Sunny Beam problems

[Gary K]

Hi all.
Now having problem with my sunny Beam. It has been fine for about 3 years but has now not recording the days output. I can get a reading of how much we are generating at a particular instant but the days total output at the bottom remains at zero.
Also the records for some of the previous month and years are not correct. I have never deleted any information so could it be running out of memory?
coincidently, the batteries died last week and I had to recharge them and then had to re bluetooth it to the inverter but its not the first time that I have had to do this but could this cause a problem?

 

[Gary K]

Good old SMA! As no one on here had any ideas, I contacted the Manufacturer direct and asked them the same questions. After 3 days of Emails, they have deducted that the SunnyBeam unit has developed a fault and one of the Tech team has arranged for a replacement unit to be sent out. First class service, I feel

 

[Gavin A]

we've had this before, and fixed it with a firmware reinstall / factory reset. but the data gets lost.

it also used to happen around the date the clocks changed, so I'm suspicious that's what this is. SMA firmware couldn't cope with the idea of the cocks changing, and differences between the inverter and sunnybeam unit. Not on all units, it seemed to be a bit random as to which units were affected, but this sounds like the same issue to me.

 

[Gary K]

LOL The whats changing? I'm sure it was OK for a few days after the clocks changed. Oddly though when I connect to the inverter via sunny explorer, the records have gone wrong also , there are months and years with little or no output, and then a month or year that is a total of the previous missing outputs.

 

[Gavin A]

LOL The whats changing? I'm sure it was OK for a few days after the clocks changed. Oddly though when I connect to the inverter via sunny explorer, the records have gone wrong also , there are months and years with little or no output, and then a month or year that is a total of the previous missing outputs.

in that case it sounds like an issue with the inverter memory, so I don't know how a new unit will help.

Unfortunately you're probably going to need to reset the inverter memory, which IIRC can be done via sunny explorer, but maybe the installer settings. Which does mean losing the data, but maybe download it first and see if you can recover it / make sense of it in a spreadsheet.

 

[Gary K]

I did mention this in my last communication but was told " If you have one of our classic range of inverters (not TL or HF) they wont record/store daily data other than the E-total figure if they aren’t connected to each day. Normally, in your case, this would be the Sunny Beam, however, if this has failed, the inverter wont store that days .csv files as it wont know the day/date and time."
He's lost me because I could always check history on the inverter (SB3800)
I'm not overly concerned about loosing the history as it is all on PVoutput. It is only a matter of time before the inverter will need replacing anyway.
I will wait for the new unit and go from there if it does not solve the problem.