New Sol Ark SmartLoad 14

[@SolarDrew]

WHEN WILL THIS BE AVAILABLE?

[@richmoore5080]

What is the retail price for this Smartload 14?

[@horscategorie]

What if you have a 400 amp service split into 2 200 amp panels? I have a 48 panel array using enphase microinverters that is grid tied. I would prefer to back up my whole home, but the enphase battery solution is not optimal. I have always liked the Sol-Ark 8k and 12k, and wonder how something like this could work with my system. Smart panels looked good initially a few years back, but the market had not evolved enough. This looks promising.

[@alzamboti8639]

Joe, how about using 2023 Outlander PHEV as back up with V2L or V2G. What device is needed and how much can it power continuously??

[@Gallardo6669]

I like sol ark, I may buy one. But they have to clear up all the concerns about being "transformerless" and the shutdowns people have on unbalanced or too high individual phase loads !

[@trebombs4life]

they did kinda, they just made bigger ones. the 30k and 60k. i doubt your 19 amp 120v compressor will crash that but who knows. also you can balance your loads easy in you panel just by moving wires onto different breakers if you know how to use a meter

[@Gallardo6669]

@@trebombs4life thx.- I do electric work myself. I research their inverters for a while. Unfortunately it is hard to find real life issues out there, being presented and explained. I ran into that with my current device... Some KZbinr showed that inductive loads make the sol ark shut down, even using wattage below rating. It seems to be an issue of being "transformerless". And a shut down on any inbalance ( still below load rating) makes their specs useless. I have seen a videos about other inverters, they simply work, no matter what, and that above rating. How hard it can be for all that money???

[@trebombs4life]

@@Gallardo6669 ya seriously. its so gay that the transformerless inverters just shut off. ive also been watching all the inverters closely for 4 years for one that actually just works right and can support a whole house no questions asked. like i said, the 30k is 120/208 3p. i have high hopes for it

[@Gallardo6669]

@@trebombs4life don't ever buy a growatt. Unless no never need the grid and you have a big battery backup. Too many issues to no end and silly software. I wrote a long comment on a growatt video

[@Zorlig]

Avoid large inductive loads and size properly. Get vfd pumps, ac, etc.

[@toolate6971]

Is this the same as SPAN? Can I use an API for this system for Home Automation?

[@mattbrew11]

Span replaces the main panel

[@leviaestes]

As someone else said, SPAN completely replaces your panel where with this you keep your panel and run the loads you want to control to the Smartloads box (a lot like the Lumin panel). But, yes, they all three accomplish the same purpose. The advantage this one has is really low latency to switch off loads when the grid is down, but my concerns are yours. I don't want to use another app, and I want it to interface with the rest of my home automation. I know someone reverse-engineered the communication with a Sol-Ark where you could monitor the inverter within Home Assistant. With that, you're able to use the inverter's status for the automation of other things, but you can't make any changes to the Sol-Ark. I'm getting a Sol-Ark and plan on using Solar Assistant to interface with Home Assistant so that control of the inverter is available, too. Sol-Ark's been tight-lipped about the Smartloads-14, but my question is the same as yours. If it doesn't have an open API to be able to use with Home Assistant, that's a dealbreaker for me. As far as other home automation systems, I haven't seen anything that integrates Sol-Ark inverters other than Home Assistant, so I don't have high hopes that Sol-Ark is going to be developing an integration with a SmartThings or Hubitat.

[@smashtoshismackamoto4746]

SPAN seems to want to control a lot of the features that are built-in to the Solark. A Span-LITE (no Battery mgmt) would be ideal to pair up with Sol-Ark. And i agree 100% with the below comment about API's. There needs to be an Open-source like mindset. I must be able to run short and long-term analytics against data-points of storage & service drop utilization, capacity draw-down, time of day/week/month, etc... Not all households operate the same and thus control and prediction programmability are paramount to an effective and efficient solution.

[@BB-lx7os]

A bit off topic, but I'm hoping someone can point me to a full featured solar solution that takes full advantage of their EV battery. I have the Ford Lightning with a 131 kWh battery. The Ford 80 amp charging station that comes with the larger battery, once installed, can support power coming from the Lighting to the house when grid is down. BUT I also want to have a solar panel solution that will power the Lightning battery when grid is down also. In theory, I could be self sufficient indefinitely. I believe Joe referenced such a solution some months ago in a Lightning video, but I haven't seen anyone employ it yet. Is the technology not yet up to this scenario? (I'm also following Tom at State of Charge for insight.) Anybody know of anyone that is doing same? Thanks in advance.

