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@@UKsystems The comparison was made based on similar pricing, for about the same price you get higher specs on the BougeRV however the trade off is that it doesn't appear to be very accurate at least with a 48 volt battery bank and it's not as efficient at pulling maximum power out of the panels. I agree the Victron is a better unit and is worth paying more for. This was to see how well a budget option worked. As a cheap backup or spare or in situations where cost is everything I think the BougeRV unit is fine, but for the a bit more you get a lot more out of the Victron.

Glad to help! I sold my 2 original Growatts to a friend along with a bunch of solar panels and my battery I built with cells from Docan Power, along with one of my pack I built from repurposed medical batteries and he's powering his place with them now. Came in handy when Helene rolled through and power was out in the area for a few days. I brought my newest Growatt with me so I still have one, I plan to use it in my work area for the few 120 volt items I brought with me. Those Growatts saved me a lot of money over the years, and they are happily still cranking out power in their new home. :)

@@infosbm 3000 watts per phase, 6000 watts for both.

@@andycanfixit how much watt maximum I can use and panel how much watt need install please tell me

@@infosbm Each inverter can handle a maximum of 4500 watts of solar panels. Max input voltage should stay under 120 volts, so depending on what panels you use, either 60 cell panels or 72 cell panels, you can generally put either 3 60 cell panels in series or 2 72 cell panels in series and then as many sets in parallel to reach the max wattage.

@@andycanfixit how much inverter I can take out put load of watt I have my house 2500 watt load I can use this device

@@infosbm Each inverter will handle up to 3000 watts of load. So if your home is using 2500 watts you can run it with one of these inverters.

Good to know, although I've never needed their support. Bougerv support was so so when I contacted the about the readings being way off. I think the BougeRV is a good budget unit, especially if you have a shunt or some other way to monitor production, but it was too inaccurate for my needs.

Actually if you contact them they put you through to the dealer who you bought the item off it wasn’t Vick that gave you poor customer service. It was the original dealer who just didn’t help you for some reason if so you can contact your local sales manager and they will assist you and give a penalty to the dealer.

@@shelley131 to charge a 48 volts battery which fully charged is around 56 volts you need your voltage to be at least 5 to 6 volts higher than the max voltage of the battery. If you only have 43 in series you will need at least one more panel to get enough voltage to charge the battery. The charge controller can take higher voltage and step it down to charge with but it can't step it up.

@@andycanfixit Thanks for the reply. So as I understand it can not charge the battery at all, or it can not charge the battery to full capacity?

@@shelley131 The voltage of the two panels is too low to charge at all unfortunately. Until you add another panel you won't have a high enough voltage to turn on the charge controller and charge the battery. 3 panels in series would be enough for a 48 volt battery with panels that are putting out 21 to 22 volts each.

@@SeekingBeautifulDesign others seem to have pretty reliable readings at 12 and 24 volts, with the readings being off mostly at 48 volts.. so for the price at lower voltages it seems like a decent buy, but it's real price advantage was for a unit that could do 48 volts and that's where it seems to struggle. Running it through a Victron shunt or similar would have been the most accurate test, but I did not have one at the time. So an accurate voltage meter and amperage clamp meter is the best way to go. Using the switch is a good approach.

240 volts at 60hz

Look forward to your results!

@@andycanfixit my unit was actually defective so I had to get a refund and I wound up ordering an HQST(?) brand.

