LCG

I converted a pull-start generator to an electric start, and rather than installing a charging system for the battery on the generator I put a 50 watt solar panel on my roof with a solar charge controller to keep the battery charged. It works like a bomb and my generator never has a flat battery. The starter motor has a direct connection to the battery so the massive current doesn't go through the charge controller. The controller just trickle charges the battery.

This might help to give you a little perspective. My house with a cottage uses 55kw a day in winter. The cottage and house are running on the solar system and I bill the cottage every month for electricity via a separate meter. My system is: 2 x 5kw SRNE Inverters 4 x 5.5kw Shoto Batteries 24 x 455watt Mono Panels I like my creature comforts and I consider my aircons an "essential item" I have a heat pump for the house on 2 x 150lt geysers in series which is on a timer from 9:00 - 13:30 The cottage is still on a normal geyser but I have fitted a 2kw element to lower the peak draw, which is on a timer from 11:00 - 15:00 The washing machines and dishwashers may only be used between 9:00 - 14:30 in winter......a little earlier and later in summer. Then I have a 9000BTU inverter aircon in the kid's room and a 12000 in my room. Which I run as and when I please. The cottage does NOT use any heaters at all. Both the house and cottage have standard DEFY stoves and ovens. In summer my system generates between 50kw - 60kw a day and around 15kw - 20kw in very cloudy weather. In summer the batteries are usually charged by 10:30 in the morning and run on solar the rest of the day. We occasionally tickle the mains supply but on average use less than 50kw of mains power a month in summer. In winter with fewer daylight hours we get a max of 45kw per day. The system switches over to mains when the batteries are about 30% in case of load-shedding, which is normally about 2am - 3am. and back to solar around 9:00am. So we use about 300kw of mains a month in winter. My biggest issue has always been the peak draw and your 8kw inverter may not carry the house and the cottage. When the two water heaters' time slots overlap that's already 3.5kw. Then the wife cooks on two stove plates while the washing machine and dishwasher are on and that peak limit of 10kw gets in rage rapidly. Enter mom-in-law with the F*cking kettle and we have 15 minutes of quiet time while the inverters reset themselves. If you can, rather go for more panels (it's a SOLAR system after all), and more panels are always better, then bill the cottage for electricity supplied by your solar system and speed up your payback time. Otherwise, your system is probably only going to be big enough to run your house, and leave the cottage on mains only.

So this is now turning into a bloody joke. I updated to the latest software version which made zero difference. I eventually got a reply from Solar Assist telling me that I needed a different cables for the SRNE inverters, Which I duly purchased for an additional R1100. The cables arrive and I am stuck with the same issues. Numerous un-answered emails later I get told that those are also the wrong cables. They advise they will collect the wrong ones, and have the correct cables to me by close of business today, which was Monday. They have collected the "Wrong" cables and the correct ones have never arrived! Again, my emails are just ignored. If you purchase one of these devices and you ever need support on it you are stuffed! The worst part is they don`t even have a phone number to contact. I am eventually going to have to report this as fraud with my bank and try to have the charge reversed on my card! Honestly disgusting treatment.

I see my software version is 2022-10-30 Any idea how I would go about updating?

I would be willing to wait for updates if they would just have the decency to reply and tell me they are working on an update. Im just getting effed off at the treatment im getting. The only thing the unit does allow me to do is remotely switch between UTI and SBU which has been very useful in avoiding load shedding if we have a cloudy day, but other than that its useless to me. So I need if for switching and cant be without it now. Yes, they are in parallel. Apparently each inverter needs its own USB cable for SNRE but it refuses to connect to the second one.

So I recently purchased the Solar Assistant device as suggested here. Unfortunately it has turned out to be a spectacular waste of money. The device will only connect one of my two SRNE inverters and gives completely different readings to what is actually happening. it constantly says we are using grid power even when we are not. Initially I was getting responses from their support guys but after we had been through all of the generic faults they just started ignoring my emails and now wont even have the manners to reply. I am quite astounded at how disgusting their service has been. Just a heads up for anyone thinking of using the device.

Wow, thanks for that guys. Ill try and get in touch with them.

I have Chinese SRNE inverters, I doubt they will be compatible with that.

