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PaulF007

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Everything posted by PaulF007

  1. Ok a couple questions: What is you max expected solar output : Is all your panels looking in the same direction : What direction is your panels looking at: What is the tilt of your panels: These should give us a understanding of what your setup looks like. My brother in-law has a system installed. (Quite nice) but as he is living in one of those townhouses roof space is a challenge. They ended up putting panels on both sides of the roof this resulted in him not getting full potential from them as they will be exposed to different solar "strengths" not much that could be done about it , apart from adding another mppt. But I agree , your output does not seem to match your description of the system.. Also a couple of other questions What is the size of your batteries : How are they configured : Reason for asking is that I have came across it where people switch series and parallel calculations . So 2 x 12v 50ah batts in series will give you 24v 50 ah whereby 2 x 12v 50ah in parallel will give you 12v 100ah ( Quite a difference in ah and "capacity" if you get it wrong) Last thought - There is a possibility that some of the batts could already be shot. Seeing that you are discharging them heavily , if they dont get charged properly they will not last long at all. You should maybe consider charging them for at least a full day without load just to make sure they are fully charged. A good indication will be if they cannot charge more than 1or 2 amps in the middle of the day ..
  2. I assume the blue line is the solar output , if so then yes you have a challenge as you have a almost perfect bell curve witch means that you are using your system optimal but also that your batteries will most likely not get charged well.Also you base load is quite high (500 w) during night time , but that is just a point of view... Maybe show a graph with you solar vs battery watts , this should also give an indication.
  3. That is one of the reasons the BMV is recommended. The data that you have is very limited and therefore almost impossible to judge from. As I remember the Axpert did report the battery amps charge / discharge. You could use that to determine the AH drawn and charged and that could , in a way , give you an idea as to if you are at least putting back what you have used. Have a look at the graph below. You will see that the batteries take as much as there is available until about 10 then start to drop away even though there is still plenty to offer from the panels. You could look at you data and check if the same happens on your system. If you get a similar curve you could assume that your panels gives enough juice. But again there is a huge amount of could , guess , might in there ....
  4. If I remember correctly it was a case of some maths. I manually added the units available in to the system and then used the daily kwH used from the grid to calculate the units left.
  5. The Used a live graph of the data that came in and set it to refresh every 5 sec. Then you place it below. This way you can see if the data feed is still active. I do know that there is a "active" plugin in emon that does the same now.
  6. Hello @patalhetas this was done ages ago so Some of it went missing but here is some of the Images that I still have and can be available here. You could edit them with something like GIMP or Photoshop (if you have a copy) Hope this helps!
  7. @Mark2 There is some picks on page one of my setup. Yes you are fairy screwed if you don't have pf.
  8. The only issue I had with Hassio was that remote connection was or maybe still is a pain. If you could not do port forward it was a huge mission to get it going. Openhab as an integrated remote connection via thier myopenhab.org site. What makes it even more attractive is that it is for free. Very nice Dashboards! One place it definitely outshines
  9. Have a look at this It was discussed at length back in 2016 , I wonder how much of the predictions came true
  10. Wow been a while since this one has came up. Ok here is one way to do it and this is from a pure $$ point of view in South Africa. Lets say you would like to do a basic setup with an Axpert. Thumb suck as I am to lazy to check for prices but it should set you back about R 150 k You will need to adapt your house hold consumption so that it fits n with the 4kw system as you will fry your batts if you dont. Now take your household consumtion after you have made the changes - Solar geyser , gas stove , low watts fridge , freezer and lights. Dont forget the TV ( These should also be added to you Total investment) Now lest look at the Value of you money - R 150 000 x 9% = R 13 500.00 / 12 = R 1 125 per month. Lett say current Eskom rate is R 2.50 per unit - R 1 125/2.5 = 450 unis So if your current consumption is less than 450 per month after you made your changes you will , in theory , never make back your money as the interest alone covers the units alternatively if you use more that that you should be good to make you money back over the term of about 10 years. Keep in mind that you are paying now and should not need to spend any thing over the rest of the term. As a side note I did do a much more comprehensive calculation a while back and it should be here somewhere on the forum but this should at least give you one principal that you could follow. Keep in mind that this is from a pure Cost vs Consumption.If you add loss of business as a result of Load shed that calculations will be much more subjective. Another note - depending on what system you add ,a solar system could even be a liability if you were to sell your house ....
