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Savings
moolmanj posted a topic in Beat Load Shedding ,
Good day
I would like some advice from people who managed to install a system greater than what you are using with sufficient battery storage as well. Basically if you switch of eskom for a day you are still running.
Have you saved or reduced your Account and by how much taking into consideration clouds,rains etc.
thanks-
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- 44 replies
Picked By
Energy-Jason, -
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New to the forum
Toxxyc posted a topic in Starting In Solar? Feel free to introduce yourself,
Good morning, everyone. I'm new here, and I'm hoping to mine a bit of the knowledge on here.
My story is simple. I currently stay in a small town in a house with a small backup solar setup. I bought the house with 2 x 450W panels, a Mecer 2.4kW inverter and 2 x 12V100AH gel batteries installed. I hated the setup from the start as it's installed in the living room and the inverter isn't particularly quiet, but alas, I needed the backup in case of loadshedding (I work from home).
Eventually the gel batteries couldn't keep up with Stage 6 and so on load shedding, not getting enough time to charge to float between uses, and they gave up the ghost. I DIY-replaced the two gel batteries with a Sunmagic 25.6V 150AH LiFePO4 battery. The new lithium battery allowed the inverter to actually use it for what it was made for, and I set it to use the absolute minimum power from the battery, and charge via solar. It's been working well-ish.
Anyway, time passed and we viewed a smallholding outside of town, put in a bit of a lowball offer (based on the work the place needs) and it got accepted. So now we're moving. However, the transformer costs on the smallholding is simply outrageous, so I'm going to take the place off grid. It's not a big place and we don't use a lot of electricity (we work smart, using around 20kW a day, max 30kW a day when it's really cold and we run some heaters around the place. Stovetop is gas, everything is LED and energy efficient, but the geyser is still electric. We're not going to change that right now, it's a future thing.
So, what I want to do is simply not register the Eskom pole to my name when I buy the place, and they'll then cut the house off. I then want to install a solar system that'll run the house. The house has plenty of roof space (around 450 square meters), the DB is in the garage (so I can put everything in there, under roof, outside the house), and we're good to go.
However, the finances are a worry. I need to finance the whole shebang as all cash we have is going into security on the smallholding. So I searched around and found Solar.co.za and I'm wondering if they're legit, how it works, etc. They have a rent-to-own system that's essentially financing the whole thing on their side, but I can't find much about them online, except for mixed reviews on HelloPeter.
So, here I am. Can anyone recommend me a rent-to-own solar company that'll do what I need at around R3k per month? From the solar.co.za guys I can get 16 x 455W panels, 2 x 5kW LuxPower inverters, and 3 x HinaESS 5.14kW batteries for ~R2,900 per month. That's perfectly in my budget, and if I install a generator I have alongside that, I should be fine even on rainy days, right?
I hope to learn a lot, and expect a TON of questions from me!-
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- 41 replies
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Energy-Jason, -
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Feeding back to grid- challenges
Alex Stewart posted a topic in Inverters,
Hi all, I have an 8kw Sunsynk inverter and started feeding back to the grid a week ago. Exciting times! However, the grid at times is being fed from my batteries which I don't want. Does anyone know how to adjust the inverter settings to prevent this? I would like the first priority of the pv generation to cover our load requirements, then charge batteries, then feed the grid but not from batteries even if they are fully charged. Any ideas?-
- 16 replies
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Energy-Jason, -
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Going To Begin My DIY Solar Build :)
SunDayFunDay posted a topic in Beat Load Shedding ,
Lets Start Here
Due to unreliability of Eskom and faults in my area I have decided to go the solar route.
This is not a solo effort I'm a noob this thread will serve its purpose and place as a tutorial for whoever would like to know how and what needs to be done under the careful watch of forum members into building a solar system from scratch as a noob please note your input is valuable and will be much appreciated, I will include cost and sizing and all small detail where I can provide it.
Hopefully you can learn and make your own small system
These are the main components below however there minute details such as capacity of Dc Breakers, SPDs, the correct AC Breakers from the main board to the AC Disconnect, Roof Mount and Accessories, wiring, placement of panels and testing and balancing of system, there is 10 critical components which depends on your budget
(Sizing and Full Specs will be done once I get an idea)
Equipment
Solar Inverter
Battery
Solar Panels
Materials:
DC Combiner Box (Breaker and SPDs/Fuses)
AC Disconnect Box (Breakers)
Battery Fuse
Earth Spike
Earth-Neutral Bond
Wiring
Roof Mount
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- 8 replies
Picked By
Energy-Jason, -
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A much better way of connecting Home Assistant to your DEYE/Sunsynk inverter
Sc00bs posted a topic in Home Automation,
Hi Guys
Just wanted to share my latest video on installation and connecting your inverter to Home Assistant using the new RS485 shield and ESP32C board.
Makes life much easier to set the thing up, no soldering and you only need to connect the power up inside the inverter to a 12V power supply and the RS485 cables so dead easy.
You can get the board and an ESP32 from https://smarthomeintegrations.co.za/ for R400 and get delivery in a day or so.
Slipx06 (Paul) has also included some cool new YAML code to calculate Daily energy production and consumption in the ESP32 and send that info to HA as well.
