MdF

Just a relative nooby question. Have been watching SA this morning whilst charging up the batteies before LS at 2pm today and noticed the following: When there is PV available, the batteries charge at a high wattage and just about match what the PV is generating. When PV drops away due to cloud cover, Grid then kicks in but the batteries charge at a much lower wattage. Jusy curious as to why the difference? Because of DC on PV and AC on Grid? MdF

Morning All, Just an update on this. After a week of monitoring this issue seems to have been resolved with the cycle count. The slave battery has not shown any further additional cycle counts. Moral of the story: Make sure firmwares on batteries are the same for all units. MdF

Afternoon All, So, Solar Assistant does not allow me to view the two different LiBSA batteries I have installed due them not being supported by the software. In view of this, I decided to have a more regular look at the actual BMS screen on each battery and found that the battery cycles of each battery are different in the sense that the Slave sometimes adds an extra cycle count in a day. There is no pattern to this but you can see from the graph below that the Slave is now approaching the cycle count of the Master. Please note that the Slave was installed a good 3 months after the Master so this means that the double count has been happening since the install of the Slave. Conundrum indeed 🙄 I have just had Andries from LiBSA remotely take at look at each battery with their BMS software. There were no issues to be seen in the raw data of both batteries. However, the firmware of the Master was V2.7 and the Slave was V2.8. Excellent support from LiBSA in this regard. The only change that has therefore been made today is the upgrading of the Master firmware to V2.8. I will continue to monitor battery cycles for the next week and see if the issue is resolved. PS, I would definitely look at purchasing different batteries in the future that would allow me to view the very detailed metrics of each battery more regularly. However, that being said, the LiBSA batteries installed are working exceptionally well. Any thoughts about this issue? MdF

Report the issue to SA. They are pretty good at getting back to you and getting things sorted. MdF

Have been using it since August 2021. Details of my setup in my signature below. From my side, it is an excellent product and is well supported with updates. Responses from Pierre is also very good indeed. MdF

Have a look at install Solar Assistant. Works exceptionally well and has 1s updating of data. https://solar-assistant.io/ MdF

Chad, something definitely not right with those graphs. I don't know what it could be? Hopefully others here will have some insight before you have to call out the installer. MdF

That must surely be the effect of clouds passing over your panels? MdF

Agreed.

Afternoon All, Just an update to this issue and it turns out there is an axplanation for this - it has nothing to do with the solar array 🤨 One of our neighbours is setting off thunderbolt firecrackers because the neighbours next to him have a noisy dog and their children play outside a lot. So he will set off these crackers in his garden next to the boundary wall to try and frighten their dog. Not good indeed, but mystery solved. MdF

Hi Kamlesh, Have a look at this thread as it may well assist you with your settings. MdF

Soapy water and sunlight liquid with a long reach mop, like you get at Verimark. Rinse down with a hose pipe. Don't clean them in summer due to rain but do so every 2nd month in winter due to dust buildup. MdF

Indeed we were - recorded 1,056mm from 1 Oct 2021 to today - most I have seen in Edenvale for many years. MdF

Not a great summer for PV generation in Gauteng this year for sure. The La Nina impact this season was significant with the country experiencing generally wetter and cooler impacts. Spent many days looking at weekly forecasts to see days on end overcast and raining. But I suppose we should be thankful for the rain as Vaal Dam has seen the most consecutive days over 100% full since 2004 at more than 119 now. A very good position to be in heading in to winter. MdF

Morning T, Was in exactly the same place that you are a few months back. The initial install was to cope with loadshedding. That slowly went out the door once I realised just what the system can do. So, then the learning curve was to setup the Work Mode time settings and to shift loads to sunny hours during the day. The plan then was using the battery from midnight to 6am when solar kicked in. But with the new round of loadshedding we had there was not enough buffer to get through the night and make sure there was enough power in case loadshedding started in the morning. Promptly ordered a second battery and installed that soonest. Yes, the expense was there, but now we have enough capacity to get through from 8pm each evening and enough if loadshedding hits. Your investment in a second battery won't be a waste. MdF

Morning All, Have done some Googling, but would appreciate the expert feedback on describing exactly what the following three items mean for the laymen to understand in terms of how their solar-inverter-battery backup system works: (1) Battery shutdown capacity (e.g. 20%). (2) Battery low capacity (e.g. 30%). (3) Battery restart capacity (e.g. 50%). Just how do the above three items actually work when using your batteries to supply load to the house? MdF

Hi Mzez, Have a look at this topic I started a while back which uses a very simple system of keeping the inverter cool. Its basic in its construct but works exceptionally well. Comes on at 7am and goes off at 5pm using a simple timer switch. Have not seen over 55 degrees since. MdF

Hi Marc, Have a look at these two topics as they may well help you with your Time of Use settings and getting your thoughts right about how to use your system. Even though you only have one battery at this time, you should still be using it overnight to capitalise on your investment in using solar to charge it up during the day. I too used my system as a UPS in the beginning because loadshedding had just hit badly at the time. It was only after that round subsided that I started with using the battery overnight. Initially the first single battery got us through from 12 midnight to when solar started charging in the morning. Decided then to by a second battery and we now use the batteries to run the house from 8pm to the next morning. Hope this helps. MdF

Good Day All, Busy with lighting changes at the property and have been looking around locally for an adapter that would convert screw-in to LED downlighter format. Nothing available in Joburg from local electricians. So, did some Googling and got hold of FutureLight in Cape Town (futurelight.co.za). They had edzachery what I was looking for. So I ordered 6 of the E27 - GU10 converters. They also supply others as per the attachment below. Did the order online on Tuesday morning and they were delivered this morning to Edenvale. Excellent service and the quality of the product is great. Would recommend using the supplier and the converters. MdF

A picture of the new cables. MdF

Morning All, So, went with the 35mm2 cable and the matching lengths have just been installed. Now waiting for the batteries to get to 100% SoC for balancing and then I should see better matching data from the two batteries. MdF

Afternoon All. I'm always amazed that even during todays rainy and cloudy conditions and with loadshedding currently on, my solar pv is still enough to run the house and put some energy into the batteries 😉 MdF

Not that I am aware of. I only ran Solarman for a couple of months so moving over to SolarAssistant was not a train smash of losing historical data. MdF

Hi Kurt, Ok, so the first step was to get an extension cable for the data logger antenna. I bought 5m of single cable HDF-195 SMA (m)-SMA(f) from Poynting Antennas which I connected to the data logger on the inverter and then connected the small antenna supplied with the logger to that. I then tried various positions to get better Wi-Fi signal. That didn't really work. The second step was then to buy a better antenna and so I bought the following antenna from Poynting again and connected that to the 5m extension cable. That did give better connectivity and connection dropping did become a bit better: https://poynting.tech/antennas/omni-85-2/ After all of that I was getting frustrated with lost signal and the 10 minute delay in data access on the inverter via SolarMan and decided to chuck all of that in and buy the full kit of the Pi from Solar Assistant and I have never looked back: https://solar-assistant.io/ Connectivity has been excellent from the Pi and the 2sec data delay has allowed me to optimise my system immediately as needed. MdF