Member Installations Showcase

Ambitious as it may be I think it would be nice to have a place where we can share instalation ideas , from the DYI'd , the dirt cheap plans (@Jaco de Jongh ) , and commercial stuff. I know that when I started my installation I were looking at all the installations for some inspiration. So , if I may, the rules for this thread. Pictures is a must preferably closeups to show detail Let's stick to the topic this time...... If the idea seems to be less safe and not in public interest refer to admin ( @Energy if this is ok with you?) We don't want this thread to be derailed by LONG discussion about the welding techniques or how the steel might be tooo…

Hi guys, let me share my current solar LAB setup with you: PV modules The only installation option was the roof, which unfortunatelly has a bad orientation: one side of the roof is facing East while the other is to the West. So I decided to install panels on the both sides of the roof. Luckilly, the panels are not so expensive and are going to last for decades, especially when compared to price and endurance of batteries. It's 36x 275Wp facing West and 36x 280Wp facing East. All together it's almost 20kWp of solar modules, but because of the orientation, the maximum possible power is quite a bit less than that. Panels are wired in four high-voltage string,…

Hi all Currently installing a system at my new house. I'll post some updates as I progress. System consists of: 1 x LuxPower SNA5000WPV 1 x Cyclone F5 5.12kwh battery 8 x JA Solar 600w Panels Monitoring with Solar Assistant. The system is being installed 90% myself with some help from family, mainly to get the panels up. The system will then be inspected by an installer, any corrections needed will be made, and the system will also be inspected by an electrical engineer so that the sign off can be done with City of Cape Town. The inverter is being mounted +- 10m from my DB which is in my kitchen. The above was what I installed b…

I have recently been asked to provide Field support for a number of commercial sites countrywide...I would like to share & document what my experiences are & also share with the community the goods the bads & the uglys about the installation work on these installs. I have really been fortunate to have such opportunities & when one starts to digest what is rapidly happening in the Commercial solar space in SA one starts to see that it's not all that different from the residential market. I must put out a disclaimer that I am a consultant on these sites & just assist with commissioning of the plant & providing Field support. I will not disclose…

This is a weird site because everything seems well specified except the Lithium battery bank...The client wanted initially a fully grid tied system & then was quick to change his mind, based on the massive frequency of power cuts we experience. The Humble little FreedomWon 40/32HV can pack quite a punch. It can deliver 100A continuously & 150A for a short time limit. It's nominal voltage at 410V gets a user to output levels of 41kW continuous & 61.5kW for a short period. So the plan on this site is to harness the suns magic as much as possible, but this is only short term because in the next month or so there will be another 2 ATESS HPS100s added a…

Hi All I have been at this for weeks and have never been this frustrated with a project in my life. I just don't seem to be getting a response from my inverter to the ESP32 Dev board in ESPHome. I have tried multiple ESP boards with multiple RS485 TTL boards and RJ45 cables and cable pinouts. Please someone out there save my marriage!! I have followed "Solar Integration" Channel with Slipx06 yaml files and pinned out accordingly with all the troubleshooting steps. These are the logs and yaml config. Modbus on the inverter is set to 1 substitutions: settings_skipped_updates: "30" devicename: sunsynk device_description: "Sun…

Hi ppl I replaced old panels with new 555w Canadians now and need a new combiner box. MY idea is to use 20A circuit brakers instead the old fusers as MCB.s are more convenient to use . Can some one help me with the box design please. I have two Kodak 4kw inverters, 12 X555 solar panels ( 8 facing east 4 facing west) and 5X3500 Pylontech batteries. Any suggestion will be appreciated. cheers

All the roof mounting structure done. Now we wait for the Procurement & alas it arrived today. Much more to come from this installation.

