Sunny island shuts down and sunny boy red light blinking

jimblessed · February 2019

Hello all,
i am new here and would like to say hi to everyone.
I have a sunny boy 5.0 and a sunny island 6.0 both on-grid. The sunny island shutsdown after an hour or two and the sunny boy is always flashing its red led.
Any ideas?

mike95490 · February 2019

I would check with the installer and read the manual. Manuals should explain the indicator lamps

BB. · February 2019

Sunny Islands generally need a battery bank to function correctly. Your batteries are the one thing that can be damaged/ruined in days or hours if they are not managed correctly.

Get a volt meter and measure your battery bank voltage and make sure that it is getting properly charged (not overcharged or over discharged).

Once your battery bank condition is known/stabilized, then you can start working on the rest of the issues.

Doing things like measuring the AC line voltage (and frequency--especially for genset power) is a starting point (if AC line is out of proper operating range, Grid Connected systems will generally shut down until proper conditions are restored).

I guess you are in Nigeria? Do you have an installer?

The SMA systems are highly configurable, and should be displaying error codes/functions somewhere. I may be of limited help, but we would need a lot more information about your basic setup and what is happening. Has the system been working and is now failing, or is this a new install?

Take care,
-Bill

jimblessed · February 2019

BB. said:

Sunny Islands generally need a battery bank to function correctly. Your batteries are the one thing that can be damaged/ruined in days or hours if they are not managed correctly.

Get a volt meter and measure your battery bank voltage and make sure that it is getting properly charged (not overcharged or over discharged).

Once your battery bank condition is known/stabilized, then you can start working on the rest of the issues.

Doing things like measuring the AC line voltage (and frequency--especially for genset power) is a starting point (if AC line is out of proper operating range, Grid Connected systems will generally shut down until proper conditions are restored).

I guess you are in Nigeria? Do you have an installer?

The SMA systems are highly configurable, and should be displaying error codes/functions somewhere. I may be of limited help, but we would need a lot more information about your basic setup and what is happening. Has the system been working and is now failing, or is this a new install?

Take care,
-Bill

Yes am in Nigeria, and we do have a mercedes benz battery bank, i guess you are right it was the AC line voltage, because we read the error codes on the sunny island remote and everthing pointed to the AC line voltage.
Actually it was installed by someone from overseas and the owner contacted i and my colleague who is an Electrical Engineer and i am into I.T.

Before now i knew almost nothing about solar systems. The sunny island was not even coming up, my colleague was able to sort it out. So now its functioning

The weird thing was that It only trips off when its connected to the grid, but when on batteries it runs smoothly without any errors!!

It worked smoothly for the first 8 months and started having this issue 2 months ago, starting with the sunny island not coming up at all, we would switch it on and it would immediately go off and as earlier stated my mate was able to sort that out, dont ask me how!!
So the basic setup is...solar panels on the roof, one sunny boy 5.0, one sunny island 6.0, sunny remote control and mercedes benz power bank.

I also noticed the sunny boy's date is not correct, its a month back and i could find any way to change the date parameter from the web interface and also the shows a locked symbol when trying to access it from sunny explorer.

Thanks Bill and Mike95490 for the replies.

Jim

BB. · February 2019

Jim,

I am very happy that you got the basics running well again.

Generally, the AC grid voltage is set to around 212 to 264 VAC (at least for US with 240 VAC nominal, yours if 230 VAC may be ~10 volts lower). And the frequency is generally 50/60 Hz +/- 1 Hz.

For the genset input, the AC frequency may be closer to +/- 5 Hz. ... If your AC voltage/frequency falls outside those ranges, you may have a choice in the configuration/setup menu to widen the Grid settings (assuming your loads do not "complain").

But you may need to need the login name/password to access some of those screens.

Take care,
-Bill

BB. · February 2019

I should add that the Sunny Island (and probably the Sunny Boy) do have the capabilities (if turned on) to "modulate" the AC grid frequency (something like +/- 1 Hz). This is used by energy sources (such as your solar array) to indicate how much "excess" energy (i.e., avialable charging energy) is available.

I am not connected with the solar businesses (like SMA), but, roughly as I understand, if the Sunny Island batteries are full, it will take the line frequency from 50/60 Hz, to 49-51/59-61 Hz) which signals your Sunny Boy with solar array to output much less power into the local AC "micro" grid. When the battery bank needs charging current, the Sunny Island takes the line frequency back to spec. (50/60 Hz).

You may know all of this, but if not, I find understanding the "black boxes" individually, and then how they work together in a group helps with later debugging.

The problem with systems that have "service person locked configuration screens" is that sometimes the things you need are hidden--And it makes it a bit frustrating when you need to access/understand some of the deeper "secrets".

-Bill

jimblessed · February 2019

Thanks a lot Bill!!

Sunny island shuts down and sunny boy red light blinking

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