SolarEdge Energy Bank Review, Part 1: Economics, Compatibility, Procurement, Installation 

That’s reassuring to hear. It’s a great feature to oversize your system array in relation to the inverter, and then see the surplus go straight into the battery. Like you, I draw very little power outside of my EV and hot water tank. At most I draw 4kW when cooking, and even then only for very brief intervals. The rest of the time, it’s 50 Watts baseload, and 300-600 Watts with evening entertainment.

There's a shortage with all inverters, which all stems from the global shortage of chips. Now chips for CPU's and GPU's on the PC market have gotten back to healthy supply. But chips for all the other applications are still chronically short. So lead times are now measured in months, rather than the pre pandemic "in stock, next day delivery".

When it comes to buying direct, I find most trades simply aren’t interested in “labour only” jobs. I did this once with my en-suite bathroom, and it took months to find someone. But at the same time, the stuff I bought wasn’t well thought out - the sink for example was massive. I think a plumber would be a better judge of what fits in a small space. But that said, I think you did the right thing buying direct. By the time you get a quote after waiting months, the prices have gone up, and then you wait months to get the part and then the installer says “price has gone up again, outside our control, force majuere etc….” I could have done the wiring myself, but the manual handling needs two strong people.

@@anthonydyer3939 Well, regarding getting an installer,, the issue seem to be that to be a solaredge installer you have a contract in which it says you must provide the item to install, thats what I was told,(believe it ro not) and I have a perfectly good company 16 miles away who simply refused the job(twice),, Them and many other just did not want to know,,and SE where not much help.. In the end I got Oval,(pricey but they did the job) Regarding wiring ,,it is simple ,,but its the little details that I was affraid off..the techy stuff... I wish I had opted to have mine inside the house instead of in the garage,,as much as anything ,for security issue,,all though they are heavy,they have big takeaway value... I fitted mine on the wall by myself ,with the help of a block and tackle and big coachbolts ,afterall its only 120 kilos and I,m 66 , I watched the rest in your series and found them very informative,,I really wish I,d watched before purchasing,,regards

I’ve worked with modbus on many interface tests in my time. It either goes perfectly within 5 minutes of arriving on site, or there’s two days spent tearing hair out over “is the slave even started?”, 2/4 wiring arrangements, address offsets, word arrangements, contiguous data blocks etc… Calta sounds familiar. I’ve got a modbus simulator on my laptop, but years since I’ve used it. Solaredge support reckons comms board was “blown up” due to incorrect inverter shutdown sequence (400V capacitors unable to discharge, inferring that electrical charge somehow leak onto extra low voltage circuitry?). It’s baloney I reckon, but if not it’s terrible product design. Either way, they are sending a new comms board. They even suggested warranty would normally be voided, but they are making an exception this time. Personally I reckon it’s software corruption, but the remedy might be a new comms board anyway. I’ll have more to say on this experience in my next video.

I still have the sleeping battery issue with no help from Solaredge Tech support

HD Wave inverters can’t support off grid operations. You need the newer single phase energy hub inverter (North America market only), or the three phase home hub inverter (North America and Europe), then you need an additional backup interface. Right now, Solaredge inverters (any sort) are in desperate short supply in the uk. My sister has Enphase microinverters, and a givenergy battery. She’s liking her system. I think you’ll be happy with your choice.

Yes, those charge discharge profiles are another gear to grind. They’ve got a wonderful array of config settings. But they are only available to installers. I’m going to cover that in part 2 of my video. I’m not fond of the Solaredge philosophy of granting detailed config settings exclusively to your installer. As a homeowner you should have master access, but you don’t. This didn’t matter when it was just an inverter, but with battery management the homeowner absolutely needs this control. This is bad, and it prevents you from changing your installer as you please.

The installation manual specifically states Cat6 cable. But the wiring to the modbus meter has now been reconfigured to use a twisted pair within the cable.

This will be one of the tests I’ll carry out once commissioned. In summary my test schedule will include: - Noise under full charge load - Noise under full discharge load. - Response time responding to small and large load variations - Charge / Discharge efficiency A discussion of the various settings, including the how to not discharge the battery when charging the car. My plan is to make 2 further videos. Part 2: Commissioning and setup, Part 3: 2 week performance review.

@@anthonydyer3939 Thanks Anthony. Good luck with it and I look forward to hearing your observations.

Ah yes, I got that error. The antennas were however right next to each other. So to fix it you need an installer account, and then SetApp. You then need to pair the units together again. There’s a procedure in the troubleshooting shooting section of your hot water installation manual. Apparently this issue is fixed with the latest inverter firmware. I do agree with you. Solaredge really should have offered rs485 as an option for connecting up the hot water controller.

@@anthonydyer3939 My battery got delivered on Thursday so just waiting for a date from Barry to come and install it so will get him to look at it as don't have an installer account. Really wish Solaredge would give more options to the owner of the system to fix issues like this without the need for a separate account, its not exactly a risk tbh.

