Wetkit

With that amount of PV your battery should not discharge during the day!!! How is you PV panels connected to the inverter? All 17 in a single string, or two strings of 8 and 9?

As stated above; R11/kg for collection. R11.50/kg when you drop off.

I have phoned all the guys mentioned above, and they all willing to collect, so no issue there, thanks!!!

Hi Carl, 8 of them is dead. Mostly there is a single cell that has died. The other 8 is still ok, but they using lots of water. They work ok, but I am not home so keeping up with the water consumption is a pain. I am sure we can make a plan.

Thanks guys. I will give the Gumtree guys a go and report back.

@Roarty, did you ever do the wind power? At one stage I also looked at that, but 48V units is very rare. Another option was to do a grid-tie system, but then I am not 100% sure how it would work with the Goodwe unit. With the Victro units you could connect it on the output side of the invertor, but not sure about the Goodwe. Regarding your geyser, why not also go for solar on the geyser? I have 2 x 200L geysers with 2 x 20 tubes. Have not switched on the power now for 3 years If there is a huge issue, then I have gas geyser backup.

Great!