Peter Topp

Hi I found a good explanation on the web for why you should not join neutral to earth at your DB or permanently at your inverter. "Why not short neutral and ground locally? What happens if a neutral wire breaks upstream? Everything else downstream of the wire break is trying to return current via neutral. So all that current from all those machines travels the neutral wire to your illegal short, hops to ground, and takes ground back to the main panel, via the official neutral-ground bond, back to source. This means many amperes of current are coming through your little plug. Neutrals don't have fuses, so this burns your house down. What if a ground wire breaks upstream? Normally if a neutral wire breaks, current can no longer return to source, and this has the effect of "floating" the neutral wire at line voltage. If you have also bridged it to ground, now you are also floating the grounding system at line voltage, at least on your machine. Anybody who comes in contact with that gets shocked. What if both neutral and ground take a hit? Similarly what if all wires are cut, and the machine has capacitors, or inductive kickback as it spins down? Again neutral floats up toward line voltage which the system would be able to handle normally. Your bootleg bonding means ground floats too, and shocks people."

Hi P1000 I see you are confused. I had another look. I have had a 3kw inverter with a pwm and after looking at the manual I see they do suggest you can connect in parallel. I do believe you could be correct to install the panels in parallel. My original thinking is that the voltage at its peak will only be about 25v (31.3v-20%) at its peak during the day and by doubling the output to the inverter you could be closer to the 30/32v for most of the day for the best efficiency.

Hi I have a 20-tube retrofit for my 150l geyser. It works well in summer however in winter it is useless as the tubes are older and not that efficient. To fix this I feed the 150l liter geyser into a gas geyser and set the gas geyser to 50 degrees as not to add cold water. I do have a Geyserwise controller and have changed my element in the geyser to 1.5kw to save the Geyserwise relay. I switch the element off and when the gas geyser gave me trouble I used the element as a backup. That said you can still use your element with a Geyserwise controller to increase your temperature and you can do this at any time by setting the timers or even do it manually without a gas geyser. If you do not want to use electricity ever then I suppose the shade cloth will work best.

Hi GraigZA The four 280w panels will suffice for your inverter.

Hi To my knowledge inverter's pv input work best between certain voltages. My best guess for this inverter as I have no manual the pv voltage should be close to 30/32v to work the best. If this is true putting the panels all in parallel would limit your available power. In this case, 2 panels in a series would give you the earliest power output during the day.

Hi I have included a drawing of how to join neutral to earth if the inverter does not do it. This is only if the earth leakage is after the inverter. I have also included a drawing of a test resistor to test if the earth leakage is working. The resistor is a 4K7 10watt resistor (47ma) which is connected to live and earth on a 3pin plug. A normal earth leakage trips at about 30ma so this setup will trip it and I have tested it. If it does not trip the earth leakage switch plug off as the resistor will get hot. I hope this will help.

Hi I do believe in overspec of the pv panels however in this case the open circuit voltage is 80v and the 300w panels are on this limit. If you overspec you stand a chance you can damage the inverter and I would not advise anyone to do this. You can overspec the current but this is limited to the number of panels used.

Hi GraigeZA You are very limited in the solar panel area. The limitations are the 80v open circuit voltage and the maximum wattage of 1200w. The best you can do is 4 x 300w solar panels with 2 parallel strings of 2 panels in series. You cannot go any higher as the open circuit voltage is too high. It is a pity you are limited as you can only get about 5amps max at 220vac at best. You can only expect 80% of this with the full sun which is about 4 amps at 220vac. I hope this will help you.

Hi As far as I know and understand the inverter needs to be well ventilated as described in the installation manual. The cabinet will definitely stop good ventilation. The inverter will get hot when in use and it needs good ventilation for cooling. If you drill holes in the steel enclosure with fans it will not be weatherproof. The recommended clearance is 50cm to the side. So I do believe it would affect the warranty.

Hi All I installed an 8KW Sunsynk hybrid inverter 3yrs ago. I have no problems and found it to be a fantastic, reliable unit as I have had 3 previous inverters which were not as good. The inverter has the older data logger which uses the Solarman app. This week I noticed that the data shown on the app had changed. The data shown previously on the diagram was the PV generation, Battery, Grid, and Consumption. The problem lies with Consumption. It previously showed consumption used from the Sunsynk UPS output (backup load). This has recently changed to show the load at the installed ct. This is not the data I want. I recently upgraded the Sunsynk firmware and I am not sure if this has anything to with the change. This means cannot monitor the output of the inverter and I do not want to change the position of the ct. I also do not want to spend the money on a new data logger. I would appreciate it if anyone can give me some advice on this problem.

Hi Gnome When I first started my borehole project I did consider RO filtering. After having my water analyzed (which I would say is important) I found it only had large iron and manganese problems, This would not be solved with RO filtering. IF you look at the water analysis which I posted after filtration you will see I have good quality water and I do not need RO Filtering. For me RO filtering would be a waist and it also waists a lot of water to wash away the impurities. I can use up to 60 Kl of water a month because of irrigation and a large household. I do have a UV light in line before the JOJO tank. I also use a ESpring filter for cooking and drinking water only because I had this unit before I sank a borehole. I also run a parallel system with the municipality for household water which is throttled as I need need to use some water to pay sewer costs. I also do have a small RO filter system packed away in my garage should it in the future become necessary.

Hi JohanO Just a word of caution when checking. With the high voltage produced during sunlight arching can occur and you can be burnt or get a shock. I hope you have some sort of isolation when you swap inputs or work on the unit. Thinking about the problem a single faulty pv unit can also cause the problem if shorted to earth.

