sproete_za

Nice one - congrats to the winner - show us how you use the items

Just an update: the installation hasn't happened just yet.
Apparently, it's quite difficult to source 550W panels these days because installers are moving to larger sizes, like 600W to 650W panels—or at least that’s what he's telling me. They did manage to find some 550W panels, but they arrived scratched. The installer said he didn't feel comfortable installing them and requested replacements.

In other news, yesterday was the first day of full sunshine we've had in probably a month, and I managed to generate 18.1 kWh worth of energy

https://powerforum.co.za/newsletter/

Hello Powerforum members,
Hubble Energy will be sending me one Hubble Energy AM16+ (16.1kWh) and one AM5+ (5.12kWh) for extended real-world testing and review.

These are part of their current LV Range which includes:
AM-2 – Popular 5.5kWh 51V NMC battery 1C rating, proven long-term performer.
AM-4 – Compact 2.56–2.75kWh 25.6V wall-mount battery with 1C rating.
AM-5+ – 5.12kWh 51.2V LFP with built-in Cloudlink, 1C rating and RGB display.
AM10+ – Larger 10kWh+ model in the + series with advanced features.
AM16+ – High-capacity 16.1kWh floor-standing LFP with wheels, built-in Cloudlink and high discharge capability.
S-100A – 12V 100Ah (1.2kWh) compact lithium battery.
X-5+ (New X-101) – Newer generation Rack Mounted 5.5kWh model with updated features.
X-101 – Established Rack Mounted 5.5kWh 51V model, widely used in hybrid systems.
Note:
Hubble Energy also has a very exciting HV Range, but this review will focus 100% on the LV Range especially for members who already own Hubble batteries or are considering them.
Hubble Energy will also soon release the new AM-2+, which keeps the same NMC technology as the existing AM-2 models but adds built-in Cloudlink and several extra features.

My Setup:
Main system: Solis S6 8kW Pro Hybrid (master) with a Solis S6 6kW Pro seeing the 8kW as “grid”
AC-coupled: Enphase micro-inverters + Solis S5 4.6kW grid-tied inverter on the Aux port of the 8kW
2kW Wind turbine on the Solis S6 6kW MPPT in constant voltage mode
Separate Solis 5kW Off-Grid inverter for additional testing
Existing battery bank: 7 × Hubble AM2 (mixed ages – oldest >5 years old)
AM2 cycle counts right now:
1411 | 1036 | 880 | 853 | 805 | 737 | 595 cycles Total bank health still at 99% – very impressive for the age mix.
What I’ll be Testing:
Daily cycling and performance of the AM16+ and AM5+ on the Solis S6 6kW and the 5kW Off-Grid inverter
Parallel operation between the new + series and my existing AM2 bank (old model compatibility is a big claim)
Mixing different aged AM2 batteries and different capacities with the new units
Compatibility with multiple inverter brands/configurations
Cross-brand testing – insider info from a senior Hubble engineer says the new Plus range can work with almost any other battery brand
Full use of the built-in Hubble Cloudlink (I have unit #388)
I’ll also be highlighting the exciting new ergonomic and safety features:
Wheels on the AM16+ for easy movement
Magnetic panels that neatly hide all internal cables
Front-accessible BMS and critical components for simpler maintenance
Active cooling, fire suppression, and more
The unlimited cycle warranty on these new models is particularly attractive and will be closely monitored during long-term testing.I’ll be doing a detailed initial short-term review followed by ongoing long-term data over the coming months.
Expect real numbers on efficiency, temperature performance, charge/discharge behaviour, Cloudlink functionality, noise, installation, display readability, and real-world interaction with wind + AC-coupled solar.
We will also speak nicely to Hubble Energy and ask if they can provide some products for a lucky draw / giveaway for Powerforum members.
If you have any testing requests (particular charge profiles, high-load scenarios, Cloudlink screenshots, parallel comms behaviour, etc.), please reply in this thread. I’ll try to cover as many as possible.
Product links:
AM5+

AM16+

This should be a very thorough and transparent review for the Hubble community.
Looking forward to sharing the results with everyone.
Cheers, @Powerforum Store

Hubble Energy AM5+ Brochure V1.2.pdf Hubble Energy AM16+ Brochure V2.3.pdf

Thanks, much appreciated!
I've scrolled through the Solar Assistant data. In the summer, the amps are definitely getting clipped. But now in winter, it's struggling to reach 10 amps on MPPT 2 and 7 amps on MPPT 1.