These are not stupid questions. Using a light switch or toggle switch is a good solution to this for dealing with shore power provided you make sure you also place the inverter in ups mode while on shore power so that it doesn't switch back to battery/inverter once they are full if you have solar as well. So long as the only ground neutral bond in your van is at the inverter via this switch you shouldn't need a separate or double pole switch to break the ground when plugged into shore power. Van's and RV's typically trip GFCI's because they have ground neutral bond somewhere that the owner doesn't know about. Given you are installing all your electrical that should be ruled out and you can test that at all your outlets with an outlet tester. For the switch a toggle or light switch is fine but you want one rated for 30 amps at 120/240 volts. You can find them online for about $12 to $18 dollars. For bonding you just need a single pole switch as you are only connecting the two wires. Unfortunately the automatic transfer switch via relay doesn't seem possible on the newer Growatt inverters as they seem to have removed the setting from them and now use it for triggering a generator start or a low battery disconnect instead. Adding a second switch to break the ground in case you find it tripping the shore power source might be a good idea if you find yourself in a pinch but in general it shouldn't be needed so long as the only ground neutral bond in your van is at the inverter via this switch. I would view breaking that ground as more of a last resort, in general you want things grounded when connected to shore power.

@@andycanfixit Thank you very much for your detailed reply. It will be quite helpful. I'm also going to ask (again) in Will Prowse's online forum to see if anyone there knows anything new. Do you do any freelance work?

I have not but the process is pretty straightforward though in addition to the data cables you also need the parallel cables the inverters came with. They are red an black cables that came with mine.

@@andycanfixit Thanks Andy, I am just wondering it did not state in the manual if I am supposed to use double pole 50amp breaker for AC in on page 28. It just stated 50amp Breaker. I need to connect 2 hot, 2 nuetrals and 2 grounds for AC in Charging. I would think its double pole but I am not sure. I appreciate your answer to my questions!

@@merrillbalan So here is where it can get a bit more complex. Since you want to parallel two of them together to run single phase 120 volts and 6000 watts, you either need a single phase breaker panel, not easy to find, or you have to run them from only one phase of dual phase panels. A dual pole breaker would feed each inverter from a different phase and that won't work. Two in parallel requires a 100 amp single pole breaker for both input into the inverters and the output from them. Alternately you could use two 50 amp single pole breakers and make sure they are both on the same phase of the panels and run each inverter to each breaker. That would give each inverter its own 50 amp breaker. Anything that draws enough to trip one will immediately trip the other. It's possible to run single phase to a panel meant for dual phase provided you never use a dual pole breaker or attempt to feed a 240 volt load from that panel. Make sure to label the panel 120 volt only so no one makes a mistake installing a dual pole breaker and expects to feed a 240 volt device from it. No idea if that violates code or not. Are you planning to feed the input of these inverters from the grid?

@@andycanfixit I was thinking 50amp double pole breaker and run hot 1(inverter 1) to the first and run the hot 2(inverter 2) to the second and so inverter 1 on phase 1 and inverter 2 on phase 2, am I right? Per your question, if I plan on feeding the input from the grid, the answer is yes and maybe just set Parameter 11 to charge inverter to 10amps charging to each of the inverters. Not sure where to get a video with exact set up. I found one from Will Prowse but its dual Split phase set up.....if you are interested see the video below ua-cam.com/video/VguSt1IAmBM/v-deo.html

@@merrillbalan The only issue is if you are feeding it from the grid, you can't use a dual pole breaker to feed it as you'd have each inverter fed from a different phase and you'd end up with 240 out of the inverter. So make sure you use two separate single pole breakers and keep them on the same phase in the panel feeding them. Every other breaker slot is the same phase, use a volt meter to confirm, if you meter between two breakers on the same phase you should read zero volts, and to ground or neutral you should read 120, if instead it reads 240 you have the two breakers on opposite phases. Also if the inverters go into bypass mode due to low battery you'll end up pulling the full load on the inverters from the grid so make sure you size the breakers feeding them appropriately. Setting the charge current won't limit the power it can pull for loads from the grid, just the amount of power it can pull to charge. If you feed one inverter on one phase of the breaker panel and the other on the other phase of the panel you'll potentially be limiting each side of the panel to 3000 watts unless both phases of the panel are jumpered together. One way to feed both feed a single pole breaker on each phase of the sub panel, and then run a wire between the two main lugs, that would feed both phases of the panel with both inverters so they can share the full 6000 watts. Just remember to only use single pole breakers after and mark the panel for 120 volt only. And make sure your jumper wire can handle the full 6000 watts.

