Sungrow Inverter: Background
Sungrow inverter review will provide you with a clear idea about Sungrow and its economical and environment-friendly solar inverters. While all other solar inverter companies evolved from well-established manufacturers of power electronics, Sungrow was founded by Cao Renxian, Professor at the Hefei University of Technology, in 1997. Cao Renxian wanted to improve the electricity supply in rural western China by using renewable sources of energy.
This motivation of helping people by supplying renewable energy was the foundation for one of the best solar inverter manufacturers around the world. Today, Sungrow Power Supply Co Ltd is the second-largest manufacturer of solar inverters after Huawei. Sungrow has a net worth of $1.6 billion, and the company specialises in energy route switching, energy conversion for electric vehicles, power conversion technologies, renewable energy generators and inverters.
Sungrow is one of the few companies in the solar industry that offer inverters designed for residential, commercial, and utility grid-tie systems. In this article, we will review two of the best-selling inverters of Sungrow.
- Residential solar inverters – SG premium – single phase
- Commercial solar inverters – CX range – single phase
Residential Solar Inverters
Sungrow’s residential SG series of solar inverters have become quite popular in Australia because of its great reliability and competitive price. According to the Fombay data, the strong sales figure of Sungrow shows that they are now the second-largest solar inverter in Australia, the first one being Fronius.
Sungrow has a marvellous reputation for providing good quality solar inverters compared to many other solar inverter manufacturers. The Sungrow support office based in Sydney has further helped to improve the reputation of the company by providing outstanding customer service.
The residential SG series inverters are transformerless, lightweight, string inverters, including a wide MPPT voltage range and Wi-Fi communication. The Sungrow residential inverters are cooled like most modern string inverters via passive cooling using a big rear heatsink.
No power de-rating is specified to occur for Sungrow inverters below 45 degrees Celsius ambient temperature due to its efficient design. This is impressive for an inverter that is passively cooled. The residential SG series inverters are available in three primary varieties:
- S Series – Single MPPT
- D Series – Dual MPPT
- TL-D Series – Dual MPPT
The SG premium series replaced the current range of Sungrow solar inverters from the end of May 2020 with a built-in DC isolator and Quick Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter (QAFCA) as standard features.
CX Commercial Solar Inverters
The CX commercial string inverters by Sungrow manufactured for the global market are available in various sizes, such as 30kW, 40kW, 50kW and the extra-large 110kW. The features of these next-generation commercial inverters are making them some of the most advanced inverters in the solar market.
The features of the CX commercial inverters are:
- Built-in DC isolator
- PID recovery function
- PV oversizing up to 150 per cent.
- Active cooling system
- IP66 with C5 anti-corrosion
- Installation angle from 90 to 180 degrees.
- Inbuilt IV curve scan.
The Australian model of the CX commercial string model is slightly different and includes the 30kW inverter model with 3 x MPPT’s, 50kW with 5 x MPPT’s and the largest 100kW with 9 x MPPT’s. The 40kW model is unavailable in Australia.
How to read a Sungrow Solar Inverter?
Monitoring a Sungrow solar inverter is easy. The latest inverters include Wi-Fi monitoring as a standard feature on all models and use the Sungrow inverter app, iSolarCloud, the latest, contemporary, cloud-based monitor portal. This Sungrow inverter app is a huge update over the outdated monitoring portal. This app is easy to use and performs quite well.
There were technical issues with consumption monitoring on the older models of the SG inverters. Still, all the latest premium SG models support consumption monitoring, and it is simple to set up with a smart energy meter plus the Wi-Fi dongle or logger1000.
Sungrow offers a wide range of meters, data loggers, and dongles for single and three-phase solar inverter installations. These energy meters are essential for export limiting and to allow the energy storage systems to function.
The iSolarCloud not only allows an inverter to monitor the energy production by the inverter but also allows it to monitor the energy consumption of the entire household.
How To Connect Sungrow Inverter to Wi-Fi?
Obtain the serial number and password of your solar inverter and get the Wi-Fi name and password of your home. The serial number of the solar inverter is on the side of the inverter.
Download the iSolarCloud app onto your smartphone or tablet. The iSolarCloud app is available on both the Apple App Store and the Android Google Play Store.
Open the iSolarCloud app and begin the registration process. Enter your email address and the code you received on your email soon after entering your email address on the iSolarCloud app.
Continue to follow the instruction on the screen after you have entered the code. The setup process will lead you to a Wi-Fi connection process.
If you have a battery installed with your solar power system, then select the option that says, “Residential Energy Storage”. Select the “Residential PV” option if you do not have a solar battery installed.
Previously, all the solar inverters of Sungrow came with a product warranty of 5 years, and only a few models offered an optional product warranty of 10 years. In order to provide a better service to the customers of Sungrow solar inverters, the company is now offering a product warranty of 10 years on the majority of new generation solar inverters that are sold in Australia from 1st April 2020.
The models included in the extended warranty list are:
- SG2K-S (Premium)
- SG2K5-S (Premium)
- SG3K-S(Premium)
- SG3K-D (Premium)
- SG5K-D (Premium)
- SG8K-D (Premium)
- SH5.0RT
- SH10RT
- SH5K-30
- SG5KTL-MT
- SG10KTL-MT
- SG15KTLM
- SG20KTLM
- SG30CX (Premium)
- SG50CX (Premium)
- SG110CX (Premium).
Currently, the warrant extension policy is being applied to Sungrow solar inverters that are purchased and installed in Australia only.