This is the highest I've seen the voltage jump when there's little to no load on the inverter.

To give you better context, I'm in Mossel Bay, about 80m above sea level and 1.3km as the crow flies from the ocean. We definitely don't see minus temps, but it can drop into the single digits.
Since sub-zero isn't a factor here, it sounds like pushing to 7 panels per string (7E/7W) will keep me safely inside that 500V MPPT limit.
Ground mounting won't work on my property, but that microinverter setup on the Aux port is a very cool idea! Thanks again for the detailed breakdown.
Installation for 2 pannels is scheduled for Wednesday.

Good Day
My first installation done.
PV Modules: 40x Canadian Solar 615W panels (8 per string/ 5 strings). Total installed capacity 24.6kW. East/West configuration.
Inverter: 30kW Deye 3phase Hybrid.
Battery: Deyeness Stack 4 Tower 57kW. Operating voltage 230V (4 stacks plug and play in series).
Location: Hermanus.
Check- no surface mounted trunking from panels to inverter and DB to inverter. In conduit under plaster.

Off the cuff, I'm a bit concerned about that tree shade on the western end of your roof - I suspect that it will move over a part of your westernmost panels (and this could get worse in winter when the sun is lower...), and that could restrict your midday to evening solar yield. Watch it for now, and if it does become a problem then consider cutting down that tree - owners of solar systems invariably (and rapidly) also become owners of chain saws 😆

How do you conclude that it's a risk for targeted robberies?
Will someone come and steal my PV panels?
The location information is voluntary.

If thieves want to target a home, they could use:
Driving around the suburbs. Property Value information from Metro General Property Valuation Register Property24. Google Earth (Satellite) or other satellite site. Bing Street View/Google Street View
 

I have a Revov R100 battery and and added another R100 about a year ago. I connected their 2 BMSs together and have my Sunsynk communicate with them via a CAN bus. I had a Revov tech on the line to confirm everything was good and they advised me to change a dip switch for the batteries to communicate with each other, but no more.
Earlier this year during a prolonged power failure my SOC ran down to 40% and then my system went offline. As a result, my tropical fish died because it was cold and their heater failed, but that's besides the point.
When I contacted Revov again, they got a sharp guy to troubleshoot and turns out my first battery had BMS code for a Victron inverter (I have a Sunsynk), and the second one had some other code which had to be upgraded, but after he mentioned that they both need to be upgraded to the same version. Sounds logical, but it would have been good to know the first time I called.
The real issue for me is that while Revov's spec sheet that came with the battery indicates that they should have an absorption voltage of 55.5V the BMS was asking for 56V. I could see this from the panel on my Inverter. After the technician reconfigured all the settings on the battery via a console cable, the battery was now set to request the 55.5V.
We could also see that the battery stated that it had only 83% life left after 450 cycles. This didn't sound good to me.
After the change, my batteries are performing much better. It's still only been a few days, but it feels like when I try to run my battery down, it now lasts significantly longer.
For the 1 and 2 years that I've had these batteries respectively, they've been overcharged because the BMS was not set correctly. Bear in mind that this is not something you'd be able to do yourself. I'm not sure how much damage this would have caused, but from what I understand, overcharging causes problems.
Just to confirm this wasn't an isolated incident, I checked with someone else with the same battery who also confirmed the BMS requesting the 56V.
Since this is not published on their website, I figured it may help someone here.

TL;DR - Check whether your Revov R100 is requesting a higher voltage (56V) than it should be (55.5). If it does, call them to rectify this.

Shoto uses a PACE bms if I recall correctly?
Have you checked if the batteries starts discharging at the same time, in other words, after fully charging them to 100% SOC and then using the batteries to supply the load, does each battery start discharging at the same time?
The PACE BMS will close the discharge MOSFETS when a cell triggers the Overvoltage Protect alarm during charging, normally set at 3.65v. The BMS will keep the discharge MOSFETS closed as it is trying to balance the cells even though the inverter might be pulling load from the other batteries.
So you might have a situation where 1 or 2 of the batteries only start supplying load when the others are already down to 90% SOC (by example). The bigger the battery bank the more pronounced this effect can be, since the BMS will only open the MOSFETS when the load warrants it (is big enough), and since you have 4 batteries in the bank this will need to be a substantial load.
This effect is also more pronounced in winter since the batteries have less time to balance the cells.
I had the same issue, eventually solved it by adjusting settings to avoid hitting OVP. The local importer could not solve this, eventually the Chinese manufacturer pointed us to PACE who supplied me with a sollution.

