Don

You are right @Marcb, you can fit 2 x rows of 6 panels next to each other on the roof = 12 panels 1 x 320w panel: Size: 1 x 2 = 2m square. Therefore 320/2 = 160w per square meter. How you calculate what you can expect is as follows: 12 x 320W = 3840 Watt You multiply that with an efficiency of 3.5 = 13 440 Watt. That is what you can expect on average for the year. You would probably achieve an efficiency of 4.5 in summer @ 17 280 watts and say an efficiency of say 2.8 to 3.0 in winter @ 11 520 watts in winter. Just make sure you do not exceed the input volts on your inverter with 12 x 320 Watt panels. Hope that answers your question.

On average for the Year about 13 500 watt per day. Summer average 17 300 watt and winter around 11 500 watt.

Hi @Leondk, if you have an Axpert inverter, get the Omnipower. Axpert inverters cannot charge Trojan batteries at the right Voltage, let alone do an equalization charge on them. You will constantly undercharge them and they won't last long.

I agree.

All I am saying is kids will be kids, leave them alone. Don't try and fix insignificant "abnormalities" with a little pill for them to act normal. So what if they run around too much or laugh too loud. That is their personality, you don't screw with that. Who can define normal in any case? You will do them more harm than good. So every time Johnny hits a cricket ball through the window, you give him a double dose of whatever he is on at the time, because he is not normal, haha? When a kid chops off the the dog's head with an axe with splattered blood dripping from his face and smiles at you, you can consider it.

I made the school psychologist cry and chase me out of her office. She refused to work with me. I was not allowed into the German class as well. I sat on the stoep having a sun tan for a whole semester. It started when we had a test. 20 Afrikaans word that we had to translate. I did not know when to use "das" or "der". So I added "Das" in front of every word, i.e. Die Bybel, I would give the answer as "Das Bybel" and got 70% for the test. I thought it was really funny and told the teacher what I did. It cracked the teacher up. Then she chased me out of the class.

While we are off topic, I might as well say something as well. This is a true story: I hated school. From Std. 6, things started going pear shaped. During the year I would fail about 3 subjects every semester and I would scrape through the last semester every single year. I became a hooligan and not even my parents could control me. When I got home, they would both sit there crying, asking me what I screwed up for the day and who would be calling. In Std. 8 I had a police record for spray painting our neighborhood's shopping center windows with spray paint. I had a 50cc bike and drove like a bat out of hell. Not even the cops with their 1000cc bikes could catch me. I phoned the headmaster pretending to be my dad and told him I had a bike accident and was in hospital in a coma. I bunked 62 straight days in one go, until my class teacher phoned my mom to find out if I am out of my coma in hospital. That was the end of that extended holiday. Our headmaster was Dr Jacobs, not just an ordinary guy. A very learned guy. In Std. 9 after we did something stupid again, he asked me to stay behind after we all got a few shots with the cane. I obviously held the school record for that as well in the school. Twice as much as the guy in second place. He told me I am a washout and that he has given up on me and he has made a note in hid dairy that I will never hold a proper job and would probably end up in jail for most of my life before the age of 25. That afternoon I sat at the street corner on my bike watching as the local bottle store deliver and offloaded a lot of liquour at his house I ordered on the book on his behalf, pretending to be him on the phone. I knew he drank whiskey, so ordered a lot of it and chucked in a few other bottles as well. After school I did my 2 years military service (sentence) and landed up in Angola during Operation Protea in 1981 at the age of 18. So I shot a few guys, unfortunately they died, luckily nobody kept that against me. It was self defense, I mean, they shot at me as well. You don't waive an AK47 at me pulling the trigger and get away with it! After the army In 1983, I started my career. I had a slight problem being accepted as a learner official, as I did not have Science, only Mathematics, which I scraped through on 40% in Matric. I think because I played 1st team rugby from standard 8 to Matric, they let it slide, but made that one of the terms that I had to play rugby for the Mine, which I did. This time it was different, the exams actually meant something to me. Who cares when the first French revolution took place in 1600 something and when Henry the 16 was succeeded by Henry the 17th. In 1988 I wrote my Advanced Certificate in Mine Environmental Control and obtained 4 distinctions out of the 6 papers I wrote. In 2003 I got Promoted to the Group Ventilation and Refrigeration Engineer for Anglo Platinum at the age of 40. (The big boss at head office). Probably also the youngest guy ever to hold that position in history. In September 2015 I retired at the age of 53. Not bad for a hooligan and a washout. I think that very clever Dr Jacobs would turn in his grave if he found out I actually made it in life and never ended up in jail as the "clever man" predicted with his Doctorate in Psychology and actually got it wrong when he diagnosed me. I am just glad they never knew about Ritalin that time. Either my parents or the school would have overdosed me with that crap, I am sure.