You mean the history on the growatt site? Yes. I did discover that on my original inverters you can't feed the data to both the growatt dongles and to solar assistant, after a few days it would start showing numerous errors in the growatt app, showing site faults etc that weren't real. I've basically logged the historical data from Growatt onto a google docs file in my google drive for reference and have been using solar assistant for the last couple months now. There are a few bits I liked better in Growatt but overall the main data bits are more easily accessed in Solar Assistant.

If you have solar coming in it should start charging them and once back above the low voltage point you should be able to restart them. Alternatively if you have a generator or grid source connected you can start them from that and use that source to charge them.

Even if they don’t turn on the solar Will charge them?

@@josephbowles4995 yes the Mppt charger will run even with the inverter side off. Once there is solar you should see the display light up and show them charging. Also if you have a grid connection make sure the breaker for that source hasn't tripped.

@@josephbowles4995 Any luck?

Yes you will need both connected to split phase power from the grid or they will give you an error message and will not startup. So neutral to both, with 1 phase hot to one and a the opposite phase hot to the other, from a dual pole breaker in your grid panel as well as ground from that panel to both. The output of both units will then go to your sub panel that you will run your loads from.

Ok what if I only have a single phase for charging for instance a Honda eu2000 generator will this work ?? I do have a transformer that takes 120 volts and turns it to 220 volts duel phase.

@@kingasapj3160 If you have an autotransformer to convert the 120 to 240 split phase so you can feed both inverters it will work, but if you only have 120 single phase with out a converter it'll give you an error feeding only one of the two inverters, and you can't feed both since the phase will be the same. In my setup I have 3 of these inverters, 2 are in split phase fed from a dual pole breaker from the grid. The third inverter is on a separate single pole breaker and a transfer switch to be fed from my generator that can only do 120 volt output. Generator can supply 3.5kw so I can use that inverter to charge the battery bank if there is little solar and an extended power outage. Only had to use it twice but it worked well. The other approach is to simply buy one of the EG4 48volt chargers that can take 120 or 240 volt input and charge the battery bank, it'll also help smooth out the power. Check out Signature Solar under batteries there is a charger category. It's about $400 but that's the best solution for your generator to supply power.

Ok I do have the auto transformer so I'll go that route. I'm so thankful you helped me out on this! Gees growatt isn't very clear on different secerneros of operation!

I wonder if it's more accurate at lower voltages? Might be something I test next to see what it does. I like the build quality and it does seem to work, the accuracy just bothers me, at least at 48 volts.

I have been using the BougeRV controller for almost a year now. I am thinking the MPPT is not great, but I have not seen as big of errors as you are seeing. But without a smart shunt, I can only see a short term live reading. Over a full day, the numbers look about right, but how much is it lying? I have 2,000 watts of solar panel connected to it. The panels are 22 volt VOC with 5 in series, so my input VOC voltage is around 110 volts. I have 3 strings, all the same voltage and cell count, but 2 rows are 100 watt 5.5 amp panels, and the third row is 200 watt 11 amp panels. So my solar input IMP is 22 amps at about 90 volts VMP. 90 x 22 = 1,980 watts. I am charging a 720 amp hour 14S Lithium Ion NMC battery bank. My battery voltage goes as low as 50.5 volts, and full charge is set to 57.6 in the BougeRV charge controller. I also found the battery voltage reads about 0.2 volts high, which works out well, because I wanted the Bulk voltage to stay under 57.5 volts, and it drops to float at around 57.4 volts as measured with my Fluke meter. As for the current output, every time I have measure it, it has been within about 5%. Showing 20 amps in the app will measure above 19 amps on my Fluke clamp meter. And it does even get very close to the same reading if the sun is very steady on the panels. But the MPPT is ALWAYS searching quite a lot. Even in full sun, when I see my array hit around 1,600 watts in the BougeRV App, the charge current varies up and down quite a lot.. I see it dip 200 watts, and then come back up all the time. I know MPPT has to sweep some, but it seems like too much. Looking at my energy yield though, the total watt hour reading in the BougeRV app seems pretty close. My average KWHs taken from the battery bank is 3.3 KWHs per day for the first 11 days of December. But the BougeRV controller is claiming it put in an average of more like 4.7 KWHs per day. I know there will always be some loss, but this is about 30% less. And it already looks like the panels are under producing by 10% compared to my older 300 watt SilFab panels. This makes it look even worse. From early spring to late fall, I was making "enough" power, and in the summer it was dropping to float, so it was no big deal. But with the low production in winter. I am falling short and 30% more from the DC panels would help a lot. The Victron 150/35 Smart Solar with built in BlueTooth is down to $190 right now, so I think I may buy it and do my own direct comparison. I have mixed feelings. I want my solar panels to make more, but it looks like the app may show less, even though it really is making more. I am not sure what to think until I try it.

