Flouw

You will have to provide more details.

Ok. Will wait for photos. But if its the older units. And all requires refurbishment and repairs. Then the price doesnt realy make sense.

Are any of them the plus/king units?

does anyone have feedback regarding the automation on the Luxpower units using Solar Assistant as yet? im looking at upgrading my inverter to a Luxpower unit. but is essential to my system that the automation still works

perhaps post the exact Axpert inverter model you have. alot of the issues/challenges you have mentioned, i have been able to resolve with Solar assistant. And a Victron smart shunt, as this monitors the SOC correctly, unless your battery communicates correctly with the inverter. Solar Assistant does have some automation options aswell now, that makes it alot less IT intensive than having to set up home assistant and and and. BUT, the likely best change i made was to an Axpert Plus model, that has better blending options. (SUB being one of the more important ones)

HI. what is all included? bracket? cables? meter? and do you have any idea if Solar assistant supports this inverter for monitoring purposes?

1. i have the inverter set to USE. 2. only have essentials connected, i run from UTI from sunset to around 22:00. base loads that time is varying as the fridge goes on and off. but it consumes 6/7% per hour. solar assist helps me to maintain the battery. i choose to cycle the battery, as it makes space to harvest PV. the next day- i need to add another battery, as mine is fully charged by 10:00 in the morning already, and the PV system is then just idling. 3. i set the float and bulk the same, as the float bug is a reality if your voltage doesnt go low enough, especially charging on PV. it only charges to float voltage. BUT, once the PV drops, it tops it off from Utility till it reaches the SOC maintainer. that is why i raised the float to where i want it to be. the 3.4v resting voltage is exactly that. resting voltage. and what i have learned with the LiFePo4, Voltage doesnt tell you much. i use to think my battery is almost empty after 4 hour load shedding, lights on, TV on. fridge running. till i fitted the Smart Shunt. then realized after a 4 hour outage, that my battery was still at least 50%.

my previous inverter didnt have the bulk timed charge function. and the floating bug is pretty much in all the inverters/batteries that cant communicate. im not running a big system. so i dont have to fast charge (less than 2 hours), so i set the bulk the same as float. 27.6 is safe. and its not in the upper curve of the voltage, so it wont run away with the PV system. i would not even use the equalization function, as i dont see the need for lithium. the esener battery BMS is apparently an active balancer, so it always balances. not only from a certain voltage. i cant give more details, as i have yet to open one to see. but i set my batteries to charge at 28.2v for 12 hours once a month. and it seems to be OK with that, lithium will only absort the power it needs, and you cant overcharge them, unless you over voltage them. do not charge them to the absolute max, and keep them there, they need to settle, otherwise it gets bloated and gas's i do have PV on the roof yes, that charges and supports all the essentials the whole day, and at night i let the battery run down to 40% SOC by 06:00. which ever comes first, as PV starts producing from there, although not much, but has enough power left for another 4 hours untill either PV is enough, or Eskom is back online if its rainy. Solar assistant helps maintain the battery, has that function. so if the battery drains faster than the graph, it switches to grid untill everything catches up. i dont charge from Eskom at all. unless the weather is really bad. IF i had to install a system again, as an backup, or for someone else, and dont have the capability to read SOC, i would again set the bulk and float to 27.6. and forget about it. ill do some tests on a lower voltage for bulk and float, to see when the "floating bug" starts setting in.

i use a Axpert type inverter. and the battery setting is on USE. as i can set the float and bulk to whatever i want. and the bulk does have the timed bulk charge function aswell (not the equalize charge function). also no comms between inverter and battery. i also had alot of questions, and sat with multimeters and and and for days and hours. so i just bought a Victron smart shunt and a Raspberry, in loaded Solar assist. yes there is still flaws. but atleast i can try resolve this myself while i am not home, as i work out of country for weeks at end. even after installing the monitoring stuff, giving me a better idea of what is going on, and and and. i still run it on 27.6v. of bulk and float. and i play around ever so often with different settings to see what effect it has. again, i cycle the battery daily, so it doesnt sit at 27.6v the whole day, probably for 4 hours or so, and then solar decreases to where it starts using battery again.

Ive set bulk and float on 27.6 v on my setup. And its been like that for some months. Yes i do cycle the battery every day. Discarge to 40% soc max.

Edit two questions where answered by reading the inverter spec sheet. What are the settings? If the battery is fully charged. The panels wont do anything. Some inverters cant "blend" Unless you switxh over to battery only. Trip the mains and see what it does. And did you make sure (+) and (-) on the PV panels are not swiched around.