Good day all, I have been browsing the forum for quote some time while beginning to have a garage built (and eventually get solar going). Pretty set on the solar setup that would work for myself = Sunsynk 5kw, 1x 5kw battery to start. This will initially be to get through load-shedding. then Solar panels will be added and eventually when that's dialed in. I would look at more storage. I am sure that is how it'll likely pan out. What I would like to ask about is the following; In the attached picture, this represents my planned garage/workshop for projects, on the far left. The garage roof design will be a single slope from right to left i…

Just got my install finished on Fri 12th Nov 2021 - can't wait for load shedding... 🙂 SunSynk 8kW inverter 4 x Hubble AM2 5.5kWh ~20kWh 16x400W Seraphim 6.4kWp in 2 strings of 8 JHB South, North facing, roof slope is ~23° Evacuated Tube Thermosiphon Solar Geyser Solar-Assistant RPI3b I have the RIOT and the "Older" SolarMan WiFi RIOT does not seem to work with the SunSynk 8kW inverter at this stage 😞 Since I had a RP3b lying around I've also tried Solar-Assistant. So far Solar-Assistant is my preferred tool as it works locally and cloud with a rich data and access to mqtt.

Hi Everyone, Thought I'd share this because I have noticed a few people concerned or frustrated with the fan noise from the 8kw Sunsynk inverter. I couldn't install my inverter in the garage because I do a lot of woodwork in there and I know the dust would cause issues in the fans and heatsinks. So its mounted at the end of our passage where it meets with the garage through the door. The noise at night was really an issue for me. During load shedding the fans would usually kick in. Specially when the aircons where running. This is obviously when the inverter was doing a lot of work and required cooling. Then also after load shedding when the batteries were charging t…

I posted a thread a while ago about the advantages of Victron over Sunsynk and vice versa. Everyone was telling me to go with Sunsynk. Well, seeing that I like to be different I went with a Victron solution. We use Victron equipment at work so I sort of know my way around it already. I will split the install over 2 phases. Phase 1 has been ordered and delivered. Seeing as this is a DIY install it will take me a couple of weeks to install everything. My work will be checked by a qualified electrician and COC issued. I plan on running 2 strings of 7 panels to the MPPT RS. My roof is flat so I will use Renusol TS+ components to lift the panels to achieve 30-35…

Good morning all. I'm new to the forum so please forgive me if i am using the wrong section to post this specific thread. My electrician installed two Phocos inverters this weekend. Currently the setup is as follows: - inverter 1 with canadian 365w panels (2 strings of 6 each) - inverter 2 with no panels currently (but will have 7 canadian 365w, connected this weekend) At the moment, the 1 inverter is generating power from the 12 panels and exporting to the grid. When I turn on the output to supply the house, the inverter goes into a F52 error (internal bus voltage is too low). According to the manual, it says i must return to repairer, if th…

Hi I have 2 Growatt inverters in Parallel with a 5.1kw stage 1 VOLTA Battery. The BMS does not seem to read the battery right in LI mode or in User mode can someone assist with the best setting for my system. I only have the 1 batt now till i have money to expand but cant seem to get the battery settings correct. the voltage is 53,3 volt and keeps on drowning the batt. Also shows that the battery is only 75% chargeged at 53.4 volt.

Hi everyone, Last year, after numerous power outages in my area I decided to go fully (more or less) off grid. I have an existing system (3kw RCT vmII, 2.8kw Hubble battery) that covers some stuff, but not enough to carry on normally during an area outage. That runs on a completely separate grid to the house mains. I'll be leaving that in place until the batteries or inverter dies. The new system is 2 x Solis S6 pro 6KW inverters paralleled for 12KW output. 12 x 550w Jinko solar panels, split in 2 strings to maximise morning and afternoon sun. The roof gets partially shaded by the neighbours tree in the morning and councils tree on the pavement in the afternoon.…

