SolarEdge Energy Bank Review, Part 3: Performance, User Interface and Control 

Glad it was a great help!

My latest video looks at import balancing as well as battery efficiency.

Here's a question about 3 Phase inverters that's worth asking: - If the loads across three phases are unbalanced (e.g. 4kW L1, 1kW L2, 1kW L3), will the inverter split the output across the three phases unequally to favour supplying the heaviest load, or could you end up with two phases exporting to the grid, and the phase with the heaviest load not getting enough supply from the inverter?

I’m not entirely sure, we are currently heavily imbalanced in what we are importing, the house, lighting (all led) and appliances are on one phase, garage and freezers on another, the only balanced load is the heat pump, but that is a heavy load. I will ask the installer in due course.

@@andrewknots Heat pumps are indeed a heavy load, but a seasonal one. When solar is productive, the best heavy load for the summer would be a 3 phase Zappi charger for an EV (or two chargers on separate phases). I’ve got a feeling that the inverter wouldn’t be asymmetric. That said, 14kW is a large generator for a domestic property, so I don’t think you’ll be coming up short on one phase while being in surplus on another phase. Best solution would be a DC coupled battery, or more heavy loads as mentioned before.

That's strange. I'll have a chat with Octopus, but I'm not willing to give my electricity account number to anyone. The referral link should "just work". My account number is a private credential between me and Octopus energy,. Please forgive me for acting with an abundance of caution here. But I'm glad you got admin rights sorted out for your system.

@@anthonydyer3939 Hi Anthony, I totally understand. It felt a bit wierd asking. It was just based upon what Octopus was asking If you are able to get someone from Octopus to make the link so we can set up the referral properly, that would be great.

I’ve had a chat with Octopus, and they said: “In order to credit referrals we need the name and postcode or email address of the person who referred them. Before the April price increase, customers used to be able to sign up online and so previously we had a referral code or referral link that customers could use.” So I’m happy to give you my private email address, but not here in public. If you’ve got any ideas on how I can send private messages to you….. but if not afraid we’re stuck. There’s no private messaging facility within RU-vid sadly.

@@anthonydyer3939 Hi Anthony, one thought - you can send a contact email on my organisation's website and they can pass it on to me. If ok with that, go to rpd.co.uk and use the contact page - the team will then pass it on to me. I'll then make contact. For others who might want to thank you with a referral, it might be worth considering setting up a new email address just for situations like this. Hope this helps. Cheers, Paul D

Ok I’ve sent an email to your ‘info’ address. I think we’ll get this sorted.

I was attracted to Solaredge in the first place by their 99% nameplate efficiency. That’s an 80 Watt lightbulbs worth of heat dissipated at full load. I think SMA for comparison was 97% efficiency. There’s a little cooling fan on the inverter, but you only hear it a little about 5kW of output. 100 Watts is wasteful when it comes to small loads, but I can live with 20 Watts.

@@anthonydyer3939 My batteries are in a detached building, so the Victron provides just enough heat to keep the batteries happy in cold weather (Like you, I live in Scotland). I do have an electric heater on a thermostat just in case it gets really cold within the power shed, however the self heating doesn't go to waste and I'm not sure the heater has ever kicked come on. As I'm off grid I have to be able to cope with large surges without the luxury of taking some extra from the grid, hence the large invertor.

@@anthonydyer3939 indeed over a 10yr period the efficiency rating adds up into MWatts of saved energy and the devil is in the fine print

@@wajopek2679 however although inefficient its not wasted energy unless you live in a hot enviroment. Every Watt ends up as 1 less Watt of heat to produce in heating. Although less efficient its not wasted and if you can capture that ineffiecency it reduceses its ineffiecency. If that makes sense. Maybe i have inefficient way of thinking🤔

The only "plug and play" you'll get is with the Bluetti / Ecoflow and other portable batteries. They have their place, and they are very accessible but they also have their limitations. The integrated home system you see here is pretty simple in terms of wiring, but they never properly designed this battery to sit alongside their own hot water controller. The "energy net" wireless comms was the centrepiece of a "simple installation", and it wasn't compatible with zigbee, so they has RS485 as the alternate option and they got the manuals all wrong in terms of the serial comms. I found the config work to be straightforward, once I restored the inverter to the way it was. Other battery / inverter combos are more of a fiddle in terms of wiring. In my instance I've run out of space in my consumer unit, so that's extra work for an electrician, but not £4000 worth of extra work.

