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Don

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Everything posted by Don

  1. They will go do shopping with a brick in one hand.
  2. It will not hurt to have some cash under the mattress as well. No card machine will work during a blackout. The first few days there might be some garages and food stores open that will operate on generators, until cash buyers run out of cash, or the generators run out of fuel. Cash will be King.
  3. Restore the power grid | South Africans in the dark about Stage 16 | eNCA
  4. Eskom is the only company in the world I know of that begs their customers on National TV not to use their product. Those adverts with the dial showing the grid usage and pleading that you switch off swimming pool pumps and everything else except your TV.
  5. Some wise words from our President. South Africans will be ‘first to know’ when power grid collapses, says Ramaphosa (ewn.co.za)
  6. Not only that. In the industry we have concentrators and smelters you cannot just shut down. They do not load shed. Eskom would give them a call and request they shut down their operation. It normally takes an hour or two to shut down these operations. I read an article where one of these smelters were requested to shut down and they just ignored the call and kept going. Eskom is now under the impression the smelter will go down shortly, but it never does. That puts the grid at risk. Should 3 or 4 of their generating units suddenly go down, Eskom are in deep trouble trying to keep the grid up.
  7. In a perfect world. This country is far from perfect.
  8. About 8-10 years ago I worked for a huge Mining company and at that time we already put plans together in the event of a total grid collapse. At that time Eskom gave us 3-4 weeks as their best estimate to bring the grid back online. They also informed us it is a not that easy to bring back the grid. At that stage they only had 2 Engineers that were capable of bringing back the grid in the country. I am sure they are no longer working for Eskom. Hopefully they left their notes behind or trained someone to be able to do it.
  9. I have the same problem with my 5.6K MK IV 48V inverter. I cannot boot up the inverter with the battery first. My Playtech UP5000 goes into fault mode immediately if I switch on the battery. For some reason the battery see the inverter as a dead short I think. Only once Grid power is available and the inverter is booted up, can I switch on the battery. The only way you can do it is to disconnect the batteries from the inverter. Pull the fuses at the fuse disconnect. Then boot up the batteries. Then slam the fuse disconnect closed. The inverter will boot up and do the battery check for about 3 seconds, then connect the battery to the inverter. I have not tried booting up the inverter with connecting solar panel first. Disconnect all loads first. That might also work to get the inverter up in running first.
  10. There might be some stores and petrol stations that will still operate for a day or two with their generators, but they will only accept cash, as card payments will not be possible. due to all banks will be offline. Then the looting will start. It will be total chaos. I don't think it will even be safe to be on the roads. The gangs will force you off the road and empty your tank Mad Max style. Bringing the Grid back is not a simple process and will take some time. They will bring back one municipality at a time and wait for the grid to stabilise before switching on the following one. It will probably take between 2-3 weeks to bring the grid back online. That is assuming all infrastructure stays in tack. Some will obviously be in fault mode due to stolen cables and some in fault mode due to shorting due to damaged infrastructure. These faults will first have to be repaired. Once the grid is back up, you will still not be able to buy food from your local shopping center, as they will first have to repairs everything that was destroyed by the looting and then restock. The worst for me will be the lack of communication with loved ones. during this time. My mom is 83 years old and lives alone in a flat 300 kilometers away from me. I will have to drive through immediately and pick her up. I try and keep my MP200 diesel full at all times Her flat will have power with the inverter, batteries and panels I installed for her, but without water and food, she will not survive. I might be wrong, but if you think a blackout will be bad, an actual one will be twice as bad.
  11. No, they are not. The batteries are shot. Lead acid batteries are not designed for solar applications, even if they are called "Deep Cycle" batteries. In my experience, lead acid batteries need at least 24 hours to be fully charged. Once they achieve their float voltage, they need to trickle charge for many hours in order to reach full capacity. If you load shed more than once per day, you are dead. Then the batteries will discharge at a faster rate the second and third time round you load shed in 24 hours, as the batteries had no chance to recover. Your system will go below 50% SOC very quickly and you damage them even more. I give your system another 3-4 months and you will be down to 30 minutes before the system switches off due to low voltage.
  12. Thanks @Coulomb. I am thinking the inverter has a problem. I have never before had a problem to boot up the inverter with a battery. As you say, when the battery does it checks when booting up, it might see the inverter as a short and go to fault mode. Now I have to disconnect the battery from the inverter and boot up the battery first, then connect it to the inverter. What bothers me is that sometime during the night, the battery went into fault mode while everything was up and running.
