Jaco de Jongh

Can you please take a picture of the from of the battery and post it here?

For interest sake, how any panels are currently connected tot this unit?

I'd guess that the import/export meter will have two odometer-type counters. This is probably safe enough. There are meters on the market that go into tamper mode if you overdo this, but I know of only one (a Landis GYR), even though if you google a bit there are several with the SRE feature (significant reverse energy). Many mechanical meters simply have a reverse lockup. You can reverse the rightmost red digit to zero, but it will refuse to run in reverse beyond that. Unfortunately the only way to know is to do it and see how it reacts. Fwiw, that meter looks mechanical, with a bit of 3-phase monitoring. Sorry Plonkster, I found the correct answer, must have been changing my post while you were typing yours...

According to the data sheet, the meter is available in Import only or import and export versions.I see yours is the mechanical version, import only.

There is no way to stop this from happening. Replacing the meter is the only solution. We have been trying to stop the meters from tripping for years now, but no-one could come up with an device to stop that from happening yet..

No experience with them, but I know this guys style. Always an office in PE and warehouse in JHB. Always the same pictures and the same modus operandi. He normally hits the market with specials when there is a shortage of lithium's in the country. When no one else has stock, and there is basically nothing imported or exported anywhere in the world, this guy magically gets enough stock to offer specials....... Last thing that worries me from this site... I would not enter any secure data like credit card details on a non secure site... that is looking for trouble on its own... Please stay away from sites like this. The Reputable dealers in SA all has more or less the same price (Few Hundred Rand difference at most) , if someone claims to be running specials a few thousand rand cheaper than the rest, I would not buy from them. The profit margin on the stuff is just to small to be running specials like that.

The CT is fairly old technology and was mostly used to measure the power generated by a PV inverter on the input or output of the inverter. In most cases your system will work fine without it. If you have loads connected before the inverter and you want to feed them by sending power back through the input of the inverter without sending any power back into the grid, you should rather use a Carlo Gavazzi Energy Meter. What feedback are you referring too?

Jip it would be a challenge, at 200watt the barriers will read for example 54 volt (100%), then you start a 1800wh kettle and it will drop to 52 volt, your calculation will now say that the batteries are at 80% or the likes. Now the kettle switches off and the volts go back to 54 volts or 100%. so in a space of 5 minutes the SOC went from 100 to 80 and back to 100%. and this will happen for every load that switches on and off... As you can see, this will never ever be an accurate way of doing it. The best option is to install a battery monitor, it will measure the coulombs in and out of the battery and give you a much more accurate reading of what the SOC/DOD really is.

Regretfully there is no formula for batteries in use. Voltage change depending on load, so you can not use voltage as an indication of SOC/DOD. The only time you can is if you disconnect the batteries and let them rest for a while. Those values you will need to get fro your battery manufacturer. It varies from brand to brand..

I'm guessing there has to be a measurement error; a buck converter can't boost even 0.1 V. So the panel and battery voltages are essentially the same. As I speculated above, it sounds like the power transistors in the solar charge controller have shorted¸ or the gate drivers are turning them on all the time. I don't know what you mean by the DC board. The Infinis (Voltronic Power hybrid inverter-chargers) have DC boards; perhaps you are thinking of them? Unlike the 450 V or 500 V solar charge controllers, these 145 V max SCCs connect directly to the battery (with only the 200 A fuse between the positive output and the positive battery terminal). So the DC bus isn't involved, except via the DC-DC converter (two full bridges with the high frequency transformer between them). So I don't expect any problem with the DC bus, as long as the rest of the inverter-charger seems to be working normally. All of the above was guesses, I am not familiar with the inside of an Axpert, I was just guessing that something on the DC side had to be stuffed to create the above symptoms.. I referenced to what I saw in the problematic Infinis that was stuck on my wall for a few months.

Morning @Coulomb, some advice please? Me and @WayneSi just tested the unit over the phone. We tested string by string for polarity, voltage and fuse continuity. All for strings are wired correctly and when connected to the inverter separately the volts drop from 129Volt to 53.6 volts. This volt drop is also visible when we connect all 4 strings simultaneously. Interesting though, the battery voltage at the time is 53.7V The Unit sees the 129 volt, connects to it, drops the voltage of the PV to the battery voltage and disconnects, waits a few seconds and repeats the cycle. Blown MPPT or DC Board? Something on the DC bus side not okay?

The long white just below that is a busbar used to join all 5 strings together, those blocks are just a way to connect a wire to the busbar. Effectively just a connector block. The red wire on the left , takes the combined positive to the isolator, and the red wire on the right connects the combined positive to the surge arrestor.

Gerrie, i dont know what to say right now, but lets look at this again.... The load is 1189 watts, right? on the AC side, that will be 1189 / 236.1 VAC = 5.03 amps. So the 14 amps Discharge is definitely not the AC amps, correct? If it was the load should have been 236.1V x 14A = 4627.6 Watts. The fact that its called Discharge amps is because it is the amps drawn from the batteries at that moment. so 50.4 Volts DC x 14 amps = 705.6 watts from batteries, plus 554 watts from pv = 1259.6 Watts (Load) The question is, why would the 12 x 330w (3960whp) panels only give 554wh when the load is only 1200?? watts, and take the rest from the batteries. And no, this is not normal for a 1218w load to pull down the voltage of a 3960 wh array from 125 to 53 volts, unless this test was done early morning or late afternoon.. EDIT: I see this test was done 15H19, so a volt drop is normal in this case.

Nope, its should drop to about 110-115 volts, maybe a bit lower with very heavy loads. Not sure about your battery specs.. have to check it,. Did you check the continuity of your fuses?

Thank you, from what I see here everything looks fine. When the sun is out tomorrow, please open all the fuses and then measure the voltage athe the bottom of the fuses, string by string to ensure all 4 strings are producing power. This should not happen with all 4 strings connected.