Sol-Ark Time of Use Settings: Save $1,000+/Year (Step-by-Step)

Most Sol-Ark systems are not set up right out of the box. Fix your Time of Use settings and you can quietly slash your peak grid usage to zero. Here is exactly how to do it.

Watch the full walk-through

I recorded a step-by-step tutorial showing the exact screens, settings, and before-and-after data from a real customer site. If you prefer to learn by watching, start here.

If you want more tutorials like this, subscribe to Solarjoejoe on YouTube. I post new DIY solar and battery videos every week.

The 60-second version

• Utilities charge different prices at different times of day. Peak is usually 5pm to 11pm. Off-peak is overnight.
• If you have a Sol-Ark, you can program it to never pull power during peak hours and instead lean on your battery.
• If you let it charge from the grid in the cheap overnight window, you can stretch the savings even further during winter or cloudy stretches.
• One real customer saved over $80 a month, close to $1,000 a year, with zero new equipment.

Step 1: Check if your utility offers Time of Use rates

Pull up your most recent electric bill and look for something labeled Rate, Rate Schedule, or Service Plan. There is usually a code or plan name next to it. Search that on your utility website to confirm what you are currently paying.

Then look for a Time of Use plan option. Most utilities now publish a simple comparison page. You can usually plug your last 12 months of usage into a calculator and see whether TOU would have saved you money. If yes, switch your plan.

Step 2: Get into the Sol-Ark cloud dashboard

You can program a Sol-Ark two ways. You can tap through the buttons on the front of the inverter, or you can log into mysolark.com from your laptop. The browser is much easier to work with.

Step 3: Find the Time of Use parameter settings

From the main dashboard, click Equipment, then Inverter. This page is a little buried, so look for the three dots on the right side of your inverter row. Click those, then click Parameter Settings.

Step 4: Set your System Work Mode

This setting matters because it tells the inverter what to prioritize. For a whole-home backup install, the typical choice is Limit to Load with Sell Solar enabled if your utility pays for export. If you do not get paid to export, you can leave Sell unchecked.

Set Energy Pattern to Battery First if your goal is to fill the battery before doing anything else with extra solar. This is the right call for most homeowners trying to ride through peak hours.

Step 5: Build your six TOU time zones

Sol-Ark gives you six time slots, and you have to fill in all six. You cannot leave any blank. Times are entered in 24-hour format. Here is the layout I use on a real customer site where peak hours are 5pm to 11pm:

For each zone you set three things: a discharge wattage cap, an SOC target, and whether to allow Charge from grid and Sell to grid.

Never check both Charge and Sell in the same zone. The battery will behave erratically.

Step 6: Understand what the SOC target really does

This is the part that trips most people up. In each zone, the SOC field is telling the battery where it should end up by the time that zone ends. It is not a minimum or a cutoff in the way you would think.

Example: in Zone 5 (peak hours) I set discharge to 10kW and SOC to 30%. Because I did not check Sell, the inverter will only discharge enough to cover the house loads, and it will stop the moment the battery hits 30%. That is exactly what I want.

In Zone 6 (late evening, after peak), I might set discharge to 500W and SOC to 50%. Because the battery is already below 50%, the only way to reach that target is to charge. If I have Charge enabled in that zone, the inverter will pull cheap grid power and bring the battery up to 50% before sunrise.

Real before-and-after numbers

One customer site I tuned was pulling significant power from the grid every weekday between 5pm and 9pm before the change. Same house, same panels, same battery, same inverter. The only thing I touched was the TOU settings.

After the rewrite, their peak-window grid pull dropped to effectively zero. Almost all their grid use shifted to the overnight off-peak window where the rate is lowest. The result was over $80 per month in savings, or close to $1,000 a year. No new equipment, no install labor, no battery upgrade.

The two biggest takeaways

1. Do not trust that your installer set this up correctly. Most do not. Most leave it at factory defaults. Always check.
2. Test, monitor, and tweak. Your summer settings will be wrong in winter. Plan to revisit your zones every few months and watch your energy generation tab for a week after any change.

Tools and resources I recommend

A few things that help when you are tuning a Sol-Ark or any other smart inverter:

Some of the links above are affiliate links. If you buy through them I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps me keep making free YouTube tutorials.

Build or expand your battery bank with OG Solar Store

TOU settings get you most of the way there. The other half of the equation is having enough battery capacity to actually ride through peak hours. If you are sizing or expanding a DIY battery bank, browse the full catalog at OG Solar Store.

FAQ

Will Time of Use work without batteries?

A little. Shifting your laundry, dishwasher, and EV charging into off-peak hours is the manual version. Solar plus batteries on a Sol-Ark is the automated version, and it captures way more savings because the battery handles the shift for you.

How long does it take to see the savings?

Most homeowners see the change on their very next monthly bill, especially if your utility breaks out peak versus off-peak usage. The Sol-Ark cloud dashboard also lets you confirm within 24 hours that grid import dropped to zero during peak windows.

What if I have AC-coupled solar instead of DC-coupled?

The TOU logic still works, but a few of the System Work Mode settings change. I cover the AC-coupled and partial-load-backup variations in follow-up videos. Subscribe on YouTube so you do not miss those.

I do not have a Sol-Ark yet. Is this worth it?

If you are planning a DIY battery build, the Sol-Ark is one of the most flexible hybrid inverters on the market for exactly this kind of programming. Pair it with a properly sized DIY pack and you have a system that pays you back every single day.

Got a Sol-Ark question I did not cover? Drop it in the comments on the YouTube video. I answer every one personally.