Sofar 6000 es

Inverters
1

Was wondering if any member here have had any experience with this inverter.

I have a friend who is looking to enter the RE arena and got gifted 3Kw PV panels as well as a Narada 4,8Kwh battery. He just needs an inverter.

Narada NESR48100 100ah 48V 4.8kwh Lithium Battery – PVStore - the battery in question.

He got offered the SOFAR 6000 ES for R1500.00 which is discontinued but is seemingly fit for use in both on and off grid application and he is really only looking to dabble a bit and test the water.

I guess my biggest concern would be if the Narada would be compatible with it in terms of the communication protocols etc (Communication mode: CAN and RS485)

Ideally if we can find him a Luxpower, Sunsync or Deye at a good price it would be better because there are support channels available for these.

Will this combination work?

Narada
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2

I did my first ever search today using Copilot (didn’t even know I had it until I saw this weird icon on my pc about a month ago)

This is how it responded to my question.

I would like to know, whether a Narada NESR48100 100ah 48V 4.8kwh Lithium Battery would be compatible with a SOFAR 6000 ES hybrid inverter.

ANSWER

Yes, the Narada NESR48100 100Ah 48V 4.8kWh Lithium Battery is likely compatible with the SOFAR 6000 ES hybrid inverter, based on several key factors:

:electric_plug: Compatibility Highlights

  • Voltage Match: The Narada battery operates at 48V, which aligns with the SOFAR 6000 ES inverter’s supported battery voltage range.
  • Communication Protocols: The battery supports CAN and RS485, which are standard protocols used by the SOFAR inverter for battery communication.
  • Parallel Expansion: The Narada battery supports up to 16 units in parallel, allowing scalability that matches the inverter’s capacity needs.
  • Designed for Hybrid Systems: The battery is marketed as compatible with mainstream inverter brands and supports customized protocols, which typically includes SOFAR inverters
3

Well… Sofar… so good?

Ba-dam-dishoom!

4

Lol!

5

It’s a difficult decision.
Back in the dim and distant past I witnessed VSDs becoming available. The first ones were unreliable but gradually better ones became available. Then it got to the stage of the device becoming a commodity. This meant that it didn’t matter which one you bought because they all did the same job and cost the same price.
All these drives were however supported by a local representatives.
For me this would be a deciding factor buying an inverter…

6

True, but basically getting a complete solar system for free, one can afford to take a little gamble.

I mean at R1500.00. But we are looking out towards more established brands.

7

Quite a while ago I started playing around with Chat GPT, it had its uses here and there, but not really.

Then around a month ago, I used it again for something and suddenly it was different, giving better more detailed answers etc.

If I now want to know something, except of course for latest pricing, latest news etc. I often ask Chat GPT before I will ask Google.

The other day for example I asked it to help me calculate ROI on a solar system for my house with different scenarios.
I uploaded my Eskom bills for the last year so it had my exact usage, plus I gave it Eskom’s proposed electricity increases for 2026 and 2027.
I gave it my roof size and orientation so it could calculate PV production, panel strings, layout etc.

It came back with the ideal size system for me. Then I told it I want to do this in stages and ultimately the door should be open to go completely off grid.

With the solar panels it even came up by itself with finer details like with the amount of panels I have the option between the 250/100 or 450/100 MPPT, depending how I want to configure the strings.

For the stage 1 install it then gave me the solar production month by month for a entire year, showed me how much grid I will still use and how much I will still pay to Eskom.
Then we did stage 2, another solar array, stage 3 more batteries etc.

Eventually I brought bank financing in to it as well, I asked it how the scenario will look if I borrow the money to finance the solar system, pay it off over X amount of years at X interest rate.

Wat it boils down to and I haven’t double checked all its calculations yet.

If I borrow money to install a system and pay it over 48 months. Then for that 48 months, I will pay R3300 per month on average more than what I’m currently paying to Eskom, which is the loan repayment plus the little bit of grid I’ll still use, plus the big snag in my case, the R4k fixed Eskom charges per month.

Very interesting stuff.

1 Like
8

I’m amazed at what it can do. But also, I am often astounded at how confidently it can get things wrong. Just yesterday, I asked it to help me solve some stupid problem with coding a pulse-style producer/consumer pattern with python asyncio, and it came up with something that would work, but perform really poorly. I thought about it some more, then asked it “how about rather doing this?” after which it told me how smart I am, and shortened its own previous code example by about 50%, coming up with roughly the same thing I had in mind anyway.

So it helped, in the ducksplaining way…

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I have one of these on my table, I explain problems to it sometimes… and even though it doesn’t understand it, explaining it on the level of a duck helps me solve it. AI is about the same for me right now.

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9

Who offered this??

10

I would take it. If it lasts one year… that is worth it… :slight_smile:

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11

But what about your time?? That costs too and you will have to get your hands in there to make the thing work…
I’ve been looking at the SLA sized batteries that have Li-Ion cells in them. Some are far better than others.(e.g. being able to open and repair them)
The latter are worth a lot more because you can fix and maintain them.

12

Even if I still sometimes have to correct it or give it more updated info, I still find it worth it. The other day I asked it to create me a Excel sheet to calculate worker pay, hours, off time, leave etc. Initially it got the latest minimum wage wrong it used last years. Then I corrected it, it just appologised, said of course I am correct and redid all the calculations again.

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13

And as if facebook guessed what I was doing today (I run things in different browsers, so it could not have known about this discussion)… I get this.

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14

Some solar installer that did a solar installation at my friends workplace.

Apparently he removed one of his other client’s home in terms of an upgrade and this client asked him to flog it.