@@capello1986 Go to the monitoring portal, log out. On the login page, where is says "New Installer?", click there. Enter your credentials, call yourself an installer, but use a different email. You should get to a page where you need to enter more credentials. Don't type in your inverter serial number, it gets returned as an invalid serial number, instead you should be able to be signed up as a generic installer. Make up a company name if needs be. Once you have those new user/password credentials, then you can download SetApp, enter new credentials there, and voila! You have the ability to configure the inverter yourself. I'm getting my new communications board, hopefully tomorrow (it's in FedEx Aberdeen depot today). So I'm going to change it out myself, with SolarEdge support, and have a video camera plotting the whole episode so that should make for more interesting viewing. It's far better than waiting weeks for Barry to become available again.

did you have to change your solar edge inverter? or did you switch it? Is it on the AC side? Cheers

@@SuperCatbert it’s AC coupled

I just replied to someone else whose energy bank worked seamlessly with his 6kW inverter. Nonetheless I’ll keep an eye out for that problem and thanks for the tip! It definitely sounds like a software or config problem. Is your battery communicating using wireless energy net, or RS485? Top tip! Register yourself as an installer with a secondary email address, and you can have use of SetApp as well. It came in handy when my hot water zigbee comms decided to die.

@@anthonydyer3939 The inverter and battery use the wireless energy net even though they are next to one another. I wonder if the wireless comms are a bit clunky. You would think that the inverter would constantly poll the battery to make sure that it was in the correct state according to the charge/discharge profile. Unless of course the comms had completely broken down.

@@mikewhite4099 I much prefer wired communication methods for fixed assets. I’ve got the same situation with my hot water controller being right next to the inverter, and I needed an extra wireless zigbee module in the inverter to make the communications work. If it used a choice of Ethernet, or secure wifi between its devices that would make things a lot more flexible. My battery is wired with serial comms. It’s old standard, but it (should be) reliable. Very slow for downloading firmware to the battery apparently. They seem to use a real hodge podge of different standards for communicating between devices within their own ecosystem.

@@anthonydyer3939 You’d think a manufacturer such as SolarEdge would make sure all of their devices are compatible with each other and communicate seamlessly. MyEnergi products seem to be a good ecosystem.

@@CastleKnight7 I think they do, but not all at once. For about a year the energy banks were only compatible with the smaller inverters. Of course when the bigger inverters were declared suitable, they’ve done a lot of testing, but then a system like mine shows up (including a hot water controller) and it turns out they haven’t adapted installation procedures to accommodate new information from their internal training slides.

There’s no off grid capability with the hd wave inverters. You need a “backup interface”, but my latest information is that those aren’t available for hd wave inverters. Backup interfaces are only available for North American “energy hub” inverters (single phase), or European three phase “home hub” inverters. That said, unless your house is fed from overhead wires, power cuts don’t happen so frequently. I have my smaller Bluetti battery for such infrequent occurrences.

@@anthonydyer3939 thanks for the replay, that's very helpful. We live in a pretty rural area and have had a handful of power-cuts over the last year, one lasting for over a day, so it's just something I'm considering as an option if it's easy enough to build in at the start. Not a deal breaker for sure, but if I can achieve that capability then so much the better. It looks like the energy bank might work with the StorEdge inverter too, so I'll speak to my installer about that to see if they have an opinion. Thanks again and keep up the good work!

I’m sure this inverter failure is nothing to do with the energy bank, but a good product needs to have good support documentation. Manuals need to be followed by electricians, not IT administrators and system engineers. They need to be designed as such. That said, when it worked it was very reliable, but when it doesn’t, I’ll be seeing how well their support turns out and I’ll report back. The most breathtaking failure in all this is the hodge podge mix of communication standards between devices within their own ecosystem. They have RS485 serial comms, their own proprietary energynet, and zigbee which happens to be completely incompatible with energynet. If I was a product manager, I’d have all the devices communicating on tcp/ip based communications (Ethernet or wifi). That simplifies and standardises connection options. Protocols of choice would either be Modbus Tcp or IEC61850. This is what modern process control and safety systems use in the maritime and offshore environment these days.

@@anthonydyer3939 I didn't understand a word of that apart from that industry standard connections are a good thing!

That's a real shame. I had another comment saying similar to you. They got their battery going again by shutdown down the inverter, isolating AC power, and then re-powering on. I've had some communications with a Technical Marketing Manager. They showed me their training slides for RS485 serial comms installations to energy banks. It's even more detailed and fascinating that the official installation manual. The trouble is: there are quite a few deviations from their official manuals. For instance the manuals tell you to install serial comms on RS485-2 channel, but the training slides tell you to install on RS485-1 channel. Furthermore the training slides tell you to set the termintion resistors off on the modbus meter, and the inverter. Modbus meter should be set to slave address 2. That apparently is the most reliable communications configuration. None of that is in the manual. Basically the training slides are a product of all the experiences gained during energy bank installs on customer sites, not in house product testing. I do have to say I have a feeling that my installer has never seen these training slides. There's also a number of cautions in the training slides. For shutdown, you have to turn off the inverter first, before the battery. Power up involves turning the battery on first, then the inverter. There's an abundance of notes saying if it's not done this way, then warranties could be voided (implying damage is being caused). The thing is: That's not in the installation manual, or the operation manual. It's exactly the kind of thing that a homeowner could do during troubleshooting if a red fault light comes on. I still haven't got my replacement comms board yet, but I'll make a new video once I'm ready to rock and roll. My advice to you would be to check the serial comms terminations in the inverter. If it's on RS485-2 channel then that could explain a few things with your setup.

