GTP

I have a Deye and Shoto, they communicate via the CAN. Works well. Software between Deye and Sunsynk i think is different though

I am inclined to agree with Seedadster. I dont see anything typically out of whack there. What i meant by throttling was that my charge power to charge the battery would drop drastically when the battery got to a certain value. In my case that value was below the expected threshold. Around 65% (although it varied.). So what i saw was the battery would limit charging. I guess it was a self health mechanism.

Hi Neil. Same setup as me. Maybe have your installer check it (battery) out. There are threads here that suggest some of these batteries needed the BMS replaced. In my battery, one or two cells were not performing as expected. My symptoms were not dropping the charge however. Mine would throttle the charging and then at some point it would not cycle to the set DOD. Either way. My issue got sorted out via my installer. I assume yours is connected via the CAN port for comms?

As promised, i received my power bill today. For the first ever for my household, my eskom useage dropped below 200 units. I averaged out my consumption between October and and Feb, and this last cycle useage turned in a 55% reduction in power use. This also coincided with the temperature dropping around these parts. The effect of the temperature changes has been that the unit runs for around 2hours a day, rather than the 1h15 i was seeing last month. I think I am happy with the performance so far. I expect to see bigger savings in summer when the ambient helps performance. I think i will give it another month before I move it onto essential loads. I also dropped my inverter grid feed from 20w to 10w. I dont get expect material differences from this, but every bit helps. Now... aboiut a gas stove...

Agree with Leshen. Could you post a pic of your System mode screen? You should have a zero export block that needs to be ticked. Maybe also the priority load selection. Could also check to see that zero export power is no higher than 20w

That does seem low. Are you considerimg the running time as well in the calc? I find my unit on its timers runs for no more than 1h30 odd a day.

Mine is also on a timer. Has been since installation. I just received my bill and saw a significant reduction of 120units in my useage (and it was only installed for 9 days of the 28 day cycle). This bodes well so far Edit. 120.unit reduction from last months bill. Not accurate i know.. but its what i have to work from whilst it is on non essential load.

Is your 1.8kw for the totality of the cycle? Or at start up only?

It is set to Lithium, protocol 00. And limits are set to 40a for max charge and discharge Edit: My error. I thought i was replying to OP.

How is the battery comms configured? By CAN or using voltages?

Quite right. In my household i really struggle to find this balance. I have to temper the shower with cold water. Or rather.. i open the hot to take the edge off the cold.. my Mrs doesnt open the cold at all. And sometimes indicates it isnt hot enough.. its a slippery slope. My heat pump is set to 53degC at bottom of tank. I assume it is between 55 and 60degC at the outlet.

So this is exactly what I am waiting to see on mine. I can only tell for sure once it is on my essential loads. I have the same heat pump. My installer said that on startup it will draw 1.8kw for about 45seconds. Or no more than 1minute. After that it reduces to 1.3kw odd for the remainder of the cycle. I am ok with the initial spike, but I do need it to drop to the specified 1.3kw afterwards.

Yes, i have also noticed this on my instance

That makes three of us. I also got into solar because of Wapadrand 😅

I have a single Shoto battery 5.12. In terms of settings (by voltage), i cannot say. My battery is coonected by CAN port to my inverter, and the battery BMS determines the charge and discharge rates. My installer simply set the max current to charge and discharge at 40a. Apparently this influences how the bms does its thing. I couldnt tell you if it is right or wrong. It just seems to work.. so I am not questioning it. That and I leave settings to my installer mostly. There was a question abive about the SOC led lights and their meaning. So 4 led's each represent 25% SOC. From left to right they represent 25, 50, 75 and 100% SOC. If you have a single flashing LED, it means the battery is somewhere under 25% and charging. If as an example you have 2 solid lights and a flashing third led, it means the battery is definitely at 50% and charging up to 75%. All lights out and a flashing run led means it is at 100%. I normally use the value on the inverter though. It seems qyite accurate given the comms