Let me know what you guys think of the video please
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- 167 replies
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Energy-Jason, -
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Hi there I'm fairly new to the whole solar thing. Had a previous question and you guys gave awesome advice. I'm back with a new question. My current system is 2 x 5kw Deye inverters, 4 x 5.2kw batteries and 20 x 545w bifacial panels...I sorted all the stuff out from my previous issues regarding the low voltage etc. For the summer I have a lot of fans for cooling the house down. This winter will be my first winter with solar. I spoke to a few people and I get mixed answers...Currently I have a few heaters that I used last winter. We usually only use them fore an hour or 2 in the morning to heat up the room when getting dressed. What is the do's and don'ts regarding heaters and the inverters/solar/battery? -
I recently purchased a Deye 5kV inverter to replace my aging RCT MKS 4kV inverter, mostly because the RCT is relying on a Pi for monitoring, and I was starting to see some really strange battery behavior, ie SOC would be at 100% and instantly drop to 40% and then back up to 100% over and over again until I reset the Pi and all was good again. I don't know what the issue was and I didn't delve more deeply into it other to verify the actual SOC was really at 100% and not bouncing up and down. Anyway, this last weekend I started setting up the Deye, plugged in the Deye provided CAN cable, and no BMS. Eventually I tried connecting each battery to the inverter by itself and the 2 older US3000 batteries report BMS fine with the cable, but the 2 newer US3000C refuse, and this is a problem because the C is the master. To cut a long story short, what cable do I need? I don't really mind if it's CAN or RS485, just as long as I can get the BMS reporting to the inverter working. Thanks -
Hows this. My parents just got their permission to install letter, 1 year and 7 months after submitting the application. "This city works for you".
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By Ed Zozulya · Posted
New version #dSolar - Real time solar station monitoring system ver 2.6.0 (17.01.2025) WinterESS: Forced on charge from grid to absorption Rotate the app screen if this option is disabled on the device Checking for message existence when chat ID search for dSolar Telegram bot Reindex and vacuum database http://doro.poltava.ua/dsolar -
My settings: 26- 55.5V 27- 54.9V Yes. Charging (current not stop and do not change too)do not stop until reach settings 27 (float voltage) but never goes to 26(bulk) if it is above 27. Practicaly inverter bulk settings is ignored and always equals float .Side effect: premature bug as if it didn't exist. I think for LFP is not a big issue. Yes. Something triggers that diode stop blinking so early. -
Hello everyone, I sent my device for warranty service. The issue was resolved with the service software. I had installed the same software myself, but the problem wasn’t fixed. I guess they use a different software at the service center. -
Solis 12KW vs Deye 12KW，I compared the parameters of both, and there are almost no differences in the important ones. The only difference is that Solis has a higher charging and discharging current than Deye. I believe both are good options and excellent brands. -
@Coulomb Here is a picture of the inverter firmware information. The motherboard is identical as the PIP 4048MS (same design and components) -
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Hi Kory If you haven't had any help yet, I would suggest you email Leon Swart at SSEG East, CoCT. Very helpful fella and he's responsible for all registrations. ([email protected]) If you explain your situation to him, he will guide you through the entire process. Also, he will send you examples of the diagram, etc. It is something that you can do yourself with a little effort. As far as the CoC is concerned, may I suggest that you dump your "installer" and find a certfied electrician to do this for you? I am sure there are many here who will gladly assist you Good luck and regards
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By Kalahari Meerkat · Posted
I would personally not exceed 3.6V, in fact 3.55V balanced is probably 99% full and maybe even a bit over... so, if you can provide 100A with all cells paralleled at 3.55V then you can probably just let it stand and when the current is down to less than 1A, I'd say the cells should be fairly well balanced... if you have time... wait for current to drop below 100mA -
These instructions need cleaning up, but all the information is there: https://forums.aeva.asn.au/viewtopic.php?p=71631#p71631 Being MAX models, you will need the ATE1 command. Use the communications tool.
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That still covers a few models. What is the present (U1, DSP) firmware version? If you can't tell, is it a 64 V model, or a 58.4 V model? It seems to be PF1, i.e. 5 kVA and 5 kW, is that correct? I do have firmwares for these versions (PF0.8, PF1 64 V, and PF1 58.4 V).
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But the battery voltage continues to rise above 54.0 V, and arrives at about 54.9 V, which I assume is your bulk/absorb voltage. Are you saying that the charge LED stopped flashing at about 10:10-10:35 that day? As far as I can tell, your inverter is operating as expected, with the possible exception of the charge LED. I would have to see beyond 13:00 to see if it actually switched to the float setting (I assume that's 54.0 V) after a suitable time in the absorb charge stage. Edit: Maybe what's happening at about 10:30 is that the spike in battery voltage (it could be more than shown on the graph because the graph only gets battery voltage samples every so often) could have flipped the inverter from bulk stage to "bulk/absorb" stage internally. I'd have to check what the charge LED is supposed to do in this stage, but maybe that's why the LED stopped blinking (if I even got that right). Bulk/absorb stage is not significantly different from bulk stage; it's still targeting the CV/bulk/absorb voltage setting.
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Are you sure that you're not running SolarPower (for on-grid models)? I can't see why Watchpower would indicate a country of regulation, or where it would get this information from. In any case, this will not affect the time; check the time that the inverter thinks it is. There must be a way to set the time for your area. My understanding is that with the power switch off, the inverter will remain on (display backlight, LEDs etc) if there is a power source (AC-in or PV in). The AC-out port should be unpowered immediately that the power switch is off. If there is no AC-in and no PV in, then the inverter should power down completely after a delay of some 30-60 seconds; not immediately.
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