Nowty Towers Vs UK Grid Storage

[Stinsy]

What with my elsewhere-documented inverter issues being resolutely unsolved, I’ve been looking at these…

How are they? Can you manage them remotely or is it a push-buttons-on-the-front kind of deal?

[SimonSays]

There is this https://github.com/cliffdude/SofarCtrl to interface with Home Assistant

I bought the parts at Christmas with a view to building it and playing with an ME3000SP as an aux battery charger

[nowty]

What with my elsewhere-documented inverter issues being resolutely unsolved, I’ve been looking at these…

How are they? Can you manage them remotely or is it a push-buttons-on-the-front kind of deal?

My first one was doing the "normal mode" with the CT clamp until I upgraded to the higher power SMA sunny Island. When the sofar first came out I reckon they were the best budget battery inverter on the market.

They are mostly a "push-buttons-on-the-front kind of deal", but some folk into software can control them in fancy ways in "Passive Mode", I keep thinking about whether to learn more about that. I think there is a whole forum or some other website with loads of info on them somewhere about.

But for now I just use them as a 3kW on or off dumb aux battery charger / discharger (in "timed mode" which is really a "test" mode without any CT clamps) which I control with a WiFi socket tripping a high power contactor on the AC side. When the AC goes off they just sit there forever with a grid failure error until I re-connect the grid, then they count down 60 secs, then continue what they were doing.

EDIT - SimonSays in the last post has linked the website I was thinking of.

[Stinsy]

I’ve had a scroll up and read a bit more about your SoFar setup. The bit I’m confused about is the role of the Victron solar charge controllers. Have I misunderstood? Do the SoFar inverters charge through them?

My plan would be to have one in smart mode avoiding peak priced electric during the day, and timed to charge/discharge during the buy,ow sell-high cycles. The 2nd would be in dumb mode charging and discharging at full whack to support the 1st during the forced charge-discharge periods and maybe discharge at 300W in the daytime.

However a simpler plan would be to spend a grand on a new Sunsink 5.5kW. Double the cost of 2x SoFar units but a teeny fraction of the faff. While I would REALLY enjoy the project detailed above to make the SoFar internet controllable, but I genuinely don’t have the time…

[nowty]

I’ve had a scroll up and read a bit more about your SoFar setup. The bit I’m confused about is the role of the Victron solar charge controllers. Have I misunderstood? Do the SoFar inverters charge through them?

The Victron charge controllers have nothing to do with the Sofar units apart from using the same intermediate DC bus bars. But of course If I was discharging during the day using one of the Sofar units the DC charge controllers would provide some of the DC current simply by being connected to the batteries on the DC side via the intermediate DC bus bars.

My next improvement will be installing a Victron Smart Shunt for remote monitoring the total DC current to/from my battery banks as I have one more unused Direct.VE port on my recent Victron Cerbo-S GX unit installation.

[jonc_uk]

I am in a similar situation. I have 3x SMA Sunny Island 8.0 which will charge my US5000s at 18kW.

However, this will not provide enough power to get from 12% to 100% in the 6 hour standard cheapslot.

I have just reinstalled 1x ME3000SP and have it operational in Passive mode via the RS485 interface and an ESP32 running ESPHome with an RS485 interface. This means I can now control it via Home Assistant.

Oh, and I recently installed a Victron charge controller too on a 5 panel string to do slightly more efficient charging than the old AC coupled SMA inverter. The other advantage is that once or twice I have managed to shut down the Sunny Islands by emptying the batteries and have them go into protect mode. In an unattended / unmonitored situation, the Victron should be able to at least keep the stack safe and hopefully allow the SIs to restart on their own.

[nowty]

The other advantage is that once or twice I have managed to shut down the Sunny Islands by emptying the batteries and have them go into protect mode. In an unattended / unmonitored situation, the Victron should be able to at least keep the stack safe and hopefully allow the SIs to restart on their own.

That has happened to me once overnight, luckily I was home to do a manual re-start. My Victron charge controllers now give me more peace of mind as well as higher overall charge rates.

Also, the ME3000SP units have an under and over voltage protect function. If the voltage gets too high, it will dump to the grid and if its too low it will take power from the grid to charge.

[nowty]

Fun and games today (or yesterday by the time I post this) at Nowty Towers.

My Victron 300A SmartShunt arrived 3 hours before todays Saving Session and in an electric van too.



Obviously I would install it AFTER the saving session as attempting to fit it BEFORE would be madness as the whole system would need to be shutdown, reconfigured and restarted.

At 2.5 hours BEFORE the saving session, I thought, its a a challenge I cannot resist.

Turned this,



Into this with under an hour before the saving session with everything operational again,



And now I can get info I need when away from home, most of my gear is SMA but the Sunny Portal just does not give me basic voltage and amps info. You can see the near 200A discharge during the saving session with me exporting.

[Lincs Robert]

What with my elsewhere-documented inverter issues being resolutely unsolved, I’ve been looking at these…

How are they? Can you manage them remotely or is it a push-buttons-on-the-front kind of deal?

Any progress on getting the problem resolved? It’s a shame that this kit is “supported” in this way. I’d have thought that a bit of proactivity on their behalf would have increased sales. Hey ho ……

[SimonSays]

FWIW, I can't recommend Growatt's UK warranty either.
The 5kW hybrid I bought behaves strangely. Growatt remoted in to it, saw the behaviour, updated the firmware = no difference.
My supplier has been bounced between the distributor and Growatt themselves, and no-one seems keen to replace the thing. This has been going on since October.
At least I have my 3.6kW inverter, but was hoping to get the 5kW running in time to get a little more out of the saving sessions.