flamegrilled

So let me provide an update, the firmware I got upgraded to cBaa-12777E seems to somewhat remove the issue.

Since they upgraded me I've only had the warning 29 2 times, all at random intervals 1 during the day at 4pm other one again at midnight.

I've emailed the company I bought it from and luxpowertek official international support and well they recommended the firmware upgrade which they executed, but nothing really after that.

International support did how ever say that if it triggers the event again they will look into creating a custom firmware, which I really hope resolves the issue.

South Africa support has not even responded once, rather disappointed since I would expect them to know what is going on in our country and would look at users complaining about this issue.

But that's about the feedback I got, will update again when something happens

Had to get Luxpower.com to give me an account to do my own thing eventually.

I Have been trying to get in touch with anyone from support. Luxtek main support keeps referring to the South African support - no reply to whatsapps etc. 
 
was quite impressed with the brand and unit but now scared to update firmware or sell and install more units as support seems to be non existent in SA 

Well, for anyone who opt to go Luxpower, understand you are on your own when it comes to information. I got handy assistance from LBSA on the setup of the battery from the Luxpower inverter end and the LBSA BMS end. The newer Luxpowers support CAN comms on pin 4 and 5, hence a straight through CAT5 or simialr cable works. The LBSA battery however needs the CAN protocol changed from Victron (default) to PN-GDLT to support the Luxpower. Untilthen you will have communication errors and the batteries won't charge. So, on the inverter set it to Lithium, type 6. Set the battery BMS to PN-GDLT - you will need a USB serial cable to RJ45 which needs to plug in on one of the parallel ports on the battery (dip switches all off) no other CAN cables in. The software used is by Seplos. The instructions are in the software folder, however the instructions are typically chinese. So tons of vital information missing. After many errors, I found the software only works on Windows 7 and probably older. I now have 2 happy inverters in parallel and happy fully charged and managed batteries.
Just be aware that if you go Luxpower, you are on your own, the agents have no interest in providing support. If you want an easier life, go with Growatt which are very similar, but probably far easier to work on, with wealth of publicly available information. I also find the displays on the Growatt more to the point and informative, the Luxpower look more bling and less function.
Cable and basic instructions, rather use the PDF in the software folder, make sure you have a Windows 7 machine to avoid errors importing protocol file:
Built Unit Battery Monitor cable | Lithium Batteries South Africa (lithiumbatteriessa.co.za)
Drivers, software and guides also available here:
Download - Seplos Technology Co., Ltd
Load the protocol file, last file in folder (Agreements folder), setup comm and baud rate (19200), connect, login (admin/admin), click on the CAN drop down, top right, select PN-GDLT and you are done. Repeat for all batteries (remember all batteries must have all dip switches to off for this). For two batteries in parallel, revert to dip 5 on (battery 1) and dip 1 on (battery 2). CAN from Luxpower to CAN on battery 1, cable from Parallel port on battery 1 to Parallel port on battery 2 (all straight through). Oh, for 2 Luxpower's in parallel, 2 dips set to on on both units (rule is first and last of the units in parallel must have dips set to on). Then also set parameter 21 to parallel, shared battery in my case to enable, phase detection default (P1), think that's about it. That is fairly well documented in the sparse manual.
Hope this helps future unsuspecting Luxpower buyers.
 

Tshwane pays 11.4c I pay them on average R2.80. So I would have to sell about 25 units to cover me for one night-time unit. If I use half my 30kWh at night, I need to sell 30/2x 25 = 375 units per day to break even. With a yield factor of 6 that is 62.5kWp or 150-180 panels ... simply infeasible. Simple maths tell me no-one has enough roof to break even with backfeed in Tshwane. So it is a non-argument.

@Erastus, why don't you post your rates sheet that shows you getting all this money back from the city

I have a 6.43 kWp array and there were a lot of Cape Town winter cloudy/rainy days could not fully charge my batteries, so no use getting another battery, only thing would be if CoCT made it easier and cheaper to feed in to the grid, then you could store surplus credits in summer and use it in winter.

Hi see https://github.com/mletenay/home-assistant-goodwe-inverter/blob/master/custom_components/goodwe/goodwe_inverter.py for detail and say thank you to https://github.com/mletenay 

Sooo, I've had a bit more time to fine tune and verify the data. I've also managed to expose a few more bits of info from the packets; it's about at a point where there's enough identified data to be useful for logging. The idea is for this parsing to be done by a python script that runs every few seconds to feed into Home Assistant. When I have a little more time to mess with it I'll get that going, running on a Pi on my network.
Below is where I'm at. Items in black I'm 99% confident of, items in Red still needs to be verified properly. Some of the AC wattage stuff isn't 100% accurate, I suspect those are VA values, not Watts, and I've not figured out if the protocol reports power factor in order to get the AC consumption figures correctly calculated.

I assume that they are not extracting but are in fact pushing air in?  To my knowledge these inverters have air inlet at the top and air outlet at the bottom - unless you have reversed the fans.
On my inverters (Kings) I have revered the fans, which has helped with cooling (mainly due to the hot air from the outlets not being recirculated after rising to the intakes).  The real change is however not nearly as dramatic as the data from the inverter indicates.  This is probably due to the temperature sensors' mounting position - once air flow is revered a sensor that was on the hot (downwind) side of a heat source is now in fact on the cold side.  The "inverter" temperature on mine now essentially show ambient temperature.
As for the batteries' temperature, heat is the no.1 enemy of LiFePo4 batteries. Well worth the effort to keep below 30C - battery life seriously deteriorates above that.