When you said your inverter was acting up, did you get the three LED lights on the inverter like I did? Red/Green: Dim, Blue: Bright ?

@@anthonydyer3939 From time to time I could hear the relays clicking in and the Blue and Green would flash repeatedly waiting for generation while outside the sun was splitting the trees. I compared my generation with some friends near by who have the same inverter and similar size PV system and they were generating much higher than I was. I did get a host of other combinations of lights but can't remember which now. I power cycled everything and cleared the fault on the battery and it would work for a time but then I would get a Blue and Red LED on the battery again. Will see what happens when the new one arrives but I still think SE have rushed these to market and have decided to solve the problems after install which is not ideal in my book.

These charge/discharge profiles will get my full attention during part 2. It's really very bad that SolarEdge has locked these settings in particular away from system owners. They need to treat their system owners as the masters here, not the installers. The inverters have 12 year warranties and there's every chance that your original installer has moved on to different things when support is required in that timeframe. And yet, they have exclusive control. It seems like you can't even get another solaredge installer to take over the inverter for fault finding or modifications.

@@anthonydyer3939 They make such a big deal about everything being done from the app, yet you can do nothing on the battery side. We have the integrated charger. I'm preferring the Zappi when I use my mother's. We can't charge the car without emptying the battery, or filling the battery. This is fine in winter but useless in summer. The hardware seems ok. But the way it operates is really poor. When we move, I'm not getting Solaredge again.

​@@anthonydyer3939 Hey bud, I've been playing with this lately using Home Assistant etc and I have it working fairly well. It seems like we need a community somewhere to be able to discuss this? Do you know of one or shall we create one?

Yes! See my part 2 and 3 videos. Both uploaded this week.

Single Twin&Earth cable connected via the double pole isolator to a 42 Amp single pole Type B MCB in the consumer unit. I can't remember the CSA of the cable cores, but 6mm2 should be good for 47 Amps clipped direct.

Warranty here: www.solaredge.com/sites/default/files/se-energy-bank-battery-warranty.pdf Headline Figures: 10 years, unlimited cycles Small Print: needs to be monitored by SolarEdge via internet, to be used for “standard, Solar use only”, you are responsible for shipping defective product back to Solaredge at your cost. This battery is only compatible with Solaredge inverters. It’s not like Pylontech, BYD, Voltacon etc…. Which are compatible with a wide range of inverters.

@@anthonydyer3939 Thanks. Unlimited cycles. I like that. I'm guessing that the internet connection is for tracking/warranty purposes. interesting

@@darwinjina yes. Unlimited cycles is what attracted me to it. That’s 3650 solar cycles. Good NMC batteries are about 2000 cycles in life expectancy so this warranty is attractive. If I didn’t have the warranty, then I’d have gone for a Pylontech LFP battery for less money.

It can’t be commissioned online. It has to be commissioned via a local wifi hotspot. That hotspot has to be activated locally, and it’s only active for a short duration without anyone connecting to it. Solaredge is not Chinese. Its headquarters are registered in Israel. All that said, once commissioned, it is supported by Solaredge. They can adjust settings and push firmware updates straight to the inverter. So in that regards, you have a point. But that said, it can function perfectly well with the Ethernet connection disconnected.

Yes, apparently according to SolarEdge support I need to be added with an Installer Sub Account. Barry Chapman is aware of this little tweak.

Which batteries did you use? I am think along the same lines as you but understand that there are coms issues with third party batteries. Cheers.

Why the hell are you watching then! Move on.

I will admit my presentation skills towards a camera are something I struggle with. If I’m unscripted, there’s hesitations, umms, errs and too many times I can breakout into waffling. Talking to people however is much more natural feeling. So I write a script, I read the lines, and then I look up at the camera to speak, and half way through I forget my lines, and a spurious ‘err’ comes my way. It’s not easy, and I’m sometimes going through several retakes to get it right. I edit out the minor mistakes, thinking ‘that’ll do, this isn’t the BBC’. Interestingly since your comment I’m now getting adverts for teleprompters!

@@anthonydyer3939 This is such good and important information, I didn’t even think about the presentation. I certainly felt it was very authentic and appropriate. Andrew hasn’t proven that he could do even as well as this! If the cadence is too slow for him, he should take advantage of RU-vid’s speed control. What does he think that’s for? Thank you very much for sharing your experience.