The battery has been very reliable. The only hiccup came during daylight savings time change in October. On 1st November my charging profile was supposed to change onto the later autumn regime. That didn’t happen until 2nd November. Otherwise I’ve had a very good and consistent experience with the battery. But the detailed charging profiles I have are still out of reach to ordinary owners. Solaredge has now enabled limited “time of use” charging, but their concept seems to focus on peak hours, rather than cheap overnight hours. I really don’t understand their philosophy here. I’m planning to do a quarterly presentation and I’ll touch upon some of the interface changes that have happened since last time.

@@anthonydyer3939 excellent, many thanks Anthony, I’ll look out for that one.

The SolarEdge model of giving the original installer exclusive rights to your monitoring platform is flawed. As the system owner, I cannot delegate a new installer to come out and carry out modifications to the system - that has to be granted by the original installer. It's not a problem now, but as you allude to, it's very likely going to be a point of friction in 12 years time. The system owners should be the kings and queens of the Inverters, not the original installers. Owners should have the exclusive rights to delegate their installers, as well as access to SetApp configurations for troubleshooting / configuration ourselves.

I didn’t know that intelligent offered a 15p export rate. I have to look into that. I’m on the flux tariff which is 18.97p. However the OFGEM price caps change on 1st October, so I’ll be keen to see what the deal is then. What I will say though is that Agile tariffs for export have been about the 10-12p realm over the summer months. Those closely follow the wholesale “day ahead” prices. Where agile leads, other tariffs will follow. So I reckon both import and export prices will fall in the wider retail environment this coming autumn.

I’ve often thought that tomorrow’s weather forecast would be just one input in a raft of determining factors that determines what battery storage profile is suitable for me today. I have to determine that by myself and apply manually, but if there was the possibility of applying external inputs into the inverter via modbus then I can apply my own python program to this requirement using my existing raspberry pi in the loft. Sadly that possibility doesn’t exist.

The batteries are good. And the user interface has improved for system owners, you can now force charge and discharge it, but I did have trouble with this over Christmas before I upgraded the firmware. The real drawback with this battery though is price. For the same price as this battery, you can now get a Fogstar 30kWh LFP server rack battery. True, that particular battery also needs an inverter and it doesn’t have “kitchen appeal”, but it’s what I’m considering sometime after my heat pump install.

@@anthonydyer3939 but is that new battery compatible with yhe solaredge system? I got my 3 batteries for $27,500

@@anthonydyer3939 how is the fogstar compatible with solaredge for app monitoring? I got 3 batteries with BUI, floor stands and the home hub inverter for $27,500 they will be in my garage.

Firmware is updated automatically whenever an installer connects to the inverter using the SolarEdge installer app. It's the first thing that happens on the installer app. However in operation, there is no automatic update of firmware. That said, if you report a problem to the support team, they can intervene remotely and update the firmware over the internet.

We don't get any reference to the fuse rating on our bill. We have the meter supply number and that's it. It would be nice to see a little sticker on the fuse cutout. I think the cables between the cutout and smart meter were replaced when the smart meter was fitted five years ago (they look new). If the actual fuse rating was made obvious (including the date that it was fitted / refitted), then that would be more informative.

They applied installer privileges' to my system owner account. That said, I did have a separate installer account which I used to troubleshoot some communication issues with my hot water controller prior to getting the battery. That account was never brought into play here. If you want the installer to use your installer account to setup the system, you'll have to negotiate that point with them when you receive the quote from them. I guess you'll get the usual BS about installer warranties not being valid if you do this, callout fees will be applied etc...... In my experience, if you do have problems, SolarEdge support can support most issues. I had a faulty solaredge module, and SolarEdge sent a replacement optimiser. My installer then fitted the replacement optimiser without any extra charge to me.

I've been looking at Modbus TCP address lists for the inverter. Sadly all the signals are inputs from the inverter, not outputs to the inverter. So there's no opportunity to control the battery externally. Likewise for the Zappi, we don't have any ability to control charging via an external networked device. Both have API's, but again you can only carry out monitoring, but no control.