Before I had the ceiling insulation in my garage sorted out, my batteries also got hot. I found that adding two whirlybirds in the roof helped a good deal, but got even better results using a low-wattage fan pointed directly on the batteries, initially running only during daylight hours. The batteries themselves seemed to be well-insulated though, so heat build-up from one day carried over to the next, and there was a noticeable temperature reduction when running the fan 24/7. I felt that I needed to point this out because you stated
and I discovered that it works better doing it 24/7, cuts 5-6 degrees.

Yes
 
Yes .Build in a changeover , be it auto or manual.
 
Soon : Zim2 :Season 2 at a Theatre near you.

Yes
 
Yes .Build in a changeover , be it auto or manual.
 
Soon : Zim2 :Season 2 at a Theatre near you.

Am running ICC v3.1 and it automatically starts for me

Perhaps not what are looking for, but I see many questions on this forum about decent crimped cables. I reckon if you offered 50mm/70mm/90mm battery cables of various lengths with lugs already crimped on, you should have a good seller.
DC trip switches and fuses of around 200A to 250A seem to be a little harder to find. 
DC clamp meters are all so expensive. If you had one for a good price, that should also sell. 
A cheaper alternative to the Victron BMV would surely sell too.

Who is going to pay for the bi directional meter and the installation? R12K is the last I heard and the payback per kwh is only R0.68.Not worth it in my opinion

Who is going to pay for the bi directional meter and the installation? R12K is the last I heard and the payback per kwh is only R0.68.Not worth it in my opinion

I don't know if the situation has changed, but colleague Weber had to replace stock fans in a customer's inverter due to intermittent "fan locked" errors with new fans (which  were Noctuas as well). It's a pest. There might be a simple modification to the fan checking hardware to fix this, but that means a lot more work than just swapping the fans.

My opinion is that it is not worth while to change it. Grid Tie is quite efficient and it's already installed and working.
It does feel like a waste that you cannot charge while load shedding is happening, but if you do look at the actual numbers it would be not that much.

One thing that's worth doing it checking the abilities of your grid meter in ZA.
If it isn't one of these ones that trips the instant you feedback, I think a grid-tied Solis with grid limiter is a good first move.
A grid-tied inverter will constantly save you money from day one, its simple, but won't work during load shedding. It can often be easily incorporated into a future expansion.
I think if a generator can tide you over for load-shedding, then a generator plus a grid-tie inverter is gets you the best utility for the smallest capital outlay. 
 
Bells and whistles are nice, but cost a fortune in this game

https://esphome.io/cookbook/power_meter.html
Have a look at that, I built one and compared the readings to an Efergy and it was spot on, they're cheap to build using a nodemcu.

To add some more info to a lot of very informative info that is already here.
One cell will always get full first. That is normal. After that the balancer(s) kick in and start moving charge from that high cell to other cells, slowly pulling the others up until they are all the same voltage. Then when you discharge, one of them will be empty first. That's because the cells are not identical, and again, that is perfectly normal. When the first cell is empty, discharge stops (regardless of whether the others have charge left), and similarly, when the first cell is full, charge stops regardless of whether the other cells are full or not.
If the cells are well chosen to have very similar capacities, then after some time they will be aligned at the top, and at the bottom they will be pretty close (if you get my drift).
In a new pack there is almost always initial imbalances. This can be avoided by fully charging the cells before assembly, but it seems more often than not these days, this step is skipped. It usually takes about two weeks for the balancer(s) to sort it out.
This is where the high end BMS/inverter setups come into their own. The BMS can do a calculation. If one of the cells is at 3.6V, for example, then it can add up the voltages of all the cells, plus a small offset, and instruct the inverter/charger to charge at that voltage. This effectively holds that one cell at 3.6V while the balancer moves charge (slowly!) to the others. As the other cells catch up, the BMS will raise the charge voltage, and over time you'll get to a place where they all even out around 3.5V (which is what you want).
In he absence of such a BMS and/or charger system, you can do this manually. Raise the charge voltage slowly (assuming this is adjustable) while keeping at least one of the cells at 3.6V, and give the balancer time to work. With some batteries (those with passive balancers I think) I found that you have to also cycle the battery slightly, eg a recent BYD battery I worked with had to be cycled between 80% ad 100% a few times before the imbalance started to improve.  I suspect it depends on whether the BMS does active or passive balancing. With an active balancer, you just have to hold the voltage sufficiently high and wait, while with passive balancers it is better to cycle it. At least, that is my experience.

Hi guys,
Having some time during Lockdown, I have came up with this simple "controller" for the Axpert inverter with Pylontech batteries. It does not run on a Pi, but on an ESP8266. What do you think:

After my installation I started playing with my new "TOY" but quickly realize that it's not going to perform to the levels I wanted to.
So like any software developer I started developing my own software. I wanted to achive the following goals:
- Generated max power, use the power as long as posisble, switch over to grid when needed
- Automaticlly change the power management for load-shedding 
- Protect my batteries against high power usage by switching over to grid when power usage exceed X for a few minutes and back when usage recovered
- Only switch to Solar when Batteries is over X voltage and Solar is over X Watt (provide to levels) 
- Switch over to Grid in the afternoon when Solar is under X level or Time. 
- Identify Low average power generation (Clouds, Rain) - For Load-Shedding
- Move from Solar Charge only to Solar/Grid when batteries are very low or for Load-shedding 
I also wanted the system to look "Cool" and I wanted to make it accesable from a browser. 
Bought a Raspberrypi and screen...
Here is the results...so much fun... still learning



 
 

Constant Load Shedding is where you got that idea no doubt..