Goodwe ET 3 phase hybrid inverter review - Updated November 2019 

We have now installed a few of these new Goodwe inverters and it's a good news story.

The ET range are three phase hybrid inverters ready to connect to BYD and Pylontech batteries with support for LG batteries in final testing. As final testing usually ends up being six months, we'll focus on the here and now.

As a regular 3 phase inverter, forgetting about it's battery capability, it's good, but expensive.

The 5kW model is $3,300 but that does include the 2 pole Goodwe GM3000 smart meter.

 

To put that into perspective, Huawei 5kW 3 phase hybrid is $2,230 including the smart meter and Fronius 3 phase Symo hybrid $3,600 including the smart meter.

 

So why would people pay $1,000 for the Goodwe hybrid over the Huawei or only $300 less than the much respected Austrian made Fronius Symo hybrid?

 

Battery support NOW
Whilst Huawei is a hybrid, at time of launch in order to cash in on the 2019 pre Christmas solar boom, it's a hybrid currently without a battery. Huawei testing process with LG batteries and whatever other battery models they are working on is ongoing and whilst they have it all working perfectly with their single phase models, it's not going to be ready until perhaps as late as mid 2020 for the three phase models.

 

With Goodwe ET you can connect BYD and Pylontech batteries right now.

 

UPS emergency circuit

Goodwe have always been rather excellent at this with all their models. Really fast (0.01 seconds) switch over from loss of grid power (power blackout) to delivering power from the battery.

The inverter can deliver the full 5kW of power from the battery when in UPS, with a maximum of 1.666kW per phase. Furthermore, if the power cut happens during daylight hours, the Goodwe ET will continue to send your panel power to charge the battery.

 

That's very good. Huawei does not have ANY UPS facility and whilst they say it may come in 2020, I wouldn't hold your breath. It may arrive as an add-on unit as other inverter manufacturers have done, but Goodwe designed it right into the inverter as standard from the outset.

 

Is Goodwe ET better than Fronius Symo Hybrid?
That's a tough one. The Fronius Symo Hybrid supports BYD and LG high voltage batteries, so on that score, they are pretty even. Fronius has UPS mode too, BUT the real downfall for Fronius Symo Hybrid is that it only has a single MPPT. In order to convert the regular Symo into a hybrid back in the day to support the original Tesla Powerwall V1, they removed an MPPT.

What that missing MPPT means is that in many, if not most cases, you can't use this inverter if your roof layout means that you have panels pointing in different directions (e.g. North and West). All the panels on the Fronius hybrid need to face the same way. Yes, you can parallel identical strings of panels together, e.g. 10 panels West facing, 10 panels East facing, but despite what the Fronius laboratory says about there being minimal 1 or 2% losses doing this, the reality from our own bitter experience has been it's more like 5 to 10% losses. Goodwe ET is a full 2 x MPPT inverter and it's also very quiet. Fronius can get very noisy.

 

Oversizing
The maximum DC input for the 5kW Goodwe ET series inverter is a rather disappointing 6.5kW. It's not really an issue as far as the usual 6.6kW of panels are concerned because 6.6kW of panels will never deliver 6.6kW of DC power to the inverter, in fact you would be lucky to ever get more than about 5.5kW of DC panel input power from 6.6kW of panels even on the finest of solar production days.

The disappointment is that you can't add more. One of the great things about hybrids and our 'STC' (Government discount scheme) is that once you connect a battery you can add more panels and claim the STCs (discount) on those extra panels. Huawei for example allow as much as 10.25kW of panel power on their 5kW 3 phase hybrid inverter, Fronius 8kW. We don't know why Goodwe have limited to 6.5kW but we are asking them to increase it. That extra panel power can be directed straight into the battery to charge it up.

 

BYD Batteries
We don't know very much about the 'other' battery that Goodwe ET supports... Pylontech, as we've never done one, but BYD batteries are much more familiar.

 

The BYD batteries that work with Goodwe ET series are the high voltage models (400Vdc).

You buy a base and a BMU (battery management unit) costing $800 and then stack 1.28kWh batteries, weighing 25kg each on top of each other. Each battery is $915 and you need to get a minimum of five, and a maximum of nine.

So it's 6.4kWh of battery storage minimum at a cost of $5,375 up to 11.52 kWh of storage at a cost of $9,035.

Here is a YouTube video of the setup of the BYD batteries.

 

Reporting Software

Goodwe reporting software like all the modern inverters with a smart meter shows your solar production, self consumption of that solar, electricity you have bought, and now, of course, with a battery, the storage and release of battery power. All the other stuff you would expect, alarms, scheduled daily, monthly emails of performance, app or web based. There really isn't much to differentiate one inverter software from another these days.

Goodwe 3 phase ET series models
There is a 5kW, 8kW and 10kW.

Brochure here (8kW model not currently available in Australia)

 

Goodwe GM3000 smart meter
One of the really pleasing things about this Goodwe smart meter is that it's only 36mm wide.

It's DIN mounted and has 3 CTs that clamp around your phase cables but the fact that it is 36mm (2 poles wide) compared to the Fronius and Huawei 3 phase meters that are 72mm wide means that you don't have to find as much space for it. Huawei and Fronius smart meters have an in-built LCD screen and that's probably why they are larger. Why the screen when you can see all the data in the reporting software?
Datasheet for GM3000 here

 

Summary
This is another really great hybrid inverter from Goodwe, who already have already built a solid reputation for their single phase EM and ES and now new EHR hybrids, and their AC coupled SBP battery inverter. They really are well ahead of the rest in many ways, especially in their range of battery capable inverters.

 

When Huawei have battery support in 2020 for their 3 phase hybrid, we expect that the Goodwe price will drop a fair bit, but until then and even after that, until Huawei also include UPS, there is no good reason for Goodwe not to charge extra for hardware they include and frankly a feature they deliver better than anyone. (UPS in 0.01 seconds after mains failure with full 5kW power not some little 10 Amp secondary circuit)