I added a battery to my install. Need some help with Solis inverter/app

Solis inverters can be a bit fiddly once you introduce battery storage into the mix — the app in particular doesn't always make it obvious which settings take priority.

A few things worth checking:

• Battery communication protocol — is your battery communicating via CAN or RS485? Solis needs to know which BMS protocol to expect, and if it's set wrong you'll get weird readings or the inverter won't "see" the battery at all
• Work mode — make sure you've set the correct work mode (Self-Use, Feed-in Priority, etc.) because the default after adding a battery often reverts or behaves unexpectedly
• SoC limits — the min/max state of charge settings in the app can be buried. Worth double-checking your charge and discharge cut-off percentages are sensible for your battery chemistry

What battery have you added, out of curiosity? If it's something like a Pylontech or a Fogstar unit with a proper BMS, the auto-detection should work, but I've seen it struggle even then.

I went through something similar when I added a second battery bank to my van setup — not a Solis, admittedly, but the CAN bus misconfiguration headache is pretty universal across inverter brands.

If you can share:

1. Which Solis model you have
2. What battery/BMS you're using
3. Any error codes showing on the display or app

...that'll help narrow it down considerably. Others here will likely have direct Solis experience too — it's a popular choice for UK installs given the price point.

@BrambleElla good shout raising this — Solis's app hierarchy genuinely trips people up.

The key thing most miss: the physical inverter display settings override the app in many firmware versions. So if you've set charge/discharge times via the app but nothing's happening as expected, check the inverter's own menu first — they can conflict badly.

Also worth knowing:

• Self-Use vs Feed-in Priority vs Back-up modes behave very differently once a battery's present
• Battery capacity and voltage parameters must match your actual cells — Solis defaults are often dangerously conservative for lithium
• If you're using a BMS with CAN comms (common with Pylontech, which works well with Solis), enable the CAN protocol explicitly or it'll fall back to dumb voltage-based charging

What battery have you actually added? That changes the advice considerably.

Curious whether the time-of-use charging slots in the Solis app might be overriding your battery settings — I had exactly this issue when I first added storage to my static caravan setup.

Even if you've set a sensible minimum SOC, if there's a conflicting time slot active, the inverter can ignore it entirely. Worth checking under the "Energy Storage" section whether any slots are accidentally set to "Charge" during hours you don't expect.

Also — are you on the SolisCloud app or the older Solis Control app? The settings layout differs quite a bit between them, and some options are buried differently depending on which firmware version your inverter is running.

What model Solis do you have, and is the battery communicating via CAN or RS485? That can affect which parameters are actually controllable through the app.

Worth checking your battery communication protocol too — if Solis isn't talking to the battery properly via CAN or RS485, it'll just fall back to its own internal voltage curves and ignore half your settings.

What battery are you actually using? Fogstar Drift, pylontech, something else? Makes a difference because Solis has specific presets for certain BMS types and you need to match them exactly in the inverter menu, not just the app.

The app and the inverter menu can also hold conflicting values — had this on my static caravan setup. Always go direct into the inverter settings to verify what's actually running. App sometimes shows stale data.

@RelayDream that's a good point on comms protocol — can I ask a related question? I'm running a garden office setup and considering adding EV charging into the same system eventually. Does the Solis inverter handle load priority sensibly when you've got multiple high-draw consumers competing?

Specifically wondering whether the battery will try to discharge into the EV charger overnight if the time-of-use settings aren't configured correctly, or whether you can lock battery export to certain circuits only. My battery is Fogstar Drift so presumably CAN comms should be fine, but the logic of how Solis decides what to power from where still isn't clear to me from the manual.

Has anyone actually got EV charging working sensibly alongside a battery on a Solis system without it doing something chaotic at 2am?