Hi @Tokkiebod, you can download the latest version from here.

Hi @PeterGutti, if you are limited to charging at 30 Amps, that is not a battery killer, it would just take longer to charge. That low voltage setting is a concern to me. It is way to low to charge your batteries properly. You are constantly undercharging your batteries. That would impact on your battery capacity in no time. Don't be surprised if your current capacity of 2-4 day drops down to 1 day in the near future. If you run on solar, do you change the charge voltage to 57.6 Volts, or do you just leave it at 51.8 Volts?

If the MPPT resets, it goes to 0 watt output between 20 - 30 seconds, then goes back to where it should be. If it goes downs to 200 W, it is not resetting, it is just cutting back because of insufficient sun. One of my security cameras is set on my solar tracker. Once my solar output took a dip and I looked at that camera and only saw blue sky. I got out my dark glasses and went outside to see what was wrong with the sun, just to make sure it was not dying on us. I could not believe it, there was only one small little cloud in the sky, right in the path of the sun. That is way above the minimum and should not be a problem. I do have resets once in a while, but not sure what causes them. I have high loads switching on and off on a daily basis, but not sure that it i\s the cause of the reset, otherwise I would have many resets daily, which is not the case. As you can see the before and after output is exactly the same, nothing started up to cause the reset. For some reason the MPPT gets confused, perhaps too many if's and but's in the code. Then it goes all the way down to 0, recalculates everything and goes back to where it should be. This is what a reset looks like. I had to go back a few days to find it.:

During my normal usage/load during the day, it is impossible to have voltage overshoots, as I am never close to bulk charging voltage. I would gradually bring my SOC up from say 85 to 95% during the day to the time the sun sets. Once the sun sets and I go to grid, the batteries are nearly fully charged. I would briefly go to bulk charge at a very stable voltage, then absorb, over to float and an hour to an hour and a half later sitting at 100%. No voltage overshoots. That suits me at this stage to do the final charging from grid.. I prefer to keep my batteries at say 90-95% SOC during the day. When the tumble drier or dishwasher stops for half an hour to 45 minutes, it is not a problem, the batteries would during that time take up the load and ensure my panels keep going without pulling back. Then from about 15h00, I start cutting down on my load and push everything the panels produce into the batteries.

Yes, charging on grid you have constant amps at the right voltage non stop. My batteries probably charge within an hour and a half when on grid. On solar, every time a cloud moves in front of the sun, the stopwatch stops. It therefore takes a lot longer on solar. I also noticed a few voltage overshoots on solar. With the solar constantly moving up and down, the MPPT had a tough time regulating the voltage. Cloud moves in, it dives down, cloud moves past, it shoots up like a rocket and when it pulls back, it is too late, the voltage overshoots.

It has never gone to zero. It comes down to 10-15 Ah and when the BMV jumps to 100% SOC, the Ah resets to zero. When I installed it in October / November last year.

@PaulF007, no, I do not mind. Here are the graphs.

Hi @PaulF007, here is my SOC graphs charging my batteries on solar only for the day. We had rain until about 07h00 this morning. As you can see from the graphs, my solar production started about an hour later than normal. I had a few clouds as well during the day. It took a bit longer for the batteries to charge on solar and therefore the increased SOC before the jump to 100%. My SOC went to 100% at 15h46. I think on a cloudless day under "normal" circumstances, I could get them to 100% by 13h00. At least my batteries had a day off for a change.