@@garymeissner6659 That is interesting, I really wish there was a calibration function at least for the volt and amp meter built into the BougeRV. Your experience with the MPPT swinging up and down is similar to mine. I had three 300 watt Canadian Solar 60 cell panels, nominal voltage for the three in series is about 98 volts, and it operates near that voltage on the Victron, however when connected to the BougeRV controller it typically ran them at around 58 volts, just a bit higher than my batter bank at full charge. I charge my bank to 56 volts max. Of course running them at that lower voltage increases the losses in the wiring from the panels to the controller so it's not terribly efficient for it to run them like such. But in my case the voltage was fairly accurate, within about .2 volts, but the amperage and wattage calculated were consistently way off, usually be 2 or 3 times what the real numbers were. It would list 260 watts coming in and there would be maybe 90 watts, it would list 5 amps and there would be maybe 1.5 amps. Worse is that not only were the numbers coming in way off but the numbers it listed it was delivering to the battery were off by quite a bit as well, with really only the voltage number being right. Of course the voltage being the most vital since too high can damage it. I just swapped it out with the Victron 150/35 and I'll see how it does over the next week, but already it's numbers are proving accurate and where the BougeRV would run the panels in the 56 to 58 volt range the Victron is running them at 95 to 101 volts so it's able to get more out and reduce line loss. Across 100 feet of 10 gauge wire at 8 amps there is a 1.2% loss but at 56 volts there is a 2.2% loss, on top of the loss in panel output, 56 volts at 8 amps is 448 watts, at 98 volts it's 784 watts, that's a 330 watt difference, so I think that BougeRV is leaving a lot of watts on the table. Especially in these cloudy months.

After watching your video, I had mixed feelings about this. I was excited that getting the Victron was going to make more power, but also disappointed that I was losing so much power. So now that the sun is up for real here, I decided to go take a few measurements and see how bad it might be. My results are quite different from yours. I didn't have a second phone or a camera available, so I could not take a pic of the live screens showing the BougeRV app and the Fluke meter, but I watched them close for a fair bit of time as I had some light clouds blowing by. I have to say, I am pretty happy with what the BougeRV charge controller was doing. The App has a bit of delay before it updates. The current out shown on my Fluke clamp meter was very quick to follow the power with the clouds. And my worries about the app over stating the power I am getting are pretty much gone. While the voltage in the app is always close to 0.2 volts high, the current shows in the app was running about 0.4 amps low. My battery voltage is at 55.2 volts now, and the app is showing 55.4 volts. When I had a minute without a heavy cloud, I saw the current rise to 16.3 amps. 55.2 x 16.3 = 899.76 watts. Not bad at all for 11 am in Dec. with some clouds. The app was reporting 55.4 volts, but at only 15.8 amps = 875 watts. So my power out was 3% more than the app was reporting. Trying to do the math as quick as the power was changing was impossible, but each time I took a freeze frame, I calculated a little more power than the app every time. So I am fairly confident I am actually getting the watt hours it is claiming. It does not seem to be lying like yours. Looking at the solar panel input, I also saw a voltage error showing between 0.1 and 0.2 volts high. My solar panel array input was running at about 89 volts, and the Fluke meter tracked it even through the clouds. I never saw it pull down near the 55 volt battery voltage. The app does not show the current at the solar panels. My Fluke clamp showed that floating around 8 amps. 89 volts x 8 amps is 712 watts. The app was showing about 720 watts at that moment, but it was moving again with another band of clouds. I still agree 100% that the Victron is a better unit, and I expect it to make a bit more power, especially in changing and partial shade conditions, but my expectations of a huge power difference has been greatly tempered. The BougeRV unit is working way better than I was expecting to see. I wish I had a second amp clamp and another volt meter. I was not able to get a real efficiency test with the changing conditions. The first 3 times I tried, the controller calculated out to 120% efficient because the sun dipped when I switched to measuring the solar input. I have a cloud in the way right now and the PV voltage is down to 73 volts and the power dipped to just 610 watts. With the huge price drop on the Victron gear, I think I am still going to get the Smart Solar 150-35 and try it out. I may split my array and put 100 watts on each and see how they do.

