Johandup

I replaced mine with a 50a car battery and a 5a Victron charger. I reckon it should give 10 years reliable service. The pathetic 1a charging board which you find in most all devices is responsible for most of our trouble. A dead motor gate can lead to a lot of problems - think about it when you are 70 plus.

My son in law had a Deye 8kw installed on a lease. Company guy told him they’ve got a 1000 installed units. If there is any trouble they swop it out immediately. Suppose its horses for courses.

My setup is so much easier with a transfer switch from the mains to the generator. I have a choice on where to send the generator output then. If I need to charge the batteries from generator (= very expensive) I'll need to reduce the battery charging amps. I've changed my Sunsynk setup to grid charge the batteries to 99% soc at 17h00 (dependant on usage and cloud cover - it also helps to use eskom and not batteries with evening meal preparation). Also to 30% soc at 02h00. Got rid of nuisance trips when the family is visiting. It uses about 3kwh per night. I must admit that I'll miss eskom when they go on stop. QED

A transfer switch of sort is a must. And forget about charging at 40a. Determine the max amps your gennie puts out and charge at 1/2 of that. My 6kw gennie battles to do 13a. Your rig needs a lot of amps for charging. I don’t know if you can set it up for charging batteries from a gennie. Otherwise it will just trip on overload. I don’t know if the gennie can be allocated just for charging - seems pointless to me. It must be able to supply your house as well. Then you can carry on when the inverter is down. I also have a 8kw Synsynk with a seperate generator. But I only set it up to run my house. If one is really serious about this you probably need a 16kw generator.

On a farm you pay for the transformer (and size) supplying you It is in your own interest to keep your consumption as low as possible. Keep in mind Eskom might fail 100% in future.

The best way to go about this is to start measuring amps on the pumps. Startup as well as running amps. Don’t consider kw when looking at inverters in this case - look at the maximum amps. Borehole pumps pull ridiculous amps when starting - my 2.2kw uses up to 35 amps to start up. It has tripped my 8kw inverter a few times. My system was installed before I went solar and now it is not cost effective for me to scale down. My 2.2kw pump has an output of way too much 15kl per hour pumping from 65m. But it is what it is. You must look at all the options like solar and variable speed controllers (to minimize startup amperages). With solar pumps you don’t need inverters. You must know how much water you need per day. It might be more cost effective to increase your container sizes - that can reduce pumping rates but also serves as emergency when pumping goes wrong. Why do you need a 3kw pump? Is it a 3-phase system? It is more cost effective to reduce your electrical consumption than trying to supply an oversize solar system. Dwellings for example could each have their own JoJo tank and small pressure pump. Instead of running a pressure pump 24/7 you can also look at a header system - with many mines (for example) closing shafts they should be on the 2ndhand market. You have the advantage of expenses being tax deductible.

I think my pool look beautiful. My swimming pool pump runs just from solar - but I switch it off when solar is low due to rain and clouds It is a 1.5kw pump with a 70kl approx. pool. It is managed by a sonoff that also measures the power consumption and running hours. In March I ran it for 138 hours with 17 days where it did not get to 5 hours for the day. It was on stop for 3 days. It is set for 7 hours per day. The coming winter I’ll set it up for 4 hours per day. Last winter it was eskom set to run for 4 hours per week. I had it remarbelite for this season so it needs tlc. We swim every day when the weather is good - in summer that means about 18 days per month It is heated to 30 degrees C - depending on the sunlight. With the weather turning now I’m thinking to cover it for winter. My pumping system is dual purpose - cleaning as well as heating. You did not mention why you want to minimise pump hours.

I am shocked by these reports. My 8kw Sunsynk has been going well for two years now with no problems. If you want to sink any brand it must get a bad name from South African consumers. There are plenty of car manufacturers who can vouch for this. I wish Sunsynk well for their venture into Australia as they don’t have our patience. Oh, and the Aussies read our forums. Keith would do well to take action in this market. My brother had a not so good repair experience with Deye recently - will I recommend it. Obviously not …

I suggest you verify the voltages with a good multimeter. Is the builtin charger in your inverter really good enough for what you want from it. I recently invested in a very expensive (for me) Victron ip22 30a 12v charger to do maintenance on all my batteries - it was an eye opener for me. Its got a bluetooth app where you can see what it does.

4 off US2000b pylontechs - now going for 4 years in use. I don’t restrict usage at night as the setup changes over to Eskom (when available) when the battery shuts down. My batteries are set to charge only from solar. I ticked the “activate” in the Battery setup - wasn’t done before. I have a 8kw Synsunk inverter. I don’t dig into the battery cell info like @Nexuss does.

