and tell you the same :-)

up_north · 23-05-2022 9:19pm

Thanks guys. You’ve been a great help. Such a minefield made worse by the fact that many solar installers in the UK are so busy they won’t even return your call and two of them stopped contacting me when I started asking them questions.

up_north · 24-05-2022 4:31pm

Sorry - one more question. If a panel is in shade does it affect only the string it’s on (I think this is the case) or the entire array - assuming a single MPPT. And following on from that, if the inverter has two MPPTs is it better to connect one string to each MPPT rather than two strings into a single MPPT?

graememk · 24-05-2022 5:47pm

Each string needs to be on its own mppt*

*Some inverters you can parallel strings/ panels but with the solis it's max current is about 11 amps so having strings in parallel would exceed that.

But yes shading in one panel will pull down the whole string to that panels output

up_north · 25-05-2022 4:35pm

Out of interest, does anybody use a battery that isn’t on Solis’ approved list?

con747 · 25-05-2022 8:47pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119113049#Comment_119113049

All the lads that diy'd batteries in the diy battery thread.

graememk · 25-05-2022 9:11pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119114225#Comment_119114225

with this caveat : the batteries there pretend to be on the approved list..

Nuphor · 25-05-2022 10:14pm

Good news, support finally got back to me. They updated the firmware remotely (now running 3A0029).

Setup Self use similar to earlier posts in the thread (charge 4am-6am at 25A). Bad news: the battery’s been sitting at 99% this evening and it won’t discharge to power the place in the evening. Have riddled with some settings in the storage options, and tried other modes, but somethings definitely stopping the battery being used. No warnings/errors.

edit: ah, I’d forgotten that Backup mode was toggled independently of self-use/feed-in. Disabled and set a discharge time and all good.

hick · 02-08-2022 4:30pm

(selfishly asking but...)

Would it be worth folks sharing pictures of the settings in their battery menus so others can try them out (albeit at their own peril!!)

for instance, my puredrive 5kW batt will not discharge below 19% 🤷‍♂️ for the life of me I can't figure out why, sent solis an email 10 days ago and chased to still awaiting a reply

I"m playing about with my night time settings right now, so the guidance has been really helpful, a screenshot would be be very handy for both trials and rollbacks!👍️

hick · 02-08-2022 4:49pm

though I did just find this as a good starter for others

https://youtu.be/qCtriOPoS_Y

all other pics or vids appreciated👌

con747 · 02-08-2022 6:55pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119419819#Comment_119419819

You need to go into advanced settings and set the Over Discharge SOC to a higher level than the Force Charge SOC and then save settings. I have mine set to 23% and 20% due to the amount of power cuts so I have enough left in the batteries just in case. AFAIK you need a few % between the settings. PureDrive warranty their batteries to discharge down as low as 10%. So you could set at 13% and 10%.

hick · 03-08-2022 12:08am

Any comments or observations greatly appreciated

currently running a 5.5kW array with a 5kW Puredrive battery. Looking to add more batteries soon

Solarwicklow · 10-09-2022 7:20pm

Hi, have 2 dyness batteries 2.4kw each, looking for an advice if the settings for a charge/discharge limit are correctly set, only noticed that menu on my inverter today when setting up night charge for the first time.

Charge limit set at 10A, discharge at 50v,is that correct?or should it be adjusted? thanks

Screenshot_20220910_190214.jpg

Screenshot_20220910_191924.jpg

con747 · 10-09-2022 8:04pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119600844#Comment_119600844

Not sure if this helps? https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058258223/solis-inverter-battery-charge-discharge-rate

jfdelb · 11-09-2022 8:29am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119600844#Comment_119600844

I THINK IT IS SIMPLY BECAUSE THE SOC IS AT 96%, AND LOGICALLY THE BATTERY'S BMS SLOWS DOWN THE CHARGE. OBSERVE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SOC IS BELOW 90% AND YOU WILL SEE THAT THE LOAD IS AT 50A.

SORRY FOR THE ENGLISH, I AM USING THE GOOGLE TRANSLATOR

Solarwicklow · 11-09-2022 8:56am

Thank you for your reply, I'm not really good with amps settings and electricity in general, just wondered if it was ok ,I understand what you are saying, thanks

ELM327 · 16-09-2022 10:59am

So it seems like I'm unable to change the 50A charge/discharge setting. We're generating over 4kW this morning but still exporting to the grid. I change the settings shown but they dont seem to save?