@@garymeissner6659 Very good data. Perhaps the one I got is just a lemon, entirely possible. One thing I have no shortage of is voltage meters, between work and other stuff I've ended up with about 5 different ones, but I swear at any given time I can usually only put my hands on two of them, oldest one I have is a Goldstar from the late 80's early 90's that I got when I took Industrial Electronics. Running them side by side should be interesting to see the results.

Minute solar kik.s it vectren I don't care for much

I'm not familiar with Verwa, unless that is a typo, on the Growatts I don't think you can switch them from 24v to 48v or vice versa, they are set at the factory, if it is possible to change it at all, it would be similar to setting the the split phase option, you have flip the power switch on the inverter off, then go in the menu before the inverter times out and then change the setting from 4 to 2. If it works let me know. I really have never tried it as all my battery banks are 48 volt.

@@andycanfixit ua-cam.com/video/e8DgyQyjV88/v-deo.htmlsi=lYvMtKTQ8jL5_HV7

That should work fine, it sounds like you are using it as an emergency power source just when the main power is out. If that's the case that should work.

@@andycanfixitAwesome thank you! Yes, I have an inverter charger and two 170ah lifepo4 batteries. Connected to that is a critical loads panel.

They've been super reliable and consistent. Balanced really well, I've put a couple years of cycles through them with zero issues.

@@andycanfixit my main bank is Weize 100a lifepo4. But I have another inverter with 6 SLA renogy batteries to retire. Hard to find these packs now

Once they have opposable thumbs it'll get really interesting! lol

@@andycanfixit yes lol

Yeah, I don't have any sponsors or free products from anyone, everything I have I've bought with my own money. I think I was one of the first to use these particular Growatt's as when I bought them as there really weren't any good tutorials on using them. Given how well they've worked I can't see any reason to replace what is working well. If they were junk I'd certainly replace them.

@@andycanfixit I probably watched your Growatt video over 20x’s.

Yeah the dashboard could use some tweaks to improve it but it really hasn't changed in the three years I've had these. Even in the app you have to click the little info button to see that battery status info. I do like that the info is much more front and center in Solar Assistant and I don't have to deal with loss of connection issues like the Growatt app and dongles suffer at least once a week.

@@andycanfixit hmm, I rarely get disconnection issues, it's been pretty stable for 3 years

@@AGhostInTheMachine It never lasts very long, a few hours at most but one or the other seem to do it at least once a week, pretty much from the beginning. I had a Ubiquiti access point originally, switch that to a TP Link no change. My Blink cameras use the same wifi with no issues. If you unplug it and reset the dongle it'll come right back or just leave it alone and it comes back on its own in a few hours. The inverters seem to store the days overall stats so once it's back online you get your total production for the day, you just lose the 5 minute interval stats while it's offline.

