JayGee

More experienced members of this forum are better qualified to comment on inverters. I bought a Fivestar inverter, it seems to be sold under the Must brand too. It does the job, it''s ok for a UPS but its not the type of product I would pay an electrician to come out to install permanently into my DB board. As far as I can tell it does not have any grid synchronization or feedback so this was not a concern for me. I will most likely ask this forum for advice when its time to do a permanent installation. I am sure there are COC requirements. Other forum members has spoken highly of Sunsynk and Dye. Those will be on the top of my list when its time for replacement. My batteries has both BMS current limiting and a breaker, I did not add an inline fuse between the battery and inverter. Most server rack batteries come with over current protection. Ultimately, this is a hack job of note and only a temporary solution. I tried to keep it as simple as possible to meet my needs for now and not set the house on fire. There are really only two expensive components that can be carried forward, the battery and inverter. Good luck, it's awkward trying to deal with loadshedding in a rented property.

I live in a rented apartment too, this created some difficulties dealing with load shedding. I cannot make changes to my DB board or touch the wiring in the apartment. I work from home so when we went into stage 6 my power trolley just couldn’t cope. I contacted Solar Installers, but they didn’t want to help since I could not make changes to the wiring. I did not know about this forum or anything about solar/backup electricity solutions. In my desperation, after watching a Will Prowse video, I went to China Mall, bought a 5kw axpert clone inverter and a 4.8 kWh lithium battery. This is the video that started it all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdeZz4QvxG0&t=314s. I wired them together, set the inverter to ups mode and set the voltages for LiFEPo4. I run AC into the inverter from a wall socket. As you can imagine, I have horrible extension cords running all over the show, it cannot be helped where I am. It did solve load shedding, I run fridge, computers, network, lights, TVs and a gaming computer from this setup, I don’t even notice when load shedding kicks in. I can easily get 5 hours of runtime from the system, if I turn of a few things, I can get 8 hours. Now that I know more, I wish I had spent more on the inverter, I will have to replace it when I move to a property I own. At least the batteries I can reuse. Dangerous voltages etc. You can kill yourself if you get it wrong.