Heat pump has been in for a little over 2 weeks now. From my observations, it runs for 30mins when the time kicks in. This is around midday. It then kicks in again with the bath/shower routines between 6 and 8pm. The latter times.. for about 15 or 20 mins. So in all. It appears to run for some 1h15 a day given the current weather and the current useage pattern. My guestimate is thus 1400w odd for hot water. So far so good. No noticeable difference in water temperature. Going to wait until May or June to gauge how it runs before I then move it onto essential loads. I can then also verify whether it does in fact run per spec at around 1200w. This should be easily covered by my PV which does virtually no work from 12pm currently. My billing cycle runs from 18 to 17 of each month. So i will obly get to see its effect on total power from the next month cycle. However i am curious to see what these 10 days would have done.. for a change I am actually eager to receive the bill

I am no authority on batteries.. but my understanding is that from a capacity perspective, i work on rated power minus 20% (this would depend on when the battery cuts off per lower limit.. eg. If your cutoff is 20%, it gives you 80% useable output). So that gives around 4kwh per battery. More or less depending on your cutoff. I have a single one of these batteries and it gives me the expected output between fully charged and 30%. In my case it never goes below 30%, this is where mine cuts off. I dont know that the output rating of the inverter affects it. I think the 8kw rating is more total output at any given time. Not cumulative power.. if that makes sense. Hopefully someone with more experience and knowledge can add to this if my view is incorrect. Question. When your batteries cutoff, have you noticed an alarm light on the batteries? If yes, is it on all the batteries? Or just one of them?

Thanks for your comment iiznh, I agree with your point re the sun. Reason i mentioned it was because that side of the house only ever sees the sun in the afternoon, i am not clear how warm the air would be in winter time in that area. The rooms on the west side feel like fridges in winter. Operating range is between -7 to 43 odd.. so should be ok. I did not realise there was a timer set on the unit so woke to cold water 😁. On clearing the timer the unit fired up and ran for some 45 to 50mins. Water is nice and hot again. My geyser is rated at E and loses some 2.7kwh of energy. The installers did take care to lag all the piping as well as install a blanket on the geyser. Going to play around with it and wait to gauge winter performance before i move this all onto essential loads

I went with an ITS branded heat pump. I had some good discussions with them. I heard similar about the control panel being rather simple. It sounds like it does what i need it to though in terms of timers etc. The tech was telling me the units actually use more power when on timers. At this point it doesnt matter, but when it goes on essential loads i definitely dont want it on at night

That certainly makes me feel better about going with a bigger unit 😀 Given the orientation of my house, the only viable location i had was a west facing wall. Will only see sun during the afternoons, so i was also weary of winter performance with a smaller unit

After much deliberation, I finally decided to get a heat pump installed for my hot water needs. The other alternative was a gas geyser, however i decided i did not want to be reliant on gas for hot water. Having a 5.4kw unit put in. I want to gauge its performance with winter on its way, and if it is inline with expectation, i plan on moving it onto essential loads. My pv system should have enough power to run it during the day. After discussing with the supplier, the representative suggested that the smaller 3.6kw unit would be a better fit for my current reality and expectation, i opted for the bigger size though for the incase factor.. ie.. in case i decide i want a second geyser hooker up.. or in case in the future i upscale from 150l to 200l etc.. That and given the math.. power wise it should use about the same power regardless. It should have a nominal power draw of some 1300w, so hopefully i see a material difference in electricity useage. Will post some results in 2 months odd time when the useage cycles cycle through

Mine (Deye 5kw) doesnt shutdown. As far as i can tell, power to the house goes down until the restart level is reached, then power to the house is restored. It could be that mine has a newer firmware installed already

Just an update. My supplier/ installer has been in touch with his supplier who has confirmed that the Sunsynk/ Deye inverters have built in buffering for current and voltage. As such, they were happy to upgrade my panels on the premise they wouldnt hurt the inverter. Happy days. I now have an extra 700w capacity. Changed from 330w to 455w.

Thanks Yellow and Nitrious. Great points

Thanks for the comments. I will check out each option. Consulting with a second supplier just to verify facts. It could be that my supplier is just being overly cautious