A man named Piet Maseema asked for a few details and solved the issue the same day—a big shoutout to Piet. I think the challenge is getting the message past the call centre. Thanks to all who suggested what to do; it is much appreciated.

Achieved a good milestone with my system, of completing my panel installation with the wiring. All finally connected and generating.
Being later in the afternoon and overcast, the graph on the Solar assistant was all over the place with me testing the system putting on the kettle etc
Happy so far with this progress.

I surely can't be the only one here that has broken the 1 Megawatt-Hour for the month 😜

Batteries are like so many things - they're a resource that you have to manage. One management task is to maximise the electrical work done during the sunny hours, leaving less for the battery to do after hours.

I have half the battery that Jacques does. I get through the night. My rule of thumb is that if the battery is fully charged at 16:00 then I will be OK (above 40% SOC) until 8:00 the next day, as long as nobody goes bonkers with appliances in the morning. By 8:00 the sun will be up, or I will have given dire warnings to all and sundry (IE wife, housekeeper, dog) about the need to be careful. Though I am less bellicose about this now because we are 200-and-something days without load shedding.

But I still want to get through the night on batteries. That keeps the bill down. 

At night we have 3 fridges/freezers running (all fairly new, with inverter drives), external lights on (LED, they draw next to nothing), wifi, alarm, electric fence, TV, some interior lights, occasional use of kettle and air fryer. So we have adjusted our routines to, as I said, make as much use as we can of free power from the sun and don't do a lot at night. It helps that we have a full gas stove, but if we had electric we'd be observing the same routines anyway. Water heating is done with a heat pump (much more efficient than a regular geyser) and twice a day (early morning, which is included in my "until 8:00" calculations) and then again at midday. The geyser has a blanket on it to reduce heat losses.

I think most homes would struggle to get through the night consistently on 5kWh (effectively 4.5, since the battery usually shuts down at 10% remaining SOC), though I sometimes come in at that mark, but with 10 and some discipline it's definitely doable. 

My system is set to resort to grid if SOC gets to 40%, so I will always have at least 3kWh of backup  in the event of an outage. If we had a power cut starting early morning and overcast weather, then I might get through to 11:30 with some restraint. Getting all the way off the grid is hard, but you can certainly make a big difference to your bill. 

Though I'm not making the difference that Jacques is.

This what I can comment on if that helps.

Do they replace/repair the battery;
According to the warranty terms it is at their discretion whether to repair or replace. Thus far they have opted to repair my batteries each time I had an issue.

What's their time frame if repairing;
When I spoke to the tech the other day the turn around can be from 1 week to 3 weeks depending on what they need to do.
E.G.
Re-balance of cells was said should be about a week
The rebuild and replacement of bad cells about 3 weeks

Warranty - from real world experiences
So far both instances I had was covered under warranty.
1st was a temp sensor that was faulty, battery was send in and sensor was replaced. (3 weeks as this was during all of the public holidays during Easter so this caused some external delays)
Currently have 2 batteries send back for repairs after the tech came out to the site and pulled the logs to make sure what happened to the batteries.

After-sales support (in person and online) - for firmware updates if need be
This will depend on your installer I think, had to get a firmware update a while back and this was done by my installer with them remotely logging in to the setup via the installers laptop.
I've dealt directly with some of the technician as well and they had no problem with me contacting them directly as my installer actually directed me to speak to them directly regarding my more technical questions I had at that time that my installer could not answer.

Ability to have battery communicate with a desktop or laptop using the CAN/RS485/RS232 port independent of the inverter for accurate readings
The R100 I have uses the Pace BMS so I'm reading my battery info via Home Assistant and a RS232 and ESP32 link for individual battery monitoring.

How long the company has been operating for and hope they keep going for a long time
No idea but my installer has been operating for 10 years and said during his time dealing with them they have not had any issue with warranties.

Yes and I don't mind, whats your daily peak temperatures right now, for instance...here, right now, 32degC in the shade and yesterdays peak around 36.5degC in the shade... refer to refrigeration mentioned above... in summer our night average will be around the 1kW constant mark...., since our daytime temperatures will peak above 40degC every day, just about and night time can remain above 30degC on the minimum, can't compare Slaapstad with the Kalahari....

