Gareth_ZA

Dear all. 
Firstly I would like to wish you all a safe and happy holiday break. I appreciate every single member and their contribution to making this a great, peaceful and happy platform to enrich each other with knowledge and advise. This was the goal when I started in 2013 with myself as 1 member.
As the aviation industry is a very uncertain career I started the powerforum store about 2 years ago. I don't and will never request any member of this forum to be obligated to purchase from the store. There are many other commercial suppliers that offer just as great service.
Since the beginning in 2013 , every member that has joined has been checked and manually been clicked on to be accepted to the community. There are so many spam individuals out there that want access to post unsavory topics. 
Some of these individuals sometimes get through as they have a perfectly looking Gmail email addresses and locations.
I have tried many different types of automatic spam filters but none are as good as checking with the human eye.
Okay to the point 🤣 : if any members notice a scam or spam member posting I ask you to make use of the report button. Please see the attached image. I require two members to report the post to be automatically hidden for moderation.
The members who have reported the post are also logged. So don't go reporting and hiding a freindly debate. ;D !
This will help me greatly as I constantly have my phone in my pocket checking for scammers to protect our community.
I would like to say thank you again for making this community great and also we nearly at 20 000 members!
Have a safe and restful holiday break.
Thank you all.
Sincerely
Jason Back
 
 

Dear @Sonoff Africa, Welcome. I think we should put together a box of Sonoff goodies to be put into the lucky draw system to celebrate your forum section! 😆
Let me know your thoughts.
Sincerely
Jason

With all the confusing talk of new eskom tariffs with R900pm fixed fee from next year, my wife and I have decided to trial going fully off-grid for the month of august using our modestly sized DIY solar system.
For the next 6 days till the start of August I will be doing some trial test runs just to fine tune timings of everything.
For starters I am running Loadshedding from 9am till 9pm.
My crypto mining rigs will now only run from 9am till 3pm everyday to give the batteries a fighting chance

 
 

Untick use timer. By doing so the battery will only be used when the grid is offline 

I have the same inverter and 4 pylontech us3000 batteries. 
My screens below. 
Did you balance the batteries for connecting them to the inverter? 

This is also my 1st full month since installation. Added a second Hubble Am-2 in the last weekend of the month. So far i am happy. Running whole house on essential side of a Sunsynk 8kw with 16 x 420W panels and 2 x Hubbles. Gerysers on timers to run from 13:00 off of PV.
 

Hi greghayter 
You can have 16 us3000c in a parallel config. Current draw limit to 100A per cable. 
So a good config for you would be 2 packs of 3 batteries each on 2 pairs of cable. 

 

Hi @zak2021,
To answer those questions:

1. Secondly do you need a CT coil on the grid side? 
2. What if you want to feed it back it the grid as a grid tie in system? 
3. From what I read the CT coil stops the export of excess energy back into the grid.  AM I correct in that understanding?
All answers are YES.

The CT coil measures the amount of power flowing along your main power cable. It can measure both directions of flow and this measurement is used to allow for a variety of configurations
 
On the Sunsynk timer setup screen:
    Prevent export power to the grid with "Zero Export".
>>> Tick this box to do not export power back to the grid (the CT coil will detect power flowing back to the grid and will reduce the power of the inverter only to supply the local load). 

 Limit power to supply to only all the house loads with "Solar Export".
>>> Tick this box if you wish to export your solar power back to the grid.

 Limit power to supply only the loads connected to LOAD port with "Limit to Load only".
>>> Tick this box if you only want to supply power to the load side of the inverter.

Gas geysers can be gas hungry if not installed correctly. 
Install a Gas Geyser in Parallel with your existing geyser, install ball valves so that you can direct the water flow. Use the gas when there is not enough sun.
Run the electrical geyser on your inverter from 10Am to 3 PM. replace the element with a 2kw element. Use a geyserwize to control the temperature as well as the switch over to mains. Switch the geyser off from 8pm. if you need hot water after 8 boil the kettle. 
Teach you family to shower early in the afternoon and not in the morning.
 
As A joke Tell them each person gets 10minutes in the bathroom. if we could get ourselves wet soaped and rinsed in 2 minutes surely the ladies can learn how to shave without water HE HE. 
 

Good on you, that's what great neighbors do. 👏

Hi there. 
 
Retrofit 20 Evac tubes with a Geyserwise to the 200l geyser and change the element to a 2kw so you can run it off your inverter if needs be. Then get a Paloma 26 or Rinnai gas geyser and connect that in series after the solar geyser. Set the gas geyser to 45 degrees so that it will only heat the water to that temp. If the geyserwise shows that the water in the tank is above 45 then turn off the gas geyser. If below 45 then turn the gas geyser on to boost the temp to 45. You can also try 48 in winter. 
 
I ran that system in my previous home and used only 18kwh per month from the Grid and a 48kg gas tank lasted 13 months with 3 adults in the home. 

If you aim to get more independent from Eskom you should get more storage capacity. In view of your inverter and PV capacity I suggest at least 4 packs Hubble AM2.
With 10kW installed inverter and 4kW nominal PW peak power I have 19kWh of nominal battery capacity.