So in a perfect world my solar system would run perfectly on its own with no manual input from me. I currently have all of my big loads running from Solar. I run on battery through the night, and in the morning batteries are charging again at 7:00. As a fail safe I keep about 30% of my batteries in reserve should mains fail at night, and should it be cloudy my system taps mains to supplement the shortfall during the day. sounds pretty straight forward......but enter sustained stage 5/6 load shedding, with heavy cloud cover and my system is taking strain. I don`t have particularly fancy inverters and splitting my DB board into essential/non essential loads was not something I had even heard of before joining this group. So essentially when I know we have load-shedding coming (The 4-5 hour slots) and we have had a cloudy day, I need to rush home and change my settings to charge the batteries a bit before the power goes out, or set to UTI to preserve the batteries for that "zero dark thirty" slot. Aside from this minor inconvenience I have not been hit by load-shedding once in the five months that I have had the system. With a certain amount of user interference required, I`m sure ill get it wrong at some point and land up in the dark, but so far so good. How are your systems coping with this stage 6 and are you having to do a bit of thinking for your systems, or does it just do its thing?

So far I have been getting 45 - 50 units a day in September. With 24 x 455watt panels.

Is this figure your total production for the day, or the peak outputs? There are a huge amount of variables involved, but you would normally expect to see a max of 70% - 80% of your panels rated outputs. My 10.9kw array peaks at about 6kw in winter. The system was only installed four months ago, so I dont know the summer output yet, but so far I have seen 7.3kw

Over the last three days I have used absolutely ZERO mains power! 🍾

I Hose my panels down every two weeks or so in Winter and it makes a hugely noticeable difference.

I don't know if you have made a decision yet, but I reckon you could do better for that kind of money. I have 2 x 5kw inverters, 15kw of battery and 10.9kw if panels fully installed cost me R233k incl vat. The guy who did my system is based in Cape Town.

Speak to the guys at Geyserwise, they are incredibly helpful. I ran that PV heating system with great success for a number of years and they always assisted with my questions.

Good day folks. So I figured it is about time I give a bit of an update on this system of mine. Despite the initial snags I experienced, I seem to now have found a good balance and things are working well. After running a second string of wires from each bank of 12 panels everything seemed to improve and everything is now running much cooler. The voltage is much higher and the amps are lower. My inverters seem rather different to the main stream stuff and I have pretty much had to figure out my settings by trail and error. What irritated me most was that my batteries would be depleted by around 2:00AM and then the system would charge the batteries on mains. So when the sun came up I had full batteries and was wasting solar power. I have now got the system on SBU, with OSO as the charge option. The system now runs on battery at night until 50v and goes over to mains, Leaving 6v in reserve for potential load shedding. It then stays on mains until the batteries get back up to 52v in the morning and then starts supplying the house with solar power. Bearing in mind that I normally use 50kw - 60kw a day at this time of year. I am now only using 7kw - 10kw of mains power, which in my opinion is fantastic. Yesterday the system generated 45kw of solar power. I have swapped the geyser element in the cottage to a 2kw to bring the peak load down which has helped massively. I have also had a 5.4kw ITS heat pump installed on 2 x 150lt geysers connected in series. The heat pump runs approximately 3.5 - 4 hours a day and despite my families best efforts, we have not run out of hot water yet. The heat pump does not run outside of that programmed daytime slot at all. I still need to run equal length battery cables and install the disconnects and will do this as soon as I can. The inverters are getting a slightly different voltage reading with the different length wires. I don`t know if this is causing any issues, but its worth fixing. I do realise that with the charge option on OSO I may get caught out if there is a lot of load shedding and a number of overcast days in a row, but I do have a generator and can always switch to UTI to charge the batteries if things are getting tight. On the upside my depth of discharge isn't as low which can only really be a good thing for my batteries. I'm still considering running hot water supplies to the dishwasher and washing machine to lesson the water heating times but I don't know if that is worth the effort at this stage. It will lessen the initial heating time, but they still heat the water constantly during the cycles. Sometime before next winter I still want to get the current east facing panels pointing North. This will require some creative brackets and fabrication work, but it is possible. This should increase my winter production quite a bit. Thanks again to everyone here who offered their invaluable input. I could not have gotten this thing right without you folks.

