Pho3niX90

I did this excercise 2 weeks ago.
To remove panels from the home, and install at the new home, which mind you were 3 houses away, cost me R30K (removal was specified as R2.5K). Granted, the price includes COC, installation of the inverters, panels etc.
If you pay someone to do it, the onus is on them to not damage it, and if they do, they need to replace. I also had a major worry about the safety of the panels, but in hindsight, there was nothing to worry about.

The best is to get pricing in your area, for your source vs destination.

I think by law you have to specify it in the OTP if you remove Solar, since this forms part of the entire COC process. I believe anything "fixed" to a property need to be disclosed if removed.

On the matter of 2 vs 1, I recommend 2 in parallel. If one fails you still have half your supply working and can continue albeit at reduced available power.

The soc is the desired end SOC.
If the battery is just there for backup, it's best to enable battery reserve switch, at a 100% soc.
A screenshot of the storage mode screen would probably give good insight.

It's mostly normal to charge 180w at the top end of the %, this avoids accidental overcharging.

Next, cut the grid, drain the battery to 50%, then charge it back up again. See if that helps.


You just need to make sure you haven't accidentally set the grid to max 180w as well.

On the soliscloud app, under device -> battery, see what the amps are registered here.
Is grid charging turned on or off? If off, do you have enough solar to support your house load then charge?

For what it’s worth, we’ve been running a 150L electric geyser with a roof-mounted vacuum tube collector for the last four years, and I’ve been seriously impressed. I swapped the standard breaker for a wifi power monitoring smart breaker to get better control. We’re a family of 4, and we mostly shower.
The geyser is off by default (electric element) and only triggers under two specific conditions:
Excess Solar: It kicks in once the batteries are fully charged and there’s surplus power.
Scheduled: It runs daily at 16:00 to ensure we're ready for the evening.
It automatically shuts off the moment it hits the set temperature. The above is the sweet spot I have found, to not sacrifice hot water, but also to allow the sun to heat it nicely, and not unnecessarily send it electricity.
In four years, we’ve never run out of hot water. To give you an idea of the efficiency: from February 1st to now, it has only used 9kWh (mostly during rainy spells). Over the last 12 months, the geyser used 800kWh out of a total 10,900kWh consumed.
That said, I’ve just bought a new property that uses a heat pump. I’ll be switching over in March, and honestly, I’m skeptical it’ll be as efficient as this vacuum tube setup. But let’s see how it performs.

Something else to consider - I have a Sunsynk 12kW single phase inverter that I installed in September 2024. This has been running quite well, but it has one "problem" (actually designed like that by Sunsynk) that has been frustrating me since soon after I bought it - it deliberately uses the grid as a buffer to even out short-term peaks and lows.
Even with full sunlight capable of supplying more than double the currently consumed load, whenever an additional (smallish) load is switched on, the unit will draw some of that load from the battery, and the majority from the grid, until the MPPTs have "latched on" and "stabilised" - doing this for a number of minutes whilst slowly ramping up the solar power until it carries the full new load - and wasting my money in the process. After going "off grid" some months ago, I noticed that the Sunsynk now happily use the batteries as a buffer (as it does not have a grid buffer to use any more...) under the same conditions where it had previously used the grid - so it is quite capable of adjusting to new loads by only using the batteries as a short-term buffer... so why use the grid (when available) as it's primary buffer?
A colleague of mine installed a slightly smaller Victron unit soon after I installed my Sunsynk, and his unit uses only the batteries as a short-term buffer, and only switches to Grid when the new load is so large that the batteries cannot cope. It is thus quite clear to me that the two manufacturers have widely differing philosophies (as could be expected, I suppose...), with Sunsynk figuratively saying "screw the customer's money, let's limit our risks as much as possible by always using the grid when the load changes", whilst Victron says "the customer has sufficient battery capacity for most changes in consumption, let's not waste his money by using the grid unless really necessary".
Now, given that my gripe is not sufficient reason to return the Sunsynk for a refund and buy a Victron, I would just have had to live with it if I did not by happy coincidence find a simple and free work-around by simply switching off my grid. So, ask yourself which of the above mentioned philosophies would you prefer?

yes, well, there is no reason to throw everything at one MPPT... you could for instance consider doing 3 MPPT's, 2 X 250/100's (6S1P panels each, assuming the Voc fits) and one to suit the remaining 2 panels, there is more than one road that lead to Rome...
I also was of a similar feeling, specially since Victron was very expensive back in 2020/2021, but since their pricing has come down quite a bit and unlike your all in one outer-Mongolian units, are fairly EMI/RFI quiet, as opposed a lot of the all-in-ones/high frequency inverters.
Looking at just one MPPT does not make sense... lightning strike and the MPPT is gone... no panels will produce power, whereas if your panels are slightly spread out and running on 2 or more MPPTs, then you may at least still have some solar power being produced, if weather has struck...
Just because your 14 panels in a single string may fit the 450/200 (not sure, maybe its 7S2P), does not mean that this is the correct way to implement the solar power production side...
Here, FYI, I was running a 5k SunSynk, now I have 3 X Multiplus II 3000VA's in parallel and 2 X 250/100 MPPT's + 1 X 250/85 MPPT and a bunch of batteries... off Eksdom's infrastructure, of course.