You can set the output of the battery to suit your specific circumstances - I did it recently on my Sunsynk as I was not comfortable taking 4000w out of the battery at one time. But note that the battery watts at 48v does not translate directly to amps at 230v. My inverter tripped yesterday at over 6000w because my wife (with good intentions) switched the geyser on (which is on an auto Geyserwise system btw) whilst the 2.2kw (electricity guzzler) borehole pump was filling the tanks - and we were on loadshedding. The setting is to protect the battery and extend its life. I changed my geyser element to a 2000w (the difference from 3kw to 2kw seems small but it makes a huge difference in solar) and it now uses 1900w whilst heating. It also increases the temperature by 14 degrees C per hour on a 150l geyser. I manage the geyser most days by hand as I’m at home - when the solar output is low due to cloud cover I leave it switched off. It services the washing room and kitchen only. I use gas for the bathrooms - expensive but convenient.

I found that my pylontechs would go down to 19% soc before switching off. On digging into the Sunsynk setup I found that I haven’t ticked the bms box. So the switching off was done on the battery by the bms. I also upped the minimum soc level to 21% in the Sunsynk setup to be safe. It is now switching over to Escom at 20% soc. In the light of this I do not know how one will be able to go down to say 10% as the bms is on auto inside the batteries. Comments welcome.

My brother got 2 years out of his 200ah “solar” batteries which was lightly used. R25k wasted. Too many negatives to mention. Totally not worth it. He is on two 5kw lifepo4 batteries now.

I think that heating the geyser must run on the kiss principle. Mine has a Geyserwise installed to control it - this makes it remarkedly easy to use (especially for our companions ) It is connected to the 8kw Sunsynk db and runs max 3 hours per day. On a 2000w element (cost me R175) it increases the temperature by 14 deg C per hour. It is set to go to 65 deg C. BUT it is not used for a bathroom - I have a gasgeyser for that. I would love to preheat the water for this but the cost for a new geyser is exorbitant. And it shares the power output with all the other electricity guzzlers.

https://arena.gov.au/assets/2018/05/lithium-ion-battery-testing-public-report-12.pdf

Okay gents, I’ve gotten the final report on the Aus battery test project - which was concluded after TEN years in March 2023. The report is VERY interesting to say the least. It is also of note to observe that we are so far behind Aus in solar (not just rugby ) that this guvament will neva eva catch up. They call it their Arena projects. A quick summary on the Pylontech US2000B batterues of which I have four. After 6 years of trial where they have been constantly (I think twice per day) discharged and charged they have completed close to 2800 cycles and retained 75% of its capacity. These batteries had zero problems during the trial. Being on pension for 7 years and pushing 70 I won’t think about this issue anymore. An observation is that I need to add a big new lifepo4 battery at some stage when capacity starts being an issue - not before the time. Having a Sunsynk 8kw makes it easy. The indicator will be when the soc reaches 20% after a night shift. The link is: https://arena.gov.au/assets/2018/05/lithium-ion-battery-testing-public-report-12.pdf for people who have time to read.

Has anyone figured this relationship out? I have Pylontechs which are “claimed - not yet proven” that they will last for 6000 life cycles at 80% dod. The usage for every 10% soc is 960wh which is (now and at current electricity prices) still affordable if drawn from the municipality. A theoretical question for now is: At what soc will the life cycle go up at lot (for Pylontech to extend the usage life time) and what will the electricity bill be for doing so? Then one can make an informed decision on how to set your inverter. I know that technology and prices will change a lot in the future.

Nothing on established suppliers in SA.

I am looking for the new RT12100G31 battery. A google search found nothing.

Measure it with a meter. Reminded me when I asked my brother in law why he is now switching off his computer but when he was living with us it was on constantly. It is difficult to spend your own money.

It is cheap to install surge protection inside a db. The value of home contents justify this protection. In my town I suspect most of the earthing copper wire in the minisubs (which are never locked anymore) is stolen so the earth leakage system is suspect of you depend on this. Santam has just notified us that they are no longer covering “surge damage due to loadshedding” because of high claims.

This is a manual process that involves a lot of work and safety procedures.

Bought from the powerforum store and he delivery of 15 panels was painless. Ensure you have space for a big lorry for parking and offloading.

Transformers have tappings that can be adjusted to compensate for losses as well as overloading. So in a perfect world it would be set for 230v because there is no overloading etc. But in our world all transformers are overloaded and the startup voltages would be above 230v to compensate for this - so as the transformers start up the volts are above 230v untill the demand stabilises. Watch the sparks on online videos to see how hazardous switching on transfromers is - well designed systems use remote switching. I trip my db main breaker when the power goes off - but I’m retired and at home most of the time.

How big is the breaker and how old is it? Sometimes it is worth it to replace it to ensure it is not the problem. A mcb can trip on overload as well as a short.