kobus123

My second installation is about 6months old and I challenged myself to go bigger. We have a farm. First thing I did was get rid of geysers and installed gas geysers. Then I got rif of NY old school lighting and only installed LED lights and spots. Borehole changed to solar pump. At peak the system draws about 1400 w of power. This is my total from on solar excluding the workshop which I am still investigating. System installed is 2 x 5kva sun pays inverters. (One is a backup should the other fail and not activly used). 8 x 550w panels. 2 x 800 wind turbines. And 4 x 100ah lifepo4 batteries. Fuses installed at pc box where panels join, then also a inline fuse from batteries to inverter and surge arrestor between pv box and batteries. I must mention that my panels do not go into the inverter directly but into mppt with then feeds to batteries. This was done to accommodate the wind turbines which in turn runs on a separate mppt. I use to have a automatic change over switch which got blow to pieces during a storm one night. I then went to.the trusted manual change over - the same as at my house. The problem is 1. My batteries drain extremely fast at certain times. You will go through the night easily the one day and the next you don't even get 4 hours. I still have eskom and the system goes back to eskom when it is to low and thus the batteries are charged. Secondly on a continuous basis a couple of minutes apart you hear a sound as if the earth leakage want to trip. But you hear it all over. At the place the inverter is installed. In the house in the out buildings couple of hundred meters away. I cannot seem to pinpoint the reason for this. I am not sure if my wiring into the existing db board might be at fault. (Eskom is 3phase and I use one phase for all the household items and lights, this is also where the inverter feeds to). I also don't understand the reasons for the batteries running down so fast. I constantly check power consumption and prior to installing I gather data for aboutn6 moths on usage from eskom on a hourly basis. Then took the period with the highest usage as my benchmark. Multiplied by 4 and build the system on this criteria.

Good morning all. We are new to solar, this being said we have 2 systems in 2 different properties. The first one is a 5kva Sun pays axpert unit. (Hope i Prenounced this correct) with 6 x 400 w panels and a 120ah SolarWize battery. System was self installed about 2 years ago and is mainly used for lights and a odd. Plug or 2 to get through loadshedding. We can manage about 6 hours with the current setup at night. This is problem 1. The inverter use to be plugged into a wall socket for charging. Separate db box for the solar with a manual charge over switch. It use to be that you could leave the system on and both inverter and eskom would work side by side with no issue. Then I decided I wanted the Inveter to get ac power directly from the db board. I connected the neutral to the neutral coming in from Eskom before it goes through any circuit breakers. And the live I fed a Separate ac circuit breaker dirrectly after the main switch before going anywhere else. Since this was done. If the inverter is on and supplying load it trips the circuit breaker with a big flash. If the inverter is not supplying and load but is on then the circuit breaker stays on and the inverter functions as normal. I am not sure what am I missing here my have searched and looked at possibly reasons and solutions without any joy. I will discuss my second installation in. Separate threat.

Hi yes can be hooked up in series. Had them running like that for about 3 to 4 Months. Make is Pylon

The overcharge voltage is 54.6v and the floating charge 54v. Voltage on the batteries in series is 51,9v. Which puts it about 20 to 25%. I can charge the batteries up to a higher voltage bit it does the same

Hi all I have been browsing through the site for some time and got a lot of useful tips and solutions. I now have a headache which I cannot seem to get the correct answer to. I installed a 3kw system with 4 x 24v 100ah lifep04 batteries. I quickly realised it was not big enough and then upgraded the 3kw to a 5kw Sun pay unit. Took the batteries which at that stage was about a month old placed them in series to make 2 x 48v 100ah batteries. I draw about 1100w at peak of the system at night which is basically just lights on a farm. System worked fine for the last couple of months until somehow the Mppt burned. (Solar panels run half of them through mppt and the other half through the inverter due to size difference in the panels). Replaced the Mppt. If I measure the batteries they are all 25.9v (approximately) and linked one by one to the 3kva system the inverter switches on. Put the batteries in series they measure about 51,9(approximately) but the inverter does not switch on and the batteries read 26.9v. take the terminals of the inverter and we are back at 51.9v. Changed the inverter with exactly the same model I have spare, does the same. I am out of ideas and solutions on this. Does anyone have a answers on how to fix this. The batteries charge on the 3kva inverter to 100% so I don't think the batteries are the problem I also swapped the batteries around when doing the series setup with the same answer everytime.