mikeblackburn

Aha. OK. I’ll give them a call. Did send an email last month but haven’t had a response. Thanks!

Yeah, my typing wasn’t clear. I have 9 x 360W giving me 3.2KW PV in full sun. On days where usage at home is low it will charge to full by midday - it would be nice to have more PV so on the days where there is more use and/or then a greater percentage of the PV goes to the battery when it’s assisting the house power.

Sure, they’re online. But they won’t come and install at my house I’m guessing?

Hello I have 9 360W Canadian solar feeding a Victron 5kvA MPPT and a 61A BSL Lithium battery. The Victron ESS does a great job but due to the often slow charging due to the significant cloudiness of the last few months, it limits my discharge run to between 50-60%. I’d like to add more charging capacity - i.e more panels. I have received a quote for 6 panels which was R42k - including R8k for a 5 string combiner, 3k for cabling, 1k (about) per panel for mounting hardware and the panels themselves at about R2500 ea. This just seems excessive It appears that I currently have 3 strings of 3 panels feeding into a 4 string combiner. Any suggestions why I couldn’t have 4 strings of four panels giving me 16 panels? Do the panels have to be the same as the existing ones? Any suggestions for another reputable i.e (you’ve had good service and pricing in the Randburg area) company I can ask for another quote? I did ask the power-forum store but then realized they’re in cape town…….. Thanks.

Looking for some advice form the hive mind please… Current setup - 9x300W panels with a Victron SmartSolar grid tie inverter (MPPT 150/100 Smart solar with color GX controller) on one of our three phases. - 8 deep cycle Lead Acid Mixtech EFB 674DT 12V 105AH batteries. Other two phases have pool and geyser, and some of the stove/oven respectively. Geyser is a solar geyser with indirect heating (yes, i know…. got some bad advice) On my HA energy dashboard the big consumers still are the geyser and pool pump (1.1kw but seems to run at 600W once running). The tribe of the long hair insist on hot water being available in the morning up until 9:00 (and then whenever they feel like showering.…) It kills me to see solar power not being used during the day - on a good day we can generate 2800W but if it’s not actively being used it goes to waste. I have tried to connect the pool onto the phase that has the solar but it trips the inverter MCB - it doesn't shut down the inverter in overload state, simply trips the MCB The batteries are a bit meh as the inverter seems to cut off during load shedding when voltage is 48V even though the inverter reports 60-65% charge. I suspect the batteries are shot. Max charge voltage I've seen in the last month is 58V. I’m really at my wit’s end as we are still using 1200KWh on a summer month and worse in winter (2500-4000kwh). Batteries and another inverter to run the geyser - i.e to warm the water in the morning before the sun starts its work? Pool pump onto another inverter or change to a DC solar pool pump - was quoted 35K Ronts for that which seems steep……?? Any thoughts would be much appreciated as I find a lot of the people installing solar stuff don’t actually know how to deal with ‘complicated’ setups and use requirements… We are in jhb (city power) with a smart meter and I suspect this means we cannot feed back into the grid.

Thanks... have managed to figure it out - have the TH16 attached to the hot water pipe on the geyser - it sends temp info to HA which then nodeRed's the CBI breaker. seems to be working quite well!

Not sure how to share the flow but here is the schema

That won't work if you go into loadshedding with the device on and exit loadshedding outside the desired operation time... (or vice versa)

i noticed this too. if you use node red you can overcome this. i just finished a flow which 1. checks the time according to the schedule, 2. if in time schedule, checks grid state, if grid on then it turns the switch on. there may be other ways.

I bought mine from LiteGlo on Saturday. When it is latched/on, the light is red and flashing with the blue light is also on. When it is off/unlatched, the light is Blue only.

Thanks. Will take a look. I was also thinking of Node-Red’ing it - if time between x and y and incoming power present then turn on switch.

Just to add that I bought one of these. Managed to get it linked to the Tuya app and then (with great difficulty I might add thanks to Tuya trying to limit the capabilities of their devices) to Homeassistant via the native Tuya v2 integration. I now have two issues.... 1. I can't find an automation that will turn the geyser on and off according to a schedule? The only was to do that seems to be via the Tuya app. 2. We've just come out of a loadshedding run - the phase that the switch and geyser are on is not on the inverter. So the switch was powered off. When power comes on again, the switch should be on according to the schedule but it is off. Anyone got any ideas?

How do you integrate the temp probe into the homeassistant? my geyser is on the roof - if i use the TH16 but leave it ON and use the input from the temp sensor in homeassistant to control the DB circuit breaker for the geyser would that work? i see the TH16 specifically says NOT for geyser switching…..

What is the wifi fallover behaviour on these? i.e if they lose wifi do they default to ON or OFF? (Asking for the long haired clan who will gently casserole me if the water isn't hot......)

Hiya could anyone point me in the direction of, or give some advice on how to use a raspberry pi to monitor the water temp in my geyser and record same ? Mike