The battery icon is for the SolarEdge hot water controller. It’s not for the SolarEdge battery. I’ve got a separate video on that. The way the Zappi manages to not drain the battery is by having an export margin programmed into the Zappi. This basically means that 100 watts (adjustable) of surplus solar will be exported to the grid while the Zappi is charging the car. This is the way the Zappi knows that it’s charging the car with surplus solar power, and not battery power from the same inverter, since the battery will only discharge to supply house loads. It won’t discharge any surplus above that. After a year I have to say this works extremely well.

Ah yes, for reference, I had watched all your SolarEdge Videos at the start of the year when I was initially looking at the Inverter and Battery. I will get the hot water jobby fitted in the new year now the new one is released. But thanks for getting back to us and that's good to hear you have no special trick so the Zappi recognises the battery separate to the house... Going back to the draining issue, I understand what you're saying above, but is that not just for daylight hours only? What happens if you plug your car in during the dark when we have no export. I had previously set the export margin (150w) but found it's still pulling from the Battery before the Grid - which given we've recently moved onto Intelligent Octopus Go is not ideal. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks

@@markwalkerphotography yes it for daylight hours only. At nighttime I set the battery not to drain during the cheap overnight period, and sometimes also charge the battery at this time as well. The export margin can be adjusted. 50 watts didn’t work for me, but 100 watts did. Just pump up the margin until you find what works for your inverter,

Yes you can set this up, if you're an installer. If your installer agrees. Your installer can assign your account as an installer "sub account", and then you can setup charge/discharge storage profiles online as I did. Now your installer may well disagree to this, because then you also have access to all his other client profiles. That's a big No-No from a data protection perspective. I don't think SolarEdge thought of that when they granted me this access. That said, I'm not saying anything. Now SolarEdge will be giving system owners access to charge/discharge control from mid November. But I'd say try and gain access now since the nights are drawing in, and I'm guessing your're no longer generating enough surplus with a 3.68kW inverter to cover all your needs now.

@@anthonydyer3939 I do solarnknstalls but not as in depth so have access to monitor design via set app etc etc so no worries there

They can void the warranty if the installer makes damaging changes to the system as well, even if they are certified Solaredge installers. Of course you could claim damages from the installer, but the installer can just as easily say they did nothing wrong, leaving you with a burden of proof to demonstrate in a court of law. But your point does raise the question: How can you possibly damage the battery through these access rights? In my experience Im actually saving it by not draining it in order to charge my car, and thus reducing the number of full depth of discharges. Of course you could set it up to constantly cycle between fully charging and then fully discharging (6 full cycles per day), and thus reduce its useful life, but outside of battery testing centres, nobody is going to use a battery like that. The new app update was promised in November, then January and now you’re saying March…… I’m not holding my breath.

Yes but thats the risk that the installer takes. We are installers, if we make changes that damages the inverter and invalidates the warranty then we would replace it as part of our installation warranty. But if a customer makes changes that then damages the inverter and we havent warned him of the risks, or even if we have, if the warranty is invalidated its then to us they will try and get a replacement. We have seen customers before trying to make changes that mess things up, i let a few customers have access and wish i hadnt. Another issue we have seen is that even though we only set the customer to see their own account, a flaw in the SE system meant they could see everyone elses, and theoretically change other peoples battery charging times. Also if they have full admin rights they can change the layout, delete things by accident that you then need to rectify. They could leave it on "charge from solar power and grid" all day and then not check it for 2 months. Or change the setting to only charge from clipped solar power, or any other number of potential things that might not damage it but mean they dont use the power effectively, dont off peak charge etc. etc. etc. As we tell our customers they are called installation and administrative rights for a reason. A customer asked us this morning, after seeing your video, and that was what we told him, but i did double check with SolarEdge support first, who confirmed that they may lose your warranty, and they told me the app update "should" be this month.