Finally, I have had the chance to explore the Solis S6. I have some very interesting information to share. Takes some getting used to having no display or touchscreen...Was it needed absolutely not. It took some time to get used to it but, when using your mobile phone as a local direct Bluetooth connection it just makes a lot of sense that there is no money wasted on a display. It took quite a while to figure out how to pair the device to the Solis cloud application but we got there in the end through some perseverance. The SVolt battery also just paired very easily with a straight 1:1 cable CANbus & Pylontech. I noticed a cable tray that almost is identic…

I have an 8Kw Sunsynk inverter installed with 24 x 455W panels & 2 x 6kw/hr Bull batteries. Due to a number of my high load devices being connected to DB Boards in my cottage & stables, I was unable to make use of the essential/non-essential splits on the Sunnsynk Inverters and have been on a journey to connect to the inverter so I can control all my high load devices with Home Assistant & Sonoff eWelink connected breakers and switches. My connection to my Inverter is now up and running, thanks to Bloubul7's Flow's and all the information that everyone has posted, has been a huge help and I wouldn't have been able to get it working without all the in…

So after many months of reading and procrastination I made the leap and upgraded from a glorified UPS ( Growatt 3kva inverter and Mecer lithium batteries) to a full off grid solution. My current average daily energy consumption is 31Kwh with the main culprits for the usage being the pool pump and 2 geysers. On very rare occasions did usage spike above 8kva. I wanted to say goodbye to ESKOM for good but decided to move to prepaid just as an extra backup and to avoid the R800 odd a month connection fee.( thanks city power for starting the R200 a month for prepaid users), I also wanted redundancy and be over capacity so I would not stress if somebody switched on th…

Long time lurker - finally got the courage to post. Got a simple starter system installed on Dec 3 - so 1 month of running thus far. Components: 1x Sunsynk 5kw Inverter 1x Dyness 4.8kw battery 8x 330w Poly Solar panels on 1 string The rain hasnt helped at all but have been able to generate approx 260kWh in Dec. Jan has gotten off to a great start and so far loving the system. One or two items still need to be sorted by the Installer but happy thus far - will look to add an extra battery and 6-8 more panels in a few months

Hallo All, Need help on the settings of Inverter, because I'm not Familiar with the Luxpower. We have replaced the Mecer(Lightning) with a Luxpower, and there is one Raystech 51.2 Battery, with 4X 500W Solar Panels in Series. When you switch of AC Grid, it doesn't switch to Battery, it doesnt switch over at all. Please help. Thanks.

Finally had the luxpower 5k hybrid installed today coupled with the Dyness 2.4kwh lithiums x 2 for now(plan to add a 3rd). Andy @ Aspergo energy was on call to double check install and assist to remotely configured inverter. Big thanks to Andy @Aspergoand the Seymour electrical guys. Next on the list Panels!!

I have just installed the above setup. It all works fine in the day with solar but stops working at about 1:00 AM every morning. It seems that the grid does not kick in when the battery runs low. Has anyone connected the BMS communication for this configuration? When I set the code 05 on the inverter to 'LI' and the code 36 to protocol to L01 I get an 04 error code. The battery is charged to above 75%. I have setup the correct DIP switch for the inverter. (for RS485) I am currently using the 'USE' setting on code 05 and I have set the appropriate dyness settings on the inverter (From the dyness manual). Inverter codes 12, 13, 19 and 20.) Any help wil…

Hi guys, After initially sourcing our own components and getting a "sparky" who claimed to have many years of experience and certifications ("PV4 AREP") in solar, we started down this rabbit hole with: 1 x 8kW Sunsynk Inverter 10 x 460W JA Mono Solar Panels (installed onto our north facing tiled roof) 2 x WM5000 (4.95kWh; 1.5C) Greenrich batteries All worked ok but soon we realised that we needed more PV and more batteries and after doing research about our existing install, I started to question the initial installer about his work. Some issues that I picked up were: According to him, you can put AC and DC cables in the same trunkin…

After being lucky enough to win a Sungrow kit, I had it installed today (no panels yet).

Main DB or Essential circuits & the Project plan. More to follow...