Sol-Ark

I have used the Sol-Ark 12K for a few months now and it has performed flawlessly. My system is grid tied and consists of solar panels, batteries, a generator and a transfer/essential loads panel. The Sol-Ark does an excellent job of managing the batteries and solar panels, and in directing power within this system. The installation of the Sol-Ark was straight forward, and it was easy to connect it to all of the system components.

I am very impressed with my Sol-Ark inverter so far. I am also pleased that they are bringing the monitoring app in house and migrating to domestic web hosting. That will be a huge improvement in security and functionality if they stay on top of it. The sales and engineering teams have both been happy to assist and answer my questions and provide support. I am glad I went with the Sol-Ark product. Keep it up!

Dead simple install and well documented setup instructions makes for a confident installation. Plenty of step-by-step videos online to follow if needed. Well designed hardware and easy to monitor with the included PowerView app. I have been running for about two weeks now with absolutely no hitches. Solar/Batteries/Grid are well managed by the 15K and have eliminated my Utility bill. Could not be happier. Mark

Bought the 12k inverter/controller in November 2021. My suspicion is that, with the way things are these days, SolArk may be growing faster than they can keep up with themselves. Good for their business, but they need to address some shortfalls. The 'bridge' to allow my batteries to heat themselves is still unavailable. (this is New England and lithium batteries mustn't charge when frozen) The 'Smart load' function on the PvPro app has been broken for months. The 12k has no ammeter between itself and the batteries, so the controller can only guess the battery fullness. Smart load can't test potential current from the panels, so it can't function as a power diverter when the batteries are full. The overcurrent protection kicks in much quicker than you may be used to with a typical home circuit breaker, meaning 37A of current can't start most shop tools, which is my business. Customer service has not returned my emails. That said, most of these issues wouldn't matter if I was grid-tied. If you're on grid with no large inductive loads, you should be fine. The 12k should not be marketed to off-grid. I'd add a couple stars if they would at least make an effort to respond. --Quaker City Solar.

Easy as Pie! and very cost effective! I Recently install a sol-ark 8k at my friends home and we found the installation process simple and much less complicated then trying to install a traditional inverter with a separate solar controller. Note I am not a solar installer nor do i profess to being and a solar expert. I am only a process research chemist with a technical back ground. My friend asked for my help and this time I took the my time and did a significant amount of research and helped him select a cost and energy efficient system. Once we setup the two series of 9 panel, each string running a total of 330 volts and 9 amp (this is called high voltage system, low amps). Just after the each string i placed and an inline 15 amp 600v fuse on the positive line, and brought each string down to the sol-ark 8k using 10 awg cable a pleasent surprise. That's it no combiner box with breaker and no heavy gauge wire to controller. This alone was a time and cost saver. Wired up the load, Grid and solar to the sol-ark, which was "easy a pie" and i was ready to go. Place the battery online, first charging up the capacitor as per instruction manual and then connecting the battery. Turn the unit on, programmed my battery info on a very nice touchscreen display, used the default off grid setup and i was running the house on a 48v 520 ah battery bank. Once i had it running off the batteries, turned on the solar panels (already late in the day) and installed the app on my android phone as described in the manual. I setup the account, and send Sol-ark a message about our newly created phone app and PC account and in a few hours i clicked my phone and i was monitoring the sol-ark on phone app and online. No communication, combo box or any other add-on to buy. This is great, now i had a way of making sure all is running well and i did not have to be there. Ten days later i called Sol-ark and they assisted me in programming the sol-ark with the grid for use as a third source of power, just in case there is no solar and the 25 kw of Lifepo4 batteries were low, the grid would kick in and partially charge the batteries to a programmed 50%. This is a very nice Hybrid inverter, I should have done my homework 2 years back when installing my solar system at home using the traditional transformer inverter with the extra cost of a separate solar controller (low voltage system, high amps), lot's of heavy cable (4 awg), installed from the solar panel combiner box, no communication software and very little flexibility with this inverter. Worst yet i spend almost as much as my friend did on his sol-ark 8k. All these little add on's is what actually make the Sol-ark 8k cost effective and easy to install, and i have not even mentioned my transformer base system draws 200 watts/hr or 5 kw/day, which makes the sol-ark energy efficient as well. Well, no point in crying over spilled milk, a lesson learned.