I still see them once in a while, just over 60 Volts. Not lately however, but on the other hand I have not really been looking at it for a while.

I see tomorrow we have a lot of clouds, but I will do it in any case. If I run on batteries from 24h00, my SOC when the solar kicks in, is about 88-89%. If I run on batteries from about 23h00, the SOC is closer to 83-85%. I will run on batteries from 23h00 tonight. I will use a bit more power tonight and hopefully I can get them down to 80% SOC.

No, it stays a stupid comment, as charging a car battery, RV battery or solar battery, the settings remain the same. That happens when you have someone reading a script and have no idea what they are talking about. She explained it perfectly and until she started talking about solar applications, then she stuffed it up, because you don't get different settings for solar applications. They must call the guy that wrote the script to tell me how to set my settings depending whether I charge a car battery or a solar battery and I will prove him wrong. It is simple: 1.) The Charged Voltage need to be below the float voltage. 2.)The Tail current need to be above the current going into your batteries. 3.) Detection time - How long those values need to be true. You cannot change the settings. There are not different setting for charging different types of batteries. There is also no different settings for charging from grid or for charging from solar. To prove it, I will charge my batteries to 100% on solar tomorrow morning, with exactly the same settings.

Here is another example. My batteries goes above 100 amps at least twice a day. Depending what I am busy doing, for the last week I have been welding and spraying with a large compressor, the inverters would go to grid 2-3 times a day because of excessive amps drawn from my batteries or excessive load when the compressor stars up. They charge for 5 hours, then they are ready for action again. At 21h00, my batteries are sitting below 1.0 amps My batteries were lying in a box for a year before I started using them. When I started logging my Charge efficiency in December 2016, they were siting at 90.5%. My batteries are improving daily, currently my charge efficiency is around about 91.4% and my Battery Midpoint = 0.01%.

This is a normal day for my batteries. They start working hard from about 8h30. My lowest SOC is just before the sun sets. I don't get to fully charge them with solar power, they work to hard. Their resting time is when the sun sets. I basically only charge them on grid. Then they cruise along from 23h00 or 24h00 until the next day, then I hammer them again.

Yes, those are my batteries. Blady Super Batteries (BSB) for short.

The charging amps go down to 0 amps. If you put one more amp into them, they would puke I think.

I would prefer it if the BMV had settings for it it to go all the way to 100%, without taking a 4% leap in the process. Unfortunately the settings does not allow that.

No, only when you set the wrong values it has an impact. Why, there is nothing wrong with my controller. My batteries goes to 100% daily, just to fast because the Victrom BMV set values are not allowing me to fine tune my setup. My problem is the Victom BMV. Victron assumes I sit with batteries that will require at least 2.5 amps when fully charged. Well Victron got it wrong, my batteries actually goes down to 0 amps. I don't need to set them back to basic settings, basic settings are for worn batteries. If I set my batteries to those settings according to the video, my a SOC would probably jump from 90% to 100%, because it is a very easy target for my batteries to achieve. I just checked, the BMV would jump to 100% while I am halfway in absorb and sitting at a SOC of 93%, it would jump to 100%.

I have no idea what you are referring to. When did I say I wanted to use a car battery in solar application? I did not make the distinction between a "battery" and a "battery in solar application"! In the video, the presenter talks about charging a "battery" and how to set the parameters, then right at the end throws in a thing when you get to "solar battery applications", set the values as follows. That to me is just stupid. So what was the first battery she referred to? A camper deep cycle battery or a yacht deep cycle battery or a car battery? To me it goes about the amps and the volts, IRRESPECTIVE of what type of battery it is and WHAT it is used for. You charge your battery for 12 hours and it should be fully charged if you use it on a daily basis or 24 hours when you don't use it that often. You check the float voltage and the tail current going into the battery at that time as it should be fully charged. You set the Charged voltage to below the Float Voltage at that time and the Tail Current going into the battery to above the Amperage going into the battery at that time and it will go to 100%. It is simple. I cannot understand why people cannot get it?