Natures Heaven

the last bvm702 i bought was R2250excl and the usb direct was around R190excl

lets just remember that battery voltage is a very poor indicator for a state of charge. its been said here before but if you can invest in a BMV then you should.  

I'm pretty sure he is talking with a load connected.
Natures maybe you can do an experiment and disconnect the loads and turn of the inverter in the morning and leave it for a few minutes and measure the battery bank volts just to confirm this

46 v  is quite low, that,s probably around 30% or less charge. That is will be seriously shortening your battery lifespan. Consider starting the generator earlier in the morning so the batteries don,t get so low.

Hi
Very happy chappy, some feedback - installed second bank batteries running 3 days now as follows
Usually at 3 am the system died - now at 9:00 we are at 46V not bad - start genie for about 2 hours (9-11) batteries at 55v batteries during day at 50.8v-51v, evening - start genie at 19:00 - 21:00 batteries at 55v, last till 9:00 at 46V
So this week more PV's, so maybe no more genie
Thank you again for every body's input and info, looks like we on the right track
 

Someone finally said it :-)
48V is always better than 24V, and 24V is always better than 12V. The only reason to go 24V is because you're as poor as a churchmouse and don't want to buy everything in multiples of 4, but you are also wise enough to know the power limitations on 12V, so you attempt a middle of the road compromise. Honestly, that is why I did it. Turns out a 24V system works fine below 3kva :-)

One upside to going 12V, is when you move on, you chuck that inverter in the car boot for emergencies. Or sell it on gumtree. Always a market for 12V stuff. Not so much for the rest. So as stop-gap stuff 12V can be justified.. Or if you literally just want to back up very light loads.
But I think this has been rehashed enough times. :-)

Thanks guys will give some feedback on changes and how it works
Cheers
 
PS: this group rocks

Thanks guys will give some feedback on changes and how it works
Cheers
 
PS: this group rocks

Yes this is the best option. Weasel explained why it wont help getting a different inverter while using the exsiting battery bank.
Use your existing inverter and just add on with panels and better batteries later

i've found general rule of thumb calcs are about 4 to 5 times the constant load gives you PV Watts, then Battery watt hour is constant load x 30 for roughly 20-30% DOD.
in this case then what the guys are saying works out. 300W constant is 1200W worth of PV and 9000 watt hour storage, on 12V that is 750Ah. 
 these calcs work out nicely if your talking about a constant load.
just because you arrange them differently to 12v and then have more amp hour capacity doesn't give you more storage.its the same amount no matter how you arrange it. you will need double the batteries and have 1200W of PV to attempt off grid.
ps, Deltecs not bad batteries at all. not truly deep cycle and more Leisure caravan that sort of thing but good none the less.

Thank you for that TTT
So what I will do is go buy 4 x more solars put solars in one string of 2 x strings and see how it goes, thank you to every bodies input I hope  I understand better it looks like a very complicated system.
I do understand that more PV is better as this will give power to the house during the day and charge the batteries to full capacity for night time, think next month I will go for the
6v Trojan batteries as I will then have 6 x 260 watt solars

Note, there are two kinds of T105 batteries, the one for golf carts, and the -RE one for renewable energy. You want the latter type. Has lower equalise and absorb voltages and better cycle life. Costs only slightly more.
Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

But why should I start out with a "small" foundation to do my upgrades if I know I am going to do that.
Do you even dare hand your wife a broom to clean the carpets?
I would rather do this ones and right from the start, do all the research I could and advise from the forums and start out without needing to buy the wrong stuff first.
This is why I went with with the T105 RE's they have charge voltages that fit the Axpert well.
Then because I do treat my batteries well and have the gennie/Eskom to fall back and not go below 70% SOC I can follow the following from the Trojan website
"Many experts recommend that batteries be equalized periodically, ranging anywhere from once a month to once or twice per year. However, Trojan only recommends equalizing when low or wide ranging specific gravity (>0.030) are detected after fully charging a battery."

Month 7(every day down to +-80% SOC and on occasion down to 70%) almost done on my bank and my gravity readings are still 100% acceptable

Okay, yes it will work.
But now all of the sudden the R/$ takes another dive oil shoots back up to  $110 a barrel (currently +-$48)
This would make running my gennie even less affordable.
I want to rely on my solar more, heck even running on the bank is cheaper than running the gennie.
Now the 48v bank is more efficient and hammers the battery bank a lot less when running the higher loads.
This is something Chris did, he just needs to use the gennie when the need arises.

The other reason he is living off-grid and as money allows he can upgrade his panels to start running more and more luxury items.
Microwave, kettle, iron, vacuum etc (can use less gass if he only uses a gas stove, another saving during day time)
Only expense now would be the the panels and cables since he already makes use of a big enough inverter

He already uses the 5kVA inverter

If you can for now try to get the panels on 6 and 9 later as it is better to run them in strings of 3 panels per string with the Axpert 5kVA.

Hi everybody
New in the solar business, spend the whole day on the forum, very good input and lots of ideas, we need some help as we are totally of the grid. Our system (still very small)
5KW Axpert Inverter
2 x 260 watt Canadian solar panels
4 x 105 AH batteries
1 x 2.5 Kw Generator
After buying all the correct appliances we use about 300 watts continuously sometimes spike to 500 w - one problem our system dies every morning around 3am, we then start the 2.5kw generator to charge the batteries, but we do use the generator a lot when using power tools and while we use it it helps the solar to charge the batteries.
What do you think we need to do, get more PV panels or more batteries or both as we chat to lots of suppliers and every guy has a different story.
Could someone give us the correct settings for our inverter for this scenario also please
Thank you in advance
 

Thank you all
So they sold me the wrong batteries from start, I got a pm from Mike and he said I need to look into the Trojans batteries
Just to be sure
If I add 6 more 260watt panels and get 8 x 205ah batteries, I should be ok (with genie as backup)
Thank you TTT for the explanation and no they did not explain it like that to us
Thank you Plonkster - with tight budgets we have to grow with the system, so I will first add one more bank and double the PV's for now as soon as we are on 8 panels we can change batteries to the Trojans and run tests
Thank you DeepBass - we have not tried to switch of fridges but we do disconnect all other stuff - we did get A++ fridges and freezers.
This is our appliances and usage
Internet   19,2   24     19,2   24 VoIP Phone 12   24 Laptop 1   45   4 Laptop 2   45   4 Radio   14   12 Cell 1 charging 10   2 Cell 2 charging 10   2 Cell 3 charging 10   2 Tablet Charging 10   2 Fridge and Freezer   313 KWh per year each               At least we are in the right direction now as it is very confusing when you hear different stories
Thank you
Regards

Without getting into the math, your system is half the size of mine (in PV and battery terms) and your loads are similar. My system isn't big enough to be fully off-grid (which is fine, I'm a city dweller). So the answer is both: You need more PV and more battery.
Those 105Ah batteries are usually not real deep cycles, and since you're killing them every day, they will not see next winter.
The first thing I would actually do is try to get that baseline load down.
TTT did a whole lot of maths already and it sounds about right. Without even looking at that, just sucking me thumb here, sounds like you need 7kwh generated per day (minumum!) and 14kwh storage (for 50% DoD, better battery life). You have maybe 3kwh and 4.8kwh storage at the moment. If you double the batteries and PV and get your baseline down it might work, but you'll need to run the generator on rainy days.