Feedback/Recommendation on Solar inverters

I can not. They charge extra for battery control allowance. That at least to me is a real no-go.

I saw it as part of the product price.

Well technically I sorta like Fenecon with their OpenEMS, good docs, and their support is really good.
However that extra charge was a bummer. It a) was sort of unclear what for it is and unexpected in the first place and b) is overpriced at 400 (now 300) Euro. You’ll really struggle to get a positive RoI from it.
I also have a customer with a huge (grid-scale) battery that was even charged >10 times more and felt about the same.
And once companies start charging per service you always have to ask yourself c) what’s next?

normally, I totally agree. Was the first time that I accepted this kind of cost. This is the way how they finance their software development. You get a fully working inverter/storage package which a lot of default logic. This includes also REST read and modbus READ.

If you want write access, you have to pay one time 299€. Other options are apps for car charging, dynamic electricity tariffs, heat pumps etc
 But there are also free apps like a Shelly device integration. They improve their software with monthly releases permanently and provide free feature updates. Btw. If you have write access, you don’t need any other app.

Good thing for me was that I was able to check the source code behind, to understand a specific API behavior better.

And if you want, just host openems by your self.

Not that I want to advertise it :innocent:, but for even less than 299 € you can get my own openHAB based commercial HEMS, and it can do all of the above with inverters from various vendors 

Including Fenecon if you pay their premium :rofl:

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As I understand Kostal has some similar pricing model, there are some coins to be purchased via installer.

Isn’t it true?

After long consideration, I opted for Deye. Three years ago, I turned it on, connected a Solar Assistant rPi and since then it runs like a charm. It is regular under maximum (and a bit higher) load.

I bought it at a Dutch reseller for a bit more then the cheapest web store, with the promise of “excellent support” of them. After the third question, they didn’t bother anymore. I contacted Deye directly, and - a bit to my suprise - their is support is more then sufficient.

The inverter can be cloud connected, and Deye pushes you a bit to do so, but you don’t need to. Deye even e-mailed me a firmware upgrade when I told them that the device is “not capable to come online”.

They have UPS capabilities, fast enough for the desktop computers and other devices but not fast enough for my servers (a small cheap UPS takes care of that).

The combination with Solar Assistant (they support a lot of inverters) makes it a stable installation that does not cost an arm and a leg. It is easy to configure and maintain, and it makes it possible to connect to OH via the build in MQTT broker.

@mstormi is not wrong. Fronius and Sungrow have excellent devices (I don’t know about Kostal), but in my view, they are much too expensive and ROI is out of balance. His other argument (will they still exist) goes for any brand these days.

Nice feature is the “fifth” connector. Besides Solar, Battery, Grid in and Load out, you can connect a Generator OR a Second load. I configured it, that it feeds a 10 kW heating rod in my water buffer when battery levels reach 99% (or 100 % from time to time).

Long story short : next time I need an inverter, I go to Solar Assistant and find a supported inverter that suits my needs.

Side note : This made me uninstall the Ambiant Weather, Go-e charger and Shelly binding for OH, and move it to MQTT.

I’d say that if you have OH working and you then still need some specific, even commercial(?) extra tool (or what is Solar Assistant ?) to operate your inverter, that’s a bummer, too.
Actually the reason why I recommended against Deye is that I tried to integrate them into my own energy management system but failed because I could not get hold of a good (non Chinese :)) modbus documentation. @GeertClaes if you happen to have one, please send it to me. Thanks.

I also wouldn’t ever migrate some specific, well-tuned, working OH binding (go-e, shelly, modbus) over to MQTT.
That just makes things more complicated and prone to errors in operations than direct control does.

Could you please send me your Solis modbus documentation and share your OH config?
In particular for the battery part. Private message or post in another thread for others’ benefit.
Thank you.

I got a reply today from the organisator of the group purchase in Belgium and they mentioned that the warranty claims now go via a commany called Solar Assistance. Maybe we talk about the same company.

Regarding which company will survive, my opinion is that EU companies can’t compete pricewise with the Chinese so I would think the EU/Western companies have bigger chances to dissappear or at least stop selling inverters.

As mentioned, I will not connect the inverter to the Internet.

And last, I also have GoE charger but the binding did not wirk for me, so I also use MQTT, but it is not a drawback

In the total cost of a solar/battery installation, it’s only a bummer of € 59. Nevertheless, you have point.

You probably have this one also. To my knowledge, that is the only support that Deye will deliver concerning modbus.

A MQTT broker is build into Solar Assistant. There is a binding that supports Deye inverters, but it connects to their cloud service. That was for me the initial and main reason why I moved to Solar Assistant and MQTT.
Deye has a very bad reputation - never connect a Deye to the internet (Click) - but like I said before, this could/will apply to any brand of manufacturer today/in the near future.

I would not call the Shelly binding well-tuned, it misses support for some devices. Just like the Go-e biding misses (or missed) some parameters (no offence to the maintainers here). The Ambient Weather binding stopped working for some time a few weeks ago, so I moved to another weather station that also supported MQTT. Nevertheless, you have a point again, but in this case, the MQTT binding worked better for me than the Go-e and Shelly binding.
But let us not discuss the use of bindings here, that’s off topic.

No, Solar Assistance is not the same as Solar Assistant. Solar Assistant is based in South-Africa (where Deye is big) and/or US.

I used the registers in this doc