My System: 24 x CSUN455Watt panels 2 x 5kw SRNE Inverters 3 x 5.12Kw Pytes/Shoto batteries Combiner box Full install R233k incl vat Granted the guys who did the install did some questionable things that I have had to fix, but other than that, this system is working damn well now.

I saw a video from the U.S. where they installed my exact batteries, with one set of battery leads to the first inverter from the top of the bank, and one set of leads from the bottom to the bank to the second inverter. The reasoning was that it balances the batteries better that way? Should I consider doing it that way or is that pointless?

Thank you once again for your amazing input. Ill check the voltage readings over the weekend. Based on the way these guys wired these I would say there is definitely a difference in length between the supply lines. I took the below image while they were installing. The batteries essentially connect to one inverter, then there is a loop to the second.

So I have been monitoring the system for a few days now. What seems to be happening is when the batteries reach full charge the one inverter stops supplying solar input and when the draw drops below a certain level, the other inverter stops supplying solar and starts supplying from battery. This causes a big dip in the batteries just before sun down and its really silly because there is still a fair amount of solar power available when this happens. What would cause this to happen?

Apologies, I forgot to mention this is not a new problem and has been happening intermittently since it was installed so its hasn't been caused by the wiring. I have checked and the Max Charge Current (07 setting on mine) is 45A on both. Max utility charge current (28 setting on mine) is also 45A on both units. All settings are identical on both inverters with the exception of The Model ID Setting, which is obviously 1 & 2. It's always the same inverter that does it. You can see in the graphs below how it just stops producing at random times. The other inverter never does that.

So today everything is running nice and cool. Voltage readings on the displays are up by 20v and the amps are down too. The next snag I'm having is that on some days the one inverter (always the same one) stops reading solar input and start supplying loads from the battery. Normally at this time of the day we have almost 6kw, but the one inverter supplies about 3.2kw and the other zero. I'm pretty sure it's a setting but you guys have any suggestions? Sometimes it starts showing solar again later in the day but not always.

And it is done! I am shit scared of heights so crawling around on the roof all day is enormously taxing and I'm stuffed. So while there is probably a compliance issue with AC and DC being in the same combiner box, I don't believe it presents any immediate safety issue. I will address that with the installers next time they are in Jhb and plot a way forward on that front. So it was a tight squeeze but I now have 2 x 6mm2 wires per polarity, per bank of 12 panels and 100amp Breakers on each bank. So wire capacity per bank is 140A, on 125A fuses and 100A Breakers. I will monitor the Temps of the wires/Breakers for a few days and see how it performs. Those 63A Breakers were getting very hot and the way its done now everything should run under less strain constantly.

Thanks for all of the input folks, it's greatly appreciated. I am just about done running the second wires for each bank and will probably connect up when the sun dips this afternoon. So working on this wiring has given me a little more of an understanding of how everything is set up and was a good exercise to undertake. There is an approximate 10V drop from panels to the inverters. Not sure if that is a big issue but I assume on a lower voltage system like mine it's probably a decent amount of loss . I assume the lower voltage is possibly causing the amps to climb under load and that is what is causing the one 63A Breaker to trip. Even if performance doesn't improve from my efforts I'll be happy that it's a safer setup, and I won't have to deal with the one breaker tripping all of the time. As far as the consumption goes, I have just installed a 5.4kw heat pump (1.2kw draw) and a second 150lt geyser, so I can program that to run between the other big loads and won't run out of hot water. My big issue remains the geyser in the cottage which only runs during the day but its a 3kw element. Now if my wife switches on the dishwasher and washing machine at the same time thats another 4kw, plus the 3kw geyser, plus the normal house draw and we are at 8. I am planning to put a 2kw element in the cottage geyser and run it for longer, then run hot water supplies with tempering valves to the washing appliances. That won't stop them drawing but will certainly shorten the amount of time that each 2kw element is running for. My mom in law lives in the house with us and there are two adults in the cottage, so we are total of seven people with the kids. I'm asking a lot from this system, but so far my mains consumption is down from 55 units a day to 23, so its clearly working.

I have two banks of 12 panels. Would the above configuration of 2 in series and 6 in parallel still work or would it still overload? I have CSUN455-144M panels. The installers put bridges between between the two Breakers, so I assume it would balance the input between the two inverters with the one bank being East facing and the other bank North facing? So essentially both banks would not reach peak output at the same time?