@@solaskirt the access rights to other solar installations is something I didn’t want to draw attention to, but it is certainly a big no no from a data protection perspective alone. I was shocked that I was granted to that extent. However full control of my system is something I do think that system owners should have. After all if I want to make changes, adding panels etc…. I want the option of using another installer, and Solaredge doesn’t make that easy by default. These systems are supposed to last 25 years, but installers come and go in that timeframe. Whilst you are right that system owners could change the layout and break settings, it’s not something that causes physical damage, it only causes support headaches as you say. I can certainly appreciate your unwillingness to grant admin access to users, however I’m the kind of owner who changes my storage profiles several times a week in order to optimise battery charging according to what the weather forecast is the following day. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want me calling up each night asking for the battery to be charged up overnight for 75mins, 30mins or not at all. Locking things down to the extent like Solaredge does by default simply causes dissatisfaction - especially considering that we are still in the “early adopter” phase for batteries and such a clientele is likely to be more technical minded. I work in the Maritime automation industry and whenever we get issues like this from a customer, our first response is always to use the advise them to revert to the backup copy of the software that we configured for them. They can change whatever settings they want but there’s always an “undo” button and a backup copy. The extent of changes is also limited. So admin rights can completely change the software to something that’s not looking like a ship anymore, while “elevated rights” allow a user to change operational parameters for their system. You can still cause a lot of problems for yourself and a service technician with just elevated rights, but they aren’t too far off the right path. If they still have issues, there’s a short warranty period, and afterwards there are standard service rates. When they want changes done by us , we give them a quote, and when equipment actually breaks, we have a warranty (but not 12/25 years).

Current inrush is negligible in terms of import savings as your mention, but power factor corrections for continuous running should be tunable in the inverter. There’s a number of config options for power factor adjustments in the inverter, but I think you’d need to have a continuous running machine to make those adjustments worthwhile.

@@anthonydyer3939 I see about 0.3-0.5kwh grid usage per day. Some of that might be boiling the kettle, while the ovens on type of deal though also. The constant balancing is fairly good on solis in terms of response.

Yes it is. But, you need to have a backup interface installed for that. My battery will go offline when the grid goes down.

Your installer can add your name as a "sub-account". However in my instance he did sound rather bemused about that. In my instance, I was given sub-installer privileges by the Technical Marketing Manager for SolarEdge. Once he did that, I still couldn't see the Storage Profiles, so there was a flurry of emails to sort that one out. If my installer handled that, I can only imagine him sticking his hands up yelling, "I'm an electrician, not IT support!"

@@anthonydyer3939 I've recently had this problem. Solaredge were prepared to make me installer but it would remove the original installers access. Since the system is less than 1 year old and I have an issue with an optimiser I have declined that for the moment. Solaredge did say that the installer was obliged to make changes when requested - and they did with help from Solaredge support. However comments on another video (that I cannot now find) suggest that there will be new software released in January that will allow users to change the battery parameters. Here's hoping.

@@miket1954 they gave me installer access, as a “sub installer”, underneath my installers name, so he still has access. January is a concern, it was only last month that I was told that November was when users were going to have access, so the deployment date has evidently slipped.

Yes I,v just had mine (battery) install,and thats what I was told

Three months later and still nothing

A minimum of one per appliance. So for the inverter: 1. Clamp meter for the main grid supply. All other meters are built into the inverter and hot water controller. Clamp meters for the EV charger 1. One for the solar supply 2. One for the grid supply 3. One for the hot water consumer

@@anthonydyer3939 I feel like the instructions for installing are some of the worst. I have a two inverters two battery’s and one backup interface and for the life of me I can’t figure out why I’m getting comm error.

@@JoeyVaracalli instructions in the public domain are terrible, and often contradictory. The slideshow instructions I was shown in private are much better, but sadly only visible to installers. It looks like SolarEdge is going down the route of using wireless “energy net” communications between devices with their new “homewave” inverters. As a systems engineer in the maritime industry I always prefer hardwired communications. They have always been reliable, especially modbus and profibus. I’ve had very occasional communication errors with the battery, but only for a few minutes / hours at a time. If you have persistent comm errors, then my usual strategy eventually distills down to “destroy all configurations and rebuild one component at a time”. Eventually you’ll be able to isolate the guilty component, and hopefully the reason why it doesn’t work.