  11. I would assume that Hassio also have a config file with all the necessary settings. So i have a small script running that will back up the config and node red files once a week to Dropbox as these are the ones that gets changed from time to time. Regarding the base OS I have a Full image backup on a hard drive with an extra SD next to the pi.Should it go belly up I can just swap the images. Update the config file to the latest and away we go. Three years later , touch wood , I have not had any problems --- yet --- . Although I am waiting for the Pi 4 os to get to the stage that it will boot negatively from a SSD. There are already a couple of workarounds to do this but Ill wait a little bit longer. There is also a project that is quite interesting to have a look at , IOTstact by Graham. He's a local and has done a tremendous amount of work. Also the place I got the Droobox script. Go have a look , well worth the 30 sec
  12. One way to go is SonOff - now a days you get quite a lot of options and they have even made an API for the firmware. Personally I have a couple of SonOff running Tasmota at difficult to reach places. But the bulk of my system is running on Arduino Programs that I wrote with MQTT as my backbone. I use Openhab only as the front interface and in theory I can control the system through any MQTT interface. This makes things much more "universal". Every thing is running on a R-pi.
  13. @Gabriell I am running on Rpi with Openhabian Image. Much easier plug and play solution as I just need to make a copy of the SD image. Also power consumption ( witch was a large deciding factor) is quite low in comparison.
  14. Another option that is worth a look is Openhabian - it is also well supported. I whent full automation about three years ago and sofar Openhab has treated me well. This is what my layout looks like :
  15. As a rule , no it is not normal. Usually if you get a shock from a ladder it would be advisable to get a tester of sorts to avoid potential shock again.
  16. Hello @desiji Have a look at this. It will give you a fair idea how I did it , also a link to the "back drop" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4xHyiE6mc0&t=1s
  17. You can but it does take a little bit of a fiddle. Option one would be to load Tasmota FW on the Sonoff then you have quite a lot op options. I recently saw that SonOff brought a new api to its FW so it could be possible to use thier API as well but I havent played with that , yet. For a rules engine I would recommend something like Node Red. The options is endless and fairly easy to do once you got the hang of it. 100% of all my rules run on it and I love it. Rpi is obviously the way to go then..
  18. The problem with "just getting started" is that you will spend money on something that could possibly not be changed later. The one thing that "pops" is that the MPPT can only handle Maximum PV Array Power : 600 W - it could be a little small. considering the inverter size ( 3 kva). Maybe look at a 48v system that could give you a little bit more on the PV side. Alternative you could also look at the option to get a separate MPPT later should the need arise. But then it will add to your cost. Or you could wheal and deal over time and sell as you upgrade , that is if that could work for you . As @Fazil said it will largely depend on what you would want to power over the long term. If it is for loadshed and just to run the TV and lights once a month or so .. Go for it
  19. Sorry , correction my friend , in the sake of transparency. Lets not beat around the bush. He was banned and then unceremoniously deleted from the forum. I am not much on the forum these days but I assume that he insulted someone heavily in the PF public forum. In all my years being part of forums he only the the second one that I have seen been deleted. The other guy came out on a US form and made some seriously bad remarks. So I would assume it would be something bad that placed Power Forum in a serious bad light. ,,,,
  20. I can see why not , you will might need some one way valves. Here is an idea. most of it is to account for the push and pull of the pump as I am not sure what pressure it has. But also keep in mind that once the geyser is running you will only use the element for a very short time to top up the temps. So the heat pump might be an overkill.
  21. @d3nominat0r - so far so good. Cant complain but keep in mind that the Geyser can not handle any pressure. 400KPA will pop it like a baloon .
  22. Yes I also saw that one - Junk mail if I remember. I requested a speck sheet. Will see of it arrives. ..
  23. Hozid gents. Does any one here have an idea how bad/good the brand is.I can't seem to find any info on the net...
  24. Thank you Jaco ! Thats the problem if you go out out the "Mold" and get special stuff. .. Ill let him know
  25. Thanks. Will be grate if we can help him out.
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