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Has anyone seen the up5000 for sale in the uk? This seems like a big step up and from calculating rand->£ its coming in at a little over £1100. That would make a lot more financial sense.

I've never seen UP5000 batteries for sale in the UK. Voltacon sell a 5.12kWh battery that is basically a white-labelled Pylontech. However if you've ever handled these batteries you will see why people often pay a little more per kWh for the 2.4kWh US2000 over the 3.5kWh US3000! It can be the difference between surgery for a hernia!

ITS ( CLICK HERE) are pretty competitive on price but I've had good luck in the past making "or best offer" bids on eBay...

As a heads up about the bigger Voltacon battery packs, I had ordered some of these, as their advert used to state that they are compatible with the inverter/charger I've just installed, a SoFar ME3000SP. It turns out that the advert was wrong, and although these packs use Pylontech cells, they are not 100% compatible, and will not work with the SoFar.

Oldgreybeard wrote: ↑Sun Sep 26, 2021 10:12 pm As a heads up about the bigger Voltacon battery packs, I had ordered some of these, as their advert used to state that they are compatible with the inverter/charger I've just installed, a SoFar ME3000SP. It turns out that the advert was wrong, and although these packs use Pylontech cells, they are not 100% compatible, and will not work with the SoFar.

That’s interesting, do you have to send them back? Are you running them without BMS communication? How do they expect to sell batteries that don’t communicate with the most popular inverters?

Oldgreybeard wrote: ↑Sun Sep 26, 2021 10:12 pm As a heads up about the bigger Voltacon battery packs, I had ordered some of these, as their advert used to state that they are compatible with the inverter/charger I've just installed, a SoFar ME3000SP. It turns out that the advert was wrong, and although these packs use Pylontech cells, they are not 100% compatible, and will not work with the SoFar.

I read some where that even the pylon tech don’t work with some inverters because the writing on the pins is different. Different cables are required depending on the inverter. It might be worth checking out the pin arrangement between the two.

@stinsy interesting. I hadn’t seen them before. Very cost effective.

RS485 was designed to work over old fashioned “serial” cables, there is no official standard as to what pin does what when using RJ45 connectors and CAT5e cable. Obviously the electrons don’t care what colour the insulation is, but the designer of one particular implementation might have crossed over some of the cables or used a novel pin designation.

Making up a cable is pretty easy so long as you have the pin diagram for both pieces of equipment…

Stinsy wrote: ↑Mon Sep 27, 2021 4:18 am That’s interesting, do you have to send them back? Are you running them without BMS communication? How do they expect to sell batteries that don’t communicate with the most popular inverters?

Luckily I spotted the potential problem before they were delivered, when reading the manual that I'd downloaded just after ordering them. I emailed Voltacon for clarification, as the compatibility list in the manual didn't match that in their advert (at that time, they've since changed their advert). After a few emails, I concluded that my best option was to ask them to change my order for three Pylontech US3000C battery packs, with a modest refund. Unfortunately they aren't getting more stock of Pylontech's in until December, though, whereas the Voltacons were arriving mid-October.

Whilst this was going on I had confirmation from ITS that they had stock due to arrive mid-October, so went ahead and pre-ordered three US3000Cs from them as well. This is a bigger pack than I was planning, and has meant raiding the piggy bank a bit more, but it's not as if savings are really making much at the moment, anyway.

Andy wrote: ↑Mon Sep 27, 2021 7:58 am I read some where that even the pylon tech don’t work with some inverters because the writing on the pins is different. Different cables are required depending on the inverter. It might be worth checking out the pin arrangement between the two.

There are diagrams for the different pin configurations used with the Voltacon battery packs, so the cables could have been configured to work OK, I think. I believe that the 16 possible DIP switch configurations on the battery allow both the comms protocol and the cable wiring to be configured for a range of different inverter/chargers, but unfortunately there is no SoFar setting listed. It may well be that they update the BMS firmware to allow this in future, though, that was suggested as a possibility. I didn't really want to be a guinea pig for this, though, and decided that as the Pylontech/SoFar combination was well-proven it made sense to go for that.

I think generally it is the inverter side that has to update the firmware, the batteries just tend to broadcast the data. It is possible to read that data and then retransmit it in a format that the inverter can read using a PI, Arduino etc.

I'm doing that in my thread https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/view ... 2258#p2258

Tinbum wrote: ↑Mon Sep 27, 2021 11:44 am I think generally it is the inverter side that has to update the firmware, the batteries just tend to broadcast the data. It is possible to read that data and then retransmit it in a format that the inverter can read using a PI, Arduino etc.

I'm doing that in my tread https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/view ... 2258#p2258

Interesting. So you're effectively making a sort of universal translator that can translate between whatever the BMS puts out and whatever format the inverter uses. The Voltacon packs have a DIP switch on the front that can be set to output different data formats, that seems to do the same sort of thing:




They also have wiring diagrams for both the CANBUS and RS485 connectors, showing how to configure the cables for each make of inverter. It does look from those as if there is zero standardisation when it comes to pinouts.

This is super interesting as I was considering a second hand Sofar ME3000SP and Voltacon 5.12kWh.

The Voltacon has a dip switch setting for Deye and I had though Sofar and Deye were the same thing as a number of brands seem to be clones of each other. I am glad I read this. Before I follow the Tinbum solution is there an inverter that can be got for a decent price that works with the Volacon battery? You can get the Sofar ME3000SP for less than £300 some days on EBAY.