[RE-wrenches] Sunny Island/Fortress E-vault

Tue Sep 19 18:42:39 PDT 2023

In my comversations with SMA, they made it clear they do not support closed loop comms with anyone at this time.YMMV-GlennSent from my 'smart'phone, so please excuse typos and spelling errors.------ Original message------From: Kienan Maxfield via RE-wrenchesDate: Tue, Sep 19, 2023 3:17 PMTo: RE-wrenches;Cc: Kienan Maxfield;Subject:Re: [RE-wrenches] Sunny Island/Fortress E-vault

That's actually incorrect, Fortress totally does support closed-loop with the SMA Sunny Island inverters. Here is their integration guide. This has all of the instructions and coms wiring, etc. - https://learn.fortresspower.com/external/manual/sma/article/introduction-useful-links?p=dc8b9a9c1b3f410556835193e66f2257c662403dfb3da4056e618e954e8381d2

Thanks,

Kienan Maxfield
Technical sales, Technical Support

Green-Go Solar Distribution

kienan at dist.solar

(801) 631-5584 (Cell)

www.distribution.solar

From: RE-wrenches > on behalf of Kirk Herander via RE-wrenches >
Sent: Saturday,
 September 16, 2023 8:33 AM
To: RE-wrenches >
Cc: Kirk Herander >
Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Sunny Island/Fortress E-vault

Jerry, 

Who is the maker of the Blue Planet/Outback SOC box interface you mention?

On Sat, Sep 16, 2023 at 9:30 AM Jerry Shafer via RE-wrenches <re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:

Mac, wrenches 
SMA and fortress can only open loop and with a fixed temp sender its fine. Now on the blue planet and open loop with outback, you need a SOC box that they can make for you, it will interface with the blue planet and command the genny.
Fun times

On Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 6:04 AM Mac Lewis <maclewis1 at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi William,

Are you doing open loop or closed loop communication?  I'm not sure if Fortress can do a closed loop with SMA or not.

We struggled to get the open loop to work well with some Blue Ion batteries, not from a charging sense but from a sense of getting the auto gen start to trigger correctly.  Basically, the SOC algorithm was
 always way off.  For a while we were using an
 external voltage trigger and we could get the generator to start OK before BMS shutdown.  We have since added a Namaka box and are using the "Ext BMS" setting for battery type in the Sunny Island and it has been working very well.

I think the difficulty arises because the Sunny Island is so State-of-Charge centric and you can't manipulate the SOC algorithm without that Ext-BMS setting (and solid communication).  One weakness of the ext BMS setting is that it won't fall back on Voltage
 settings if battery communication goes down, but this is a weakness throughout closed loop communication for many manufacturers.

Let us know if there is a Fortress to SMA communication solution.

On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 11:11 PM Jerry Shafer via RE-wrenches <re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:

William, Wrenches
Yes I do and it does require some basic electronics to make it work correctly, you will need to remove the ttemp sender and
 make a resistor pack to simulate the 77 degree reading otherwise it will not charge properly, for the first one I used a breadboard
 to set the temp for what I wanted to see then build a more solid state shrink wrap resistor. Doing this will prevent undercharge by the SMA and your customer will be happy to see the full state of charge at the batteries.
OldSchool fun times

On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 2:12 PM William Miller via RE-wrenches <re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:

Friends:

I am commissioning an E-vault battery array to an existing SMA Sunny Island System.  Does anyone have any experience with this they could share?

Thanks.

William

Miller Solar
17395 Oak Road, Atascadero, CA 93422
805-438-5600
www.millersolar.com
CA Lic. 773985

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