Hi JohanO If there is a crack in the insulation the higher voltage when the 3 extra panels can show up as a problem. This how I would check the problem. 1) Check the second string of 6 panels in series separately on another input if no problem continue. 2) Check the second string of 6 panels in series separately on the input where fault shows up if no problem continue. 3) Check cables of fault stings and repair or replace cable. If in step 1 or step 2 you have a problem you need to check and repair or replace all cables if this does not solve the problem you will need to have the Deye unit checked.

Hi JohanO Fault 23 means you have a current leak before the unit either a short circuit or arching. You would have to check your cabling from the pv's to the unit for cracks. If you have surge arrestors connected they will also have to checked. The cable can also be checked with a megger when the cable is disconnected from the panels and Deye unit. It might be easier just to replace the cable. Does this happen to both series strings or just one? You can test one at a time.

Hi JohanO I have quoted you the specs of the Deye Kw inverter needed for the pv panels . Here it is in detail. PV String Input Data Max. DC Input Power (W): 10400W. PV input Voltage (V): 370V (100V-500V). MPPT Range (V): 125-425V. Start-up Voltage (V): 150V. PV Input Current (A): 22A + 22A. No. of MPPT Trackers: 2 No. of Strings Per MPPT Tracker: 2+2. .

Hi JohanO As far as I can deduce from what you have given. This what I can suggest. As you have 12 X JA 450 W panels. Each panel has an output of Voc 49,7v and 10.44A max. I would have 2 strings X (6 x panels in series) on the input of the Deye inverter. (2 X inputs) It is better to use only 2 strings as the start up voltage is 150V (the voltage the unit is able to utilize the power input from the panels). If you use only 2 strings it allows you to utilize the power at a lower level on cloudy days. With 3 panels in series you output at the best sunlight is less than 150V (41.42V x3= 123,6V for each string). In short this means you would not be able to utilize the pv panels to get the best power input to the 8KW Deye if you use 4strings x (3 panels in series). You can put up to 425Voc (Volts open circuit) max and 9Amps max on each input. As you can produce slightly more amps it really does not matter and if you do the unit will only utilize 9amps. I think some updated units allow slightly more amps to accommodate bigger panels. This would be 298.2 Voc (volts open circuit) and 10,44A max for each series string which is well within the specification. You should not connect any panels in parallel as each panel is already at the input current limit. You will not need any combiner boxes if you connect panels in series. I hope this explanation helps.

HI I have further updated my borehole water system as follows. After adding a 100l pressure tank which has helped a lot by reducing the motor switching I found that I had to manually switch off the irrigation system when it rains. To fix this I first bought a rain sensor and integrated it into my system. This seemed to work great however with a rain sensor when the rain stops and the wind is blowing the sensor dries out quickly and the system will irrigate even if the ground is saturated. To combat this I use a new device which has just come on the market, which is used together with the rain sensor. The sensor is a Sonoff Smart Soil Moisture Sensor MS01 coupled to a Sonoff TH10/16. The device can be set to switch on and off at adjustable moisture (%RH) values from a smartphone or pc. With all the rain I have had this has helped tremendously and now I can say my borehole water system is fully automatic. I hope this will help someone with similar problems.

Hi nico1 Good to hear from you and that you have learned a valuable lesson. Just to clarify the output from your previous system. I believe you can draw the high current if you have a combined generator or a another constant power source (pv panels are not constant eg: clouds etc.) that is combined with the mains input, however as I said you cannot draw the full power from the mains input as you are limited to the specified value of the inverter. This is only true if the specific inverter allows for this function.

Hi Gourish I have a look at the specs and they look good. For my personal use my ph has always been a problem as my ph is always below 6.5 and I add calcite after 1st stage initial filtering. As far as cost effective goes I cannot see it. At the Filtershop it goes for R3375.00 a 25kg bag. A 1054 FRP vessel will require 2 bags. R6750.00 to fill a 1x FRP vessel is out of my league. I only use a venturi aerated Clinobrite in all my stages and is not ph reliant at R320.00 a 25kg bag that makes it more than 10x less expensive to do the same job however you might need a extra stage of filtering.

Hi The Asute switch works with the Smart life and CBI Home app and not with the eWeLink app.

Hi I guess this a battery cable. In the case you cannot get anyone with a large crimper to help you. This not the best method however it works as an alternative. Strip the wire and fit the lug. Put the lug with the wire in a vice and close vice tightly. This will flatten the lug which is not the best. Pull on the wire to check and if a little loose, repeat. You can also put a screw on the side of lug and tighten after the first attempt to put an indentation in the lug to stop the wire from coming loose Something to keep in mind. Loose or bad connections with large amounts of current is bad news.

Hi I now have a good understanding of passthrough however I do believe there are many members who do not and I do not see it explained well anywhere. The posts give a good insight of how passthrough works. The bottom line that the inverter without a generator or pv will only generate the rated KW and will trip out if used incorrectly to supply a load exceeding the rated KW. I would think most users including myself use the inverter (Sunsynk 8KW) for load shedding and to minimize grid use. The passthrough function would have to monitored well for smooth changeover when no grid is available.

Hi I understand that however a inverter is also for load shedding and cannot sustain 90A loads as suggested.

Hi I agree that that is from three sources however should there be no power from mains or pv the battery or inverter cannot sustain that power and therefor this setup would not be normal and the current is just on about 41amps which is about the about the max limit of the inverter not 90amps.Some members think that would be able to pass through the 90A from mains as I have had this discussion in other posts. A member had bought a 2KW inverter to handle 60A amps because of the passthrough spec.

Hi Achmat Your picture shows exactly what I said max of about 10Kw which is 5Kw battery+ 5Kw Load 220v x (24A +24A). The ups to me only supports excess power and will be limited. The explanation you have given defies the limitation of the inverter and would be in alarm mode if you draw that amount of current.