SD_DRACULA · 16-09-2022 12:06pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119625408#Comment_119625408

Does the battery support more than 50a?

And remember the lies told to us by solis, it will only do 100a for 15 mins then derates to about 70a.

I actually had this issue in the past where it just started forcing 50a no matter what I set, solution was for solis to update the inverter firmware

ELM327 · 16-09-2022 12:12pm

Yes battery (4*dyness) supports 100a. It seems to be throttling by the inverter.

However no changes I make seem to get saved. I've tried even switching off the input. Is there a "factory reset" anywhere?

ELM327 · 16-09-2022 12:27pm

And it seems stuck on "Grid - off grid" despite me switching between "self use" and "backup" modes. It even says self use in the menu but on the main display it shows grid off grid but the grid is powering the house. I'm sending 2.5kW to the batteries but pulling 600-3000w to the house. Makes no sense.

SD_DRACULA · 16-09-2022 5:50pm

Do you have the possibility to try and set those values remotely via modbus/python? See if it makes a difference?

Tried powering off the inverter completely?

And reset the batteries too?

ELM327 · 19-09-2022 11:27am

I did a lot of fiddling and got it back to "auto" mode. But it seems that after a split second going above 50A, it resets back. Even after resetting everything. If it were an EV and a charger I'd say something was throttling the charge rate.

Anyway, I'll just mitigate as best as possible, maybe get a second inverter and some more batteries.

SD_DRACULA · 19-09-2022 1:57pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119636862#Comment_119636862

I'd say get onto Solis and have them either update your FW or see if they can force the 100a values remotely.

The FW update fixed this exact issue for me back when I had the puredrive battery installed.

I'm running 4x dyness at the moment without any issues on my 6kwh solis hybrid on FW version: 3A0029

connesha · 19-09-2022 2:19pm

@ELM327 , are you on solis 6kw hybrid 5g? And if I understand correctly, you can only get 50A in/out of battery?

If so, I've the same inverter, and am "stuck" at 65A limit.

I've a ticket opened for it with Solis, and am getting some responses this morning.

Maybe it'll useful to open a ticket too, if you haven't already? (at least they'll then see a couple of instances of a similar issue...). here is the link https://solis-service.solisinverters.com/support/tickets/new

In my case so far, they changed the FW to 3D002A this morning, but that has not resolved the issue. Lets see whats next...

ELM327 · 19-09-2022 2:49pm

Yes that;s the exact same one.

To be honest I'm considering not doing that, and instead considering the 50A limit as a protector/mitigant for battery degradation.

SD_DRACULA · 19-09-2022 3:40pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119637833#Comment_119637833

I have the 5G one so not sure about 6G, thought that wasn't out yet?

Did you also set up the manual values below as Dyness suggested?

Floating:55.5V

Overvoltage:56.75V

Undervoltage:43~45V

Battery select: Dyness LV

Assuming you have B51100s

connesha · 19-09-2022 4:27pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119638063#Comment_119638063

typo, yea, 5G

ELM327 · 20-09-2022 9:14am

Sorry, I read 6G as 6kw!

I hadnt changed the battery voltage but I checked in the battery settings and they all match what's above, including the name being preselected.

I'm also being quite the fool. Apparently - I saw this on youtube - if you don't switch the inverter to off in the advanced settings, the settings changes for amp limits etc doesnt save!

connesha · 20-09-2022 9:47am

Apparently - I saw this on youtube - if you don't switch the inverter to off in the advanced settings, the settings changes for amp limits etc doesnt save!

Link please

ELM327 · 20-09-2022 10:51am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119640546#Comment_119640546

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVIGEm74-UU

shareboy · 19-10-2022 3:25pm

Hi all

I've Solis hybrid inverter with 3.5kw pylontec battery.

I have my inverter set up for self use with Time of Use disable/stop.

At present my battery is charging from the pv panels and in turn discharged to the house. All good until bad weather days like today when generation is poor my battery force charges from the grid at 15% then goes on to discharge again to the house until it reaches 15%.

My question is can I set my inverter to just charge the battery from pv and not charge the battery from the grid? There is an option to not allow charging from grid but concerned that it will fall under 15% charge.

I only have a standard meter so no night rate avaible yet so hence the enquiry.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Solis Hybrid - charge battery using Night rate

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