This post is part of our reviews of hybrid solar inverters – which when paired with a battery – can be good Tesla Powerwall alternatives. Here, I’m taking a closer look at the Sungrow SH5.0RS. Contact online >>
This post is part of our reviews of hybrid solar inverters – which when paired with a battery – can be good Tesla Powerwall alternatives. Here, I’m taking a closer look at the Sungrow SH5.0RS.
The ability to integrate another AC-coupled solar inverter makes these units much more attractive. You can either have legacy solar on the grid sideor more Sungrow AC-coupled inverters on the backup side of the system.
This means the extra solar inverter (rated not more than the hybrid) can power loads directly – without bothering the battery. Great news if you want or need more daytime surge capacity. Better yet, the full-rated specifications available with a battery hybrid means you can load a Sungrow with 200% solar. That’s potentially 20kW of panels on the roof with a single-phase connection.
The SH5.0RS has far greater surge capacity and is a little more flexible in solar terms than Sungrow’s previous hybrid inverters. As panel wattages trend upward, solar current outputs are going up more than voltages, so the inverters are now given a suitably lower opening voltage window and more importantly, greater current ratings.
All new generation high voltage hybrid inverters use lower current, so they require much lighter cables from the inverter to the battery, and long cables will suffer less voltage drop. This means the batteries can be placed further away. These advantages come with a small trade-off in the form of an extra layer of complexity (and point of failure) in the battery management system compared to the older low-voltage models.
Lighter, cheaper cables become important when you realise that Sungrow (amongst many) wire the Emergency Power Supply through the inverter. That means you may need a large and expensive pair of cables to run:
Suppose you instead choose an inverter that operates in parallel with the grid, like the Fronius Gen24 or SolarEdge. In that case, you’ll only need one decent-sized supply cable, potentially freeing up the positioning of the whole system.
You can argue a long changeover is a feature, an unmissable analogue warning that the grid is gone and you need to curb your consumption. Still, many will prefer the seamless changeover of a Selectronic, Sungrow, Goodwe or Tesla system.
The new Sungrows have a tiny screen, relying on the monitoring platform to communicate. This makes them more heavily dependent on a good internet connection to monitor their behaviour and for installers to set them up. With the advent of flexible export connection agreements, mandatory in South Australia, optional in Queensland and coming to Victoria soon, having a solid internet connection is essential.
There are options for wired internet, WiFi dongles, and a 4G dongle that accepts a SIM card if you don’t have a local network. Annoyingly, the internet hardware only has a two-year warranty, which, as the system warranty relies on internet connectivity, strikes me as a rort.
While self-consumption is the name of the game in solar, exports are still handy for helping defray daily access charges. If your system is enrolled in Flexible Exports (mandatory in SA, opt-in in QLD, likely coming soon everywhere else), you may occasionally find you’re not allowed to export, but without a data connection, your system will be throttled to 1.5kW or even zero export.
About Hybrid solar inverter reviews
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