On my Sunsynk 5kw, which I believe is the same hardware as the Deye 5kw, I'm using the top left port labelled BMS485 and it works fine there. BMSCAN in the top middle port where you have a yellow cable is for the CANBUS communication to my batteries.

Well, for one thing, I already extract about 2kWh from the batteries every morning before sunrise to heat the geyser. Discharging more than this some 2-3 hours before charging can begin via PV panels would drain the batteries further than I would like, so that's not an option.
Even though discharging may be possible down to -20 degrees C, it does not mean that it would be good for the batteries - after all, power is supplied as a result of a chemical reaction, and as most people would know, chemical reactions happen better/easier/quicker at optimum temperatures - which for LiFePO4 happen to be quite a bit higher than your quoted -20 degrees C... so discharging might be "possible", but arguably not "fine".
Anyway, I prefer to do things as best I can, and that's my choice - further CONSTRUCTIVE feedback is still welcomed...

My inverter is installed in my garage and during summer it gets quite hot in Bloemfontein. When you park a hot car in there it gets even hotter. I realized the Inverter DC side reached temperatures of near 90 degrees during midday. I installed 3 x 120mm computer fans on top with a temperature controller switching the fans on and off. The thermistor is attached to the heatsink. The heatsink temperature is about 20 degrees below the internal temperature indicating by the app. With the fans the temperature stays below 60 degrees.
I 3D printed the bracket and bought the temperature controller from an online store for under R200 with a 12V powersupply. Is anybody is interested visit Thingiverse:Thing6468217 to get the STL files for the bracket. (Search Sunsynk 5kW)
 

8kw Sunsynk with 3 x 5kw BSL Powerline 5 batteries and 10 x 550w panels.
Sunsynk BSL combo offers additional 5 year warranty on the inverter and 15 year warranty on the Powerline 5. 

I have recently been asked to provide Field support for a number of commercial sites countrywide...I would like to share & document what my experiences are & also share with the community the goods the bads & the uglys about the installation work on these installs. I have really been fortunate to have such opportunities & when one starts to digest what is rapidly happening in the Commercial solar space in SA one starts to see that it's not all that different from the residential market. 
I must put out a disclaimer that I am a consultant on these sites & just assist with commissioning of the plant & providing Field support. I will not disclose the parties involved for their own security of equipment privacy etc. 
I will share on this thread the common equipment types of the two main brands on this thread rather than to make new threads each time. I often feel like a kid in a toy store when I see these plants produce power for the first time.
Enjoy the solar pawn....

Sunsynk 8kw with 2 x 5.1 BSL Powerline 5 and 14 x 550w panels. 7 east and 7 west. 

@BrettB thanks for the inspiration. Here is my attempt at a 3D printable fan holder. Settled on 4 fans as the vents are not that big. Still need to mount this to my wall. I used the Cooler Master Sickleflow 92 fans.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5896902

I've been participating quite regularly on the forum for a short while now, but earlier this week I finally got my setup installed and comissioned.
Some information:
Sunsynk 8kW Inverter 2 X Greenrich WM5000 wall mount batteries 10 X Longi 555W panels, all facing north. I was originally planning on going 6+6, with one string facing north and another facing east/west due to size constraints on my north-facing roof. But the installers managed to fit 10 on the north facing roof alone, and we reckoned 10 facing north is better than 6 facing north and 6 facing east/west. I was considering buying 8 more, and put another 10 on the other roof so that I can use the other MPPT as well, but that might come in the future, pending my actual usage patterns.
Solar generation is good so far, and in fact it seems over specced. On sunny days I have this large notch in the middle of my PV graph. The batteries are recharged by 10h, and the rest of the day's loads are quite low. 
I have my geyser connected to the inverter Aux port, as a semi-critical load. I'm still playing around with the settings to find the most optimal configuration, but so far it seems like it's working. I've made another post explaining how I set things up. I reduced the geyser element to 2kW, so that when it runs it can run 100% off solar. I don't want to cycle my batteries during the day for hot water. The geyser thermostat is also set as high as it can go, so that it can act like a thermal battery of sorts, taking up more of that sunshine if the rest of my loads don't call for it.
Total outlay was just north of R200k. I purchased the expensive equipment myself (inverter+batteries+pv), and contracted an installer to do the actual installation for me.