[@seabream]

The DCBel r16 incorporates bi-directional vehicle charging, dual MPPTs for solar, stationary storage management (if desired), with a grid-down mode which I believe includes the ability to send power from the solar to both the house and the vehicle as well as vehicle to home depending on the load and generation rate. It's rolling out in New York, California and Texas this year, with the rest of the continental US, UK and France by end of year 2023 according to press reports. I don't know how their integration with the Lightning is specifically, though they do advertise both CCS and CHAdeMO (Obviously they also have J1772.) compatibility. I've heard anecdotally that even Ford's official partner rollout isn't without hiccups. I recommend contacting them and asking for more information. Other things the r16 does is allow app based peak shaving and charging management. If you want to charge your vehicle on solar only, you can set the app to do that. If you want to schedule charging off-peak from the grid, you can do that too. They're a Canadian company with lead staff coming from a grid infrastructure background. What it doesn't appear to do is allow for automatic control of a generator if that's something you need. Sol-Ark can do that. I've also heard mention of them working on vehicle charging, but don't know whether that includes vehicle-to-home or not. I'd imagine they're at least considering it, but I haven't heard anything concrete about timing or capabilities. Best of luck. I'm hoping to incorporate solar plus vehicle battery whole home backup as well, but there are lots of details to work out before I get there.

[@DesentryD]

I’m just not seeing value in this. it's just making sure essentially 2 things dont turn on at once? But say you're doing 80amp charging for your EV, and the heat pump needs to kick on to bring temp up to set point. Can it temporarily cut the charging off, turn heat pump on, then cut back in to car charging after set point reached?

[@SolarSurge]

Yes, that's exactly what this system can do. If the heat pump has priority over the EV charger, then the system will operate just as you described.

[@DesentryD]

@@SolarSurge ok, I stand corrected. That’s really valuable.

[@offgridwanabe]

I can use a $50 timer to do that.

[@Gallardo6669]

Lol. Me too. Currently I run main loads during solar hours anyway...

[@seabream]

Your timer isn't going to know when the grid is up or down or the state of charge of your battery. And if you're not home, and don't have a network connection, or you don't even know there's an outage at home while you're at work, even if you have a networked load it won't be shut off remotely. I don't know the specifics of how well the Smart-Load 14 handles automatic load management, but Lumin and SPAN both support automatic load profiles that you can program them to switch to in a grid outage and at different states of charge, even if they're limited to the local network. I'd be quite surprised if Sol-Ark didn't have something similar.

[@offgridwanabe]

@@seabream true but it is all about cost, the few times the grid is down it will drain the battery if I am not home during the day at night it is off. I can buy a lot of grid power for the difference in cost between a timer and a load management system. I could also buy a voltage controlled AC breaker to shut off the tank if the voltage goes down. Load management is a great idea but it needs to pay for it's cost within a reasonable time.

[@seabream]

@@offgridwanabe Payback period is certainly a valid way to look at purchases that makes sense some of the time. But "pay for its cost" only works for some applications. For example: If someone's getting backup for emergencies, a lot of the time they're looking at it like buying insurance - it enables a bad situation, _which you don't want to happen,_ to be less bad if it ends up happening. And for that, while you could certainly argue for a payback if there's a monetary value of the difference in outcomes in the case of said emergency with and without it, you would really rather that the disaster didn't happen. Anything else it can do outside of that primary usage is a nice bonus, and can certainly influence choosing one product over another, but the most important factor in the decision to buy and what it's worth is the use that they're buying it for. And if they're getting that whole home backup, load management can definitely both, one, better enable their system to work in comparison to a $50 timer solution, and two, save them money if their limiting factor is peak load - as stated in the video. Also, I personally approach things like this from the perspective that it's not about whether a product will pay for itself, it's whether it is worth the cost. And that's going to depend on how good a fit it is with what I want from my system in comparison to other alternatives. For some situations an inexpensive timer or set of timers, and manual control will be just the ticket. For others, not so much, and that's fine. There's room for both to exist.

[@NdxtremePro]

@@offgridwanabe How about the cost of replacing your batteries because you consistently pull too much from them, or being able to lower the price of your battery system because you don't need to ensure your max load doesn't damage your batteries? Or being able to buy AGM or other lead acid because you have more control over not ever depleting them past 1/3 of their capacity?