I'm in Sydney, Australia. I have a 12.8kw panels on a 10kw inverter. The maximum export is set at 10kw by my distributor. Basically, on a fine summer day the system produces 10kw from around 11am until 3pm, so it's clipped at 10kw. There was a couple of days recently with really heavy cloud that came in for a a couple of hours late morning and on those days the battery ran down to around 80%. Once the sun came back out, I notice the system was producing 11.8 to 12kw until the battery was back at 100% and then dropped back to 10kw. I assume it was allowing the clipping to stop so the extra could go to the battery.

@@MickC2167 I think you're right on what it's doing.

Hot water is very well behaved. The home battery charges up first, then the car, finally the hot water controller. When I’m at home during this time of the year, there’s very little grid export. Now between the home battery and the car, there’s actually very little left over for the hot water controller now. So I have to top up the tank, either by burning propane, or running the immersion heater during the cheap electricity period.

@@anthonydyer3939 I have a 3rd party hot water controller coupled to a similar system as yours but when something with a motor shuts down, like the washing machine, the sudden back feed makes the hot water controller think it's export and starts draining the battery. It's supposedly a common problem on dc coupled batteries.

@@scubajoe back feed is a very brief phenomenon, and I don’t think the sample rate on the metering equipment would be fast enough to detect it. That said, metering equipment can have different sampling modes: mean/min/max so maybe it can be clocked, but I’ve never seen my battery drain after a load has suddenly switched off.

@@scubajoe The Eddi allows a time delay. Export has to continue for a predefined time prior to it consuming power.

That’s not correct. The import export CT clamp is mounted on the meter tail and it will monitor current destined for the charger, which is fed from the main consumer unit. As far as the inverter goes however, the charger is treated just like any other household load. So when you charge your car up, it will drain the SolarEdge battery. Therefore to prevent this, if you’re planning to charge the car up overnight, you either need to turn the SolarEdge battery off, or also set it to charge from the grid at the same time.

@@anthonydyer3939 sorry, I rewatched, and heard that car charger is turned off, and first time I may didn't heard it and expected that in discharge mode we will see 5 kW consumption from the loads, as much as we want to load the car. :) Nice review, realy detailed.

I understand your sentiment. I went through a process of asking where the best place for it would be. Outside it won’t perform so well and it will suffer from a much higher internal resistance on cold nights. I don’t have a garage either. The kitchen location is away from the house escape routes, and it does have a heat alarm as per latest Scottish building regs. All that said, it does have a charge controller that will be much safer than your £2 no names brand powerbank. There is a fire extinguisher built into the battery. If this battery model did suffer a fire elsewhere in the world, then I’m pretty sure that Solaredge would issue a recall. I’d be unlucky to be the first casualty of such a fire.

Is there a security concern if mounted outside? How 'stealable' are SolarEdge batteries if mounted on front wall facing the public road?

"Set it and forget it" is the ultimate goal, but getting there will be a great struggle. The trouble with "set it and forget it" is that optimum battery charge/discharge behaviours do depend a lot on several things: - The date (and therefore how much daylight there is) - What the battery state of charge is now, and what it's forecast to be by midnight - What your car battery state of charge is now, and what journey you're planning to do (which has an influence on charging priorities) - What the weather's doing now (solar power charging up my battery) - What the weather's doing tomorrow - The electricity tariff you're on As a result, I do need to change the profile settings often. The options hidden behind the installer account are easy to follow (in my opinion), but hard to access. But doing this automatically would require data to be input into the SolarEdge account that it cannot possibly know about (especially your car charge level). I am intending to come up with a more sophisticated solution, using the modbus comms interface. But it's certainly not "consumer level control".

@@anthonydyer3939 Thanks for the explanation.

Yes I have. So backup operation is only available with an additional device called a “backup interface”, and that isn’t compatible with HD Wave inverters. It’s compatible only with 3 phase “homewave” inverters, or single phase “energy hub” inverters (north American market only).

@@anthonydyer3939 I thought the above suggested that the HD Wave inverters may gain backup functionality in 2022.

@@RichardABW So far I haven’t seen any other literature indicating that this will be the case. My usual supplier lists aren’t listing the backup interface in their catalogues. That said, I can’t see any reason why compatibility won’t come in future.