LCG

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.

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

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

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

I am NOT helping to sort out the knots when two of those things cross paths 😁

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. 

......and they gave me a COC for this installation. 

They also used ferrules wrapped in insulation tape to connect up the panels, rather than the correct connectors. When I questioned that they told me it s far more reliable method than the connectors which leak and fail?
 

......and they gave me a COC for this installation. 

They also used ferrules wrapped in insulation tape to connect up the panels, rather than the correct connectors. When I questioned that they told me it s far more reliable method than the connectors which leak and fail?