I initially took the device here to a local shop, they replaced the resistor with another. Here comes the problem
Device turned on, but complained about high resistance on 6 and 7, although voltages were now there.
So I opened it up again

They used a 1.0Ohm resistor, vs , what barely had resistance at all (0.01 Ohm). So l, got the soldering iron out, took the new one of, and just used the correct resistor from my stash of electrical goodies.
It's now perfect, just not sure what caused this in the first place.

I initially took the device here to a local shop, they replaced the resistor with another. Here comes the problem
Device turned on, but complained about high resistance on 6 and 7, although voltages were now there.
So I opened it up again

They used a 1.0Ohm resistor, vs , what barely had resistance at all (0.01 Ohm). So l, got the soldering iron out, took the new one of, and just used the correct resistor from my stash of electrical goodies.
It's now perfect, just not sure what caused this in the first place.

If you cannot solder the surface mount resistor, you can try and get a leaded 1% tolerance 1/8W and solder that in, but with a fine soldering tip on a Weller or similar temperature controlled soldering Iron, you should be able to do this yourself, assuming you're not like me, needing serious magnification to see that the fly dirt is actually a SMD device...

I only ordered the cells and bmses and screens.
I ordered 32 cells, 3 bmses and 3 screens. Totals were
Items 1404 usd
Shipping 370 usd
Total 1774 usd
There were no import duties, fees or taxes.

Any ethernet cable will work, therefore if you want custom sizing, you can visit your local matrix (or similiar) and just ask them to make you one to your sizing

My experience is listed here: https://powerforum.co.za/topic/20699-apexium-eve-cells/page/8/#findComment-217538

They are on a major drive to convert all old meters to prepaid.

That seems normal. What is the issue?

Do the sunsynks not adhere to the SOC from the BMS?
Im my view SOH is just a FYI measurement. Everything else is handled by the BMS, which informs the inverter what charge it wants, and how much the inverter can still use.

Are you planning on splitting it up between the 2 houses? Or will both inverters be running in parallel and feeding them?
Inverter I would suggest is
Power Forum Renewable Energy Sto...
Solis S6 Pro 8kW Advanced Hybrid Inverter
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I would then also chatting to wimpie and ask for battery suggestions, they also have specials on the 600w panels. Batteries are only as good as their local support, or your technical knowledge.

Just a note of caution. There are a lot of scam websites floating around, do not try and find too good to be true deals, as it might bite you.

Maybe get in touch here:
Being brand bound is a bit of a run around when it comes to add more storage. A possible solution is to figure out the BMS it uses, and just get batteries with the same BMS. Then, you also have the option of just fitting a known BMS.

Thank you everyone for your help. I have decided to go with the Solis 6kw hybrid and run it in off grid mode. I cannot beat the Powerforum store for price. Even if they add courier costs to i, they still come under their nearest competitor.

As @Beat mentioned, most of these issues typically are related to loose connections, or balancing issues. Since it was already rebalanced, it's probably a loose connection.
A good way to diagnose it, is if the lowest cell is always consistently the same when top balancing it, or when reaching a full charge.
This is mainly why I can never get behind off the shelve batteries. Fixing a simple issues voids your warranty, and retightening the nuts is a maintenance item.

It might just be conspiracy theories. My Solis had what seemed to be a simcard, I left it as is. They do not need hidden coms to shut them down, since the majority are connected via wifi/ethernet. If concerned, delete the dongles, use rs485 or waveshare, either via home assistant or other preferred method.
The security of the BMSes are a much bigger concern, since none of them are secured on bluetooth. Any bad actor can access them, shut them down, change OVP etc, just by being close enough.

Here is mine for yesterday.
Base load when everyone is asleep is sround 350-400w. Also a lot of tech running, but all rather efficient. The largest consumer during the night is an AMD epyc server, although very energy efficient.
The biggest spike of the day in the morning is the coffee machine.
Fridge averages out to around 50w
Batteries are around 70% before solar charges again.


Here is the graph for the last week

I can also recommend the aboce mentioned Solis, it does have internal fans, but it only kicks in when it's necessary. It also doesn't feedback when backflow power is set to 0.