I've gone with an EG4 3000watt inverter and AOLithium's server rack batteries. The AOLithium batteries are less than 2/3 the price of going with the EG4 batteries after the taxes, shipping and other import fees here in Canada.
I'm very unclear what advantage, if any connecting up the RS485 communications between the inverter and the batteries would have.
I'm not sure they can even talk the same protocol. The AOLithium batteries seem to talk a number of different protocols. It looks like the EG4 may only talk it's own protocol?
I may just program my own controller that can talk to both and do protocol translation. Also do things like turn on the water heater when the batteries are 100% and there is excess solar production. I've got lots of experience in microcontroller programming in c. I've seen a number of different projects on git hub and such that attempt to reverse engineer some of the protocols. I'm just really unclear as to how the Inverter might use the data from the batteries. I can see lots of useful data I can poll from the inverter.
So the real question is, is it worth spending the time to program such a controller? Or maybe just a simpler project that polls the batteries for state of charge to control the water heater?
I'm very unclear what advantage, if any connecting up the RS485 communications between the inverter and the batteries would have.
I'm not sure they can even talk the same protocol. The AOLithium batteries seem to talk a number of different protocols. It looks like the EG4 may only talk it's own protocol?
I may just program my own controller that can talk to both and do protocol translation. Also do things like turn on the water heater when the batteries are 100% and there is excess solar production. I've got lots of experience in microcontroller programming in c. I've seen a number of different projects on git hub and such that attempt to reverse engineer some of the protocols. I'm just really unclear as to how the Inverter might use the data from the batteries. I can see lots of useful data I can poll from the inverter.
So the real question is, is it worth spending the time to program such a controller? Or maybe just a simpler project that polls the batteries for state of charge to control the water heater?