I am planning a video update on the Growatt's, the Growatt monitoring site and my recent addition of Solar Assistant. They are continuing to run well. They have generated just shy of 20 megawatt hours of solar since I installed them in March of 2020 and I added a third one that I bought from Signature Solar in August of last year that is dedicated to 120 volt loads. That one has a bit different firmware than the original two do but it has ran well too.

If no one cusses or bleeds a bit it's not a successful project! 🤣🤣

They make good guard turkey's haha 😂😂

Lol 🦃 🦃ing!😂

​@@andycanfixitI've seen them in action!👍

​@@andycanfixitAnd they are pretty smart birds. Their gobble for Guard-dog mode sounds different than their regular gobble.

Thanks man, amazing how cheap the parts were once I found them on Digikey. Took less than 30 minutes to swap out all six of them. It's new owner will certainly appreciate it!

I have 2 of these packs, both about 5 kilowatt hours each. If anything I'd probably use a smaller gauge wire for the cell to cell interconnects used to balance the 16 individual cells and parallel them together as the most I've ever seen is less than a half amp cell to cell. But being overkill is certainly not an issue. The packs of held up well, remain very well balanced and are cycled daily. My oldest pack is over 2 years old now. Cost wise it worked out to be very affordable. Of course now, it's much easier to get new prismatic cells for a reasonable price.

I'm using 250 amp bus bars for my 48 volt batteries, nominal fully charge voltage is 56 volts and drops to about 51 volts at low disconnect. When I first hooked them up I used 4 gauge THHN wire from the inverters to the bus bars, I later replaced that with 1 gauge wire. Each inverter has the same length wire from it to the bus bars. Then I'm using 4 gauge wire from the bus bar to each of my two 100ah batteries and I'm using 1 gauge wire to my 230ah battery. I've never come close to maxing out the amperage in charging or discharging the batteries. Each inverter can put out 3kw of power or surge to 6kw but that surge is only for a few seconds. 4 gauge THHN wire will handle 95 amps which at 56 volts which is 5.3kw, well above what either inverter will pull. 1 gauge handles 8,000 watts. It's pretty rare that I'm pulling more then 4,000 watts at any given time. Each battery has a fuse sized for it's wire so the fuse will fail before wire does.

Yes, it's best to be slow and careful, especially when dealing with cells capable of some huge c rates of discharge. If I ever get a chance to get more of these I certainly will, while certainly a slow somewhat tedious process, they've performed amazingly well especially for the price.

The negative end of the battery goes all the way up to the edge of the positive side? So what you're trying to say is the side walls of the can are negative? Wanna bet $100 that if I take a DMM and put the positive probe on the positive terminal and the negative probe on the side wall of the can I will get 0 volts?

2 plus years of daily cycling and they are still perfectly balanced with basically no capacity loss. I've got about 10kwh of them in service and they've been fantastic. Super easy life for them in this use. I have a 12 volt battery I've built with them that's 4s8p that I've used to start my riding lawn mower as well as an Onan 7000 watt generator, pulls about 250 amps at start and works fantastic. Way better than any lawn mower battery.

Your import from grid section is red? Only reason I could see that is if you had no import from the grid or there is a failure of some sort. Mine shows my daily use and total use over the life of the inverter.

Yes you will need two inverters and yes you connect both inverters neutral to the neutral bus bar of the sub-panel. No auto-tranformer required. You set each inverter for a different phase and make sure the communication cables are connected. Set the settings on the inverters before hooking them up to grid power or your sub panel.

On the grid ac input does it have to be on both growatts?? or can you just run it to one growatt slave or master?

In SBU mode it uses solar and battery first so long as they can handle the loads and only switches to utilities when there isn't enough solar or battery for the loads. In Sub mode it will use utilities as well as solar to help charge the battery.. that's why you would see the meter slowly spinning as it's charging the battery partly with utility power. That mode is good for prepping for a storm if you want to keep the batteries full ahead of time but otherwise use SBU for the most part.