Alec Swanepoel

All this really reminds me that what we are concerned with, in the end is "work" (measured in joules, aka energy). Now as you might recall from those dreamy days known as school, Work equals Force times Distance.  Force, in turn, is mass times acceleration (Newton), and gravity is a kind of acceleration. So if you took a rock and dropped it off a tall building, the amount of work would be mgh, mass times gravity times height. So I can get the same work done by dropping a rock of half the mass off a building twice the height.
And that really is the same principle here. Drop half the amp hours off twice the voltage, and you get the same work done (once again, in theory, all sorts of inefficiencies come out to play too). So when you get confused, work out the total capacity for work (in kwh) in the simplest terms that makes sense to you. Then, you know you must always get the same answer when you start mucking around with things. When you count your cows and there is suddenly twice as many as you thought... better get off the Vodka there :-)

Simplistically speaking, yes. In practice, no. Peukert's law. More about that later.
 
No. In Series the Ah stays the same and the voltage goes up, so still 100A for one hour (but because you're doing it at 4 times the voltage, you get four times the Wh (watt hour)).
 
8 batteries, two strings of 4. When you series, the Ah stays the same. So each string is 100Ah. When you parallel, voltage stays the same, but Ah is added. So you have 48V, 200Ah. 200 amps for one hour (if you ignore Peukert) or 1 amp for 200 hours or 20 amps for 10 hours, etc etc. But once again, at 48V, you have 200 * 48 = 9.6kwh. If you had 4 strings of 2 batteries, you'd have 24V. Each string would still be 100Ah, but because you have 4 strings that would be a total of 400Ah, but at 24V that is still 24 * 400 = 9.6kwh. And if you took all 8 batteries and paralleled them, you'd have 8 * 100Ah = 800Ah, but at 12V, and 12 * 800 = 9.6kwh.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Okay, Peukert. Peukert basically says that the faster you discharge a battery, the less useful capacity you will get out of it. So if you attempt to discharge our hypothetical 100Ah battery at 100A, you'll get maybe 40 minutes, not to mention that you might damage it.
Most batteries are rated at C20 (over 20 hours), so the battery can give you 5 ampere constantly for 20 hours before it is dead. At 10 ampere, it will last slightly less than 10 hours (because Peukert says you lose discharge efficiency), and at 20 ampere you'll get maybe 4.5 hours. It's not advisable discharge at rates higher than C5.

I would be happy to put together a fool's guide to Axpert settings. My experience does not extend to running two in parallel so maybe someone else should do it.

Hi Manie,
I also installed a Axpert 5kva, and started with 3 panels.
I found it was enough to charge the batteries, with very light usage and good weather in summer. But more than that i think one is abusing the batteries, by cycling them? Also passing clouds will have a more of pronounced effect.
So I put in a 2nd string and found that I could better carry our daytime load in summer, but could still not run the aircon during the day from solar, and the Ironing would eventually force the inverter to switch to Eskom even in good weather.
So we added a 3rd string and it works really well. No real issues now.
Although we are going into winter and I have adjusted the panels to winter sun. But am now thinking that if I add the 4th string of panels, I will maximize the early morning and late afternoon power generation ability.
Also I will be able to run the aircon for heating in winter earlier rather than from 10am-2pm? Maybe from 9-3pm?
Expect to add the 4th string soon
And at night the batteries are fully charged from Eskom in my case.
Our load varies from around 350 watts at the lowest to 800w during the day, once the ironing starts it spikes to around 2.2kw for short periods and if the aircon runs it sits at around 2kw continuously while running everything.
Enjoy the solar journey

Hi Alec
You can safely raise your max charge rate to 20A (and your AC charge rate to 20A if you want to). 20A on a 200Ah battery bank is still a C/10 charge rate.
Chris
 
Addition: The max you'll ever see from your current panels is just below 15A so there is no cause for concern in terms of over charging from solar. It just means that if you batteries are not fully charged you can use every Watt of energy available from you panels. And at 20A AC charging you will reach fully charged sooner. 

Inbox me bud, will beat that price for the 702 by R500

Very soon!

Up until a moment before you start measuring your inverter is in line mode and your charging rate is 10A. From the voltage it appears you are in bulk or absorb and your batteries are not fully charged. When you Axpert goes into float (i.e. the batteries are 99% charged) the middle LED does not flash but is on permanently. If it is charging and is in bulk or absorb the LED flashes. Good batteries will still steadily accept 1% of charge when they are full.
You then switch to battery and immediately your voltage drops from 56.8V to 51.7V  2 minutes later. This is purely because you are no longer charging the batteries. 10 minutes later your batteries are at 50.1V which is closer to your batteries true voltage and a little while later you kick back to grid. I suspect your settings for program 12 & 13 are too close together. 
MY grid power has just gone off and in 4 minutes my batteries have dropped from 54.4V to 51.1V with a 12A draw - entirely normal.
I am away tomorrow but post a screenshot of your settings and the Axpert mechanics will sort it out I am sure.
Addition: Now ½ hour later the battery voltage has recovered to 51.4V with a draw of 5A.