  13. I installed a RCT 5.6K Mk4 inverter, one UP5000 Pylontech battery and 4 x JA 545 watt solar panels at my mom's flat. The system works great. Last weekend I added some plugs to the essential side feeding from the inverter. After I completed the wiring I had to boot up the inverter. Normally I start off with switching on the AC power from Eskom. This time I decided to boot up the Pylontech battery first. The battery went into fault mode immediately with Red Fault light. I tied again, battery goes into fault mode with Red light. I then switched off the battery and flipped the AC power switch and booted up the inverter first, then started up the battery. No issues, battery started up. Then switched on the solar panels. That is an issue for me. If I switch everything off to work on the system and we do load shedding, I will have to wait for load shedding to end before I can boot up the system. This morning my mom phones me and informs me the Red fault Light is on the battery. She switched off the battery and switched it back on, but the Red Fault light comes on immediately. Now the battery will not boot up even with Inverter running on AC power. I tell her to pull the battery disconnect fuses between battery and Inverter and switch on the battery. The battery boots up. Close the battery fuse disconnect and the battery connects to inverter and starts charging. All up and running. The Pylontech battery cannot boot up connected to the Inverter. Is this a battery problem or is it an Inverter problem?
  14. 100%. The ideal scenario is they phone you and say, i.e., disconnect solar panels, disconnect all loads. Once you confirm they should say, right we will now upgrade the firmware and it will take 10 minutes, please be patient. Please inform me should the display go out or whatever. Once done, they should confirm if everything is still fine on your side. Then instruct you to either reboot the inverter or if it is not required, to re-connect the solar panels and thereafter the loads. Then if everything seems to be running 100%, confirm the new firmware was installed on the inverter, then hang up.
  15. The only thing that is disingenuous is that they do a firmware upgrade irrespective of the state of the inverter, i.e. running at full load, when it suits them. Therefore, 10 people have jumped over a cliff and 5 have survived, therefore it is safe to jump over the cliff?
  16. Logic would tell you, if you want to update the firmware and overwrite the eeprom, only the inferter and the battery should be running. Disconnect everything else, especially any load on the inverter. Or do people think it is wise to do this while the inverter is trying to manage 3kW of load in the background? After the firmware upgrade, the inverter probably needs to be re-booted in any case. I have never seen a doctor trying to do a knee replacement while a guy is busy doing a marathon.
  17. I would just use ESKOM to top off the batteries. It is the cheapest option. I had a 7kW generator. That thing gobbled up 25l of fuel in no time. Every second day I had to go buy more fuel. It is very expensive to run a generator, excluding the capital cost to buy the thing in the first place. If you live out on a farm or are determined to go off grid, it is a different story. Then you bite the bullet and pay-up.
  18. I don't have any knowledge or experience on these batteries. If this was my battery, looking at the Spec sheet, I would set the following parameters: 1) Battery float charge = 52.5V 2) Battery absorption charge = 53.0V 3) Battery equalization charge = Off (disabled) With these settings you should still be able to achieve 100% SOC without cooking the battery at max. voltage.
  19. 50A each to make up the 100A.
  20. Yes, it is not a problem.
  21. Lead acid and gel batteries are the worst option for renewable energy installations. They need to trickle charge up to 24 hours to regain full capacity. With loadshedding up to 3 times a day, those batteries can never be fully charged. They are not designed for renewable applications and do not last. Once you have a waterfall drop in voltage on those batteries, that is their limit. They are done. Throw them far away and invest in Lithium iron batteries. I know they come at a cost, but that is unfortunately the only route to go.
  22. Flashing failed about another 5 times. At times the speed would go down to 1 block per second and would fail or just fail 3 - 5 minutes in. Restarted laptop and inverter and it finally flashed successfully.
  23. Note to self: In future, don't do firmware upgrade half an hour before dark and ensure laptop is fully charged. I am back on 90.28 running around with candles. All Led lamps are flat and need charging. Had to charge laptop at neighbour.
  24. @Coulomb, it went well up to about 60%, then stopped. Retry did not work. I now have 32 flashing on the display. Please help.
  25. Thanks @Coulomb. I will flash my inverter with the patched software . Is the 12.21 firmware included, or should I first download it somewhere else?
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