EDIT(ive added a screenshot of the setting) also known as power sensing. if the current draw is very low, the inverter swithces off what mecer model is it? and there is a "power saving" setting that you need to disable. check the manual. im not 100% sure what is is called. Power saving. Standby. or something like that

send screenshot of your settings page on solar assistant. also, sign into the inverter with your phone's bluetooth, and screenshot the setting page of each. last but not least, can you confirm that both inverters are on the same firmware, and that they are "talking"to one another in parallel mode.

as a test. disconnect the batteries from one another. and see what the SOC indicators indicates for each battery.

Are the batteries communicating with one another? I would think that so many batteries is series, if not communicating, one of them could very easily go out of sync. Voltage can not be used to indicate SOC on lithium. Ive tried it. How is the equipment wired together? And where do you get the SOC reading from?

and the losses associated with inverter and batteries without solar is adding on to the grid load. so we are exactly where we where before loadshedding, in fact a little worse. some might have added panels and this reduced the loads. but the ones not having any panels, but added inverters and batteries have consumed that saving. Did eskom not see this coming? they want people to install solar to reduce demand, but scared they loose revenue. hence them pushing for the fixed connection fee. more and more paying customers are switching to solar, and reducing consumption. so revenue is reducing. but the demand does not reflect this. as their "base load" (read non paying legal and illegal connections) is not changing. Eskom is to look into their non paying consumers.

thank you. i havent googled/searched solar panel prices since March this year when i bought some. seems like the prices has dropped rapidly.

strange yes. as the general public is still struggling to get 545w panels for under R3200

likely your easiest option here, as what @PsyWulf said. control the supply from the inverter instead of controlling the Eskom. take note, that the amp rating on the smart switch will have to be substantial, as you are trying to run geyser and oven on the same switch. my personal opinion, leave the oven on the grid. as these are normally used at night when there is no Solar anyway, and using battery for this purpose is is not smart. rather use a smaller air fryer or even a convectional oven that uses similar power, but for a much shorted duration. (is the lamb chop worth a battery) the geyser i would agree, put it on solar during daytime to get most out of you installation. and switch to grid in the evening, also incorporate a smart controller for the geyser, to control temps for when not needed.

i had the same inverter. and used lead acid batteries. they where also of age, and didnt last very long. the way i see it. the mecer units are rather an UPS, than an inverter. their intended use is to keep the equipment running in the event of an power outage. till you can switch off the equipment or till a generator kicks in. yes, if you have an lithium battery connected, the can run for hours. yes f you have enough battery capacity they can also run for hours. BUT. their charging capabilities are not good. if you rush 20a charge into them, they charge to the voltage setting for a very short duration. and then goes to trickle charge. hence, no absorption. i have monitored the charging with a shunt. it reaches the max voltage, and the amps drops off shortly after and the voltage then reduces to a float voltage. and charges with 1/2 amps only. that way it will take forever to reach full charged capacity. much longer than what we have between load shedding. the very same happens with the Axpert type inverters on lithium battery when charging with a higher amperage. once charging hits the set voltage, it drops to float voltage very quickly and no absorption time. most of the times the charge algorithm is also not triggered if the voltage doesnt drop low enough. thats why i have set float voltage and absorption voltage to 3.45v per cell. that was it will reach 99% SOC, although it charges a little longer. it wont over charge, and wont experience the premature float bug as they call it.

Yes it will. The other option is to buy solar assitant. It has the energy control function. Not 100 perfect. But ive managed to get it set in such a way that the batteries drain about 5% only in gokden hour. And discharges to 40% only till 06:00 in the morning. Leaves a bit of a buffer if load shedding is early. Or cloudy weather. Also gives you remote access. If remote access doesnt bother. Old laptop with multisub. Or even a raspberry

thank you for the response,

safe to say that this would be similar to the "king" models. with the removeable display centralised in the bottom middle? does it have a parallel card? and perhaps cables?

perhaps a photo of the unit? or the info sticker. there was numerous different models.

Thank you for the response. My 3kw king doesnt have the power balance setting on the LCD display. Apparnetly the 5kw does. However. The setting is available on the older watchpower version. V1.15. And i could toggle it. And it did make a difference on max PV input. Linked to max charge setting. But i was unable to make any changes to battery voltages. Eg. Float. Bulk. Or even cut off. On watchpower 1.16. The power balance setting is not available. But doesnt bother. As once its set. Its set. Unless i run into issues later with a larger pv array having run aways once larger loads switch off. With watchpower 1.16 im able to set the voltages again. For some reason i recall i had watchpower 1.14. That had all the settings working perfectly. Aswell as the power balance. And had a setting for "any inverter can have PV". This settings seems to have disapeared on 1.15 and 1.16. Not sure if its linked to the dispay firmware upgrade. Or watchpower. EDIT: ive managed to find a Watchpower 1.14. all functions are back and changeable. seems like most of the issues where Watchpower giving me issues. doing any sort of battery settings on the bluetooth app is still unavailable.