So, I bit the bullet and had the Synsunk 12 kW 3 Phase system installed.
I put in the following:
Sunsynk 12kw 3 Phase inverter 1 x Hubble AM2 8 x 540w JA Solar Panels I connected all three phases of the board to the inverter, i.e. everything on the UPS side.
I've set the unit so that:
I'm off grid power from around 9.00 am to around 7.00 pm every day (some days a bit longer) I preserve a nominal battery charge from 07.00 pm to 11.00 pm in case the power goes out - if I don't do that I can go until 08.00 pm being off grid and deplete the battery to 25%. I charge the batter to around 75% (from 50%) which sees me through to 04.00 am At 04.30 pm the geysers kick in and its all on grid (geyser is on for about an hour) Second geyser kicks in 08.00 am to 08.30 am all on grid Really good results so far.  The loads are managed via smart timers.  Still getting the timings right to use everything we produce and take care of the low production days as well.
During the day I have to dump excess power into the geysers for limited period of time.
Pool pump is on from 10.00 am to 04.00 pm - all from solar.
I do get a battery comm fault every now and then, especially when a geyser kicks in and the battery is at 25% already.  Fault is only at this time, clears and carries on.
Essentially, the morning and evening geysers, and the power requirements between 07.00 pm and 11.00 pm and the battery charge at 11.00 pm are from the grid.
My on grid consumption has dropped by 60-65% on average.
Next upgrade would be 1 x Hubble AM2 and 8 x 540 w panels.  That is still not enough for the morning and afternoon peak.  
Apart from the random BMS battery fault, everything is working well.
 

5KW Sunsynk/Hubble Lithium AM-2 - 5 x 540W JA Solar Panels.  System is producing in excess of 15KW per day.

This is a huge debate on this forum and everyone will have their own view on the matter. For me, it makes more sense to have enough PV to power everything including the geyser. Yes an EV tube geyser is more efficient, but spending that much on a geyser that can only heat water is a waste of funds, whereas using that R30k odd to add more panels is money better spent. My reasoning is that the additional power produced can be used for anything you choose. 
Like I said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, so feel free to disagree, feel free to give me charts on how much better a solar geyser can perform on a cloudy day. It’s all a matter of what works best for you. 
 
Personally I go for more panels to produce more power that I can use wherever I need it. 😊
Someone else can comment on the inverter/battery question….

I'm with @Pietpower's view. With or without feedback, use the power you are generating.
I comfortably run 2 x electric geysers with timer's to ensure enough hot water for showering 4 people early evening and early next morning. 7.2 kW of panels, so 15 kW is ample/over designed.
Get your timing wrong, and then suffer the consequence.😂

Hi, and welcome!
You must be referring to the PowerforumStore. They specified and supplied my kit, everything down to the last nut and bolt, and recommended a good installer for me, it was a great experience and the system still works great 15 months later, so I am sure that they can do the same for you. What kit are you eyeing?

It depends what make of KWH meter you have some meters have a little symbol on the front with a round gear and a lock lever in place, those cannot count backwards. I was at a installation on Tuesday where there is a Sangamo Weston disc meter with a 8KW inverter and the reading was in fact moving down wards.

Our weather atm, solar output could be better

That is ideal. Then you use Eskom as a "battery". You export say 4kWh to the grid during the day and when the sun sets, the first 4kWh you draw from the grid is yours, free of charge. 

There's also the unfair practice of "net-zero", your electricity bill over the year can't be positive.
IMHO, this is a problem.
Metro uses TOU rates and metro should also allow for unlimited feed-in to allow for home owners to make a profit.
This would be an incentive to install Solar+Battery for feed-in.
Electricity supplied to metro from home owners is much cheaper than Eskom.
If I could make a profit, I would add an extra battery and sell back at peak to make $$$.
After installing Solar+Battery, my bill is already near zero, so there is little incentive to grid-feed, so I don't bother.

I'm still doing research at this stage. Just considering options. 
I'm happy with my batteries, good for 6000 cycles down to 5% if I am to believe the marketing. Though I only take them down to 15% daily. 
If I can grab 2 more pylontech us3000c's (second hand) for 30k then that is a much better for me I think. 

@Gareth_ZA, I am in Cape Town and researched the grid feed in offered by the council, the bi-directional meter is at customer's cost from R8.5k to R10k, plus a R100 per month admin fee. I have a 6.5 kWp array, which according solar calculators can potentially produce 10 MWh per year, I consumed 7 MWh last year, so I am at the cusp of being financially viable, but obviously it depends on what kind of winter we have.
So have not signed up yet.

yes, you would set it up as a grid tied inverter, it is a very simple set up, you don't have to worry about splitting the db to essential and non-essential. only thing to remember is that you have any assist when there is no sun.

Thanks all. It was actually plain to see (once I removed the clamp. The clamp has an arrow indicating the direction in which energy should flow. However, the installer probably found that the clamp was difficult to install the correct way around, so he just took the easy way out. I've managed to get the clamp out, but I'm struggling to install it again. I am sure that was the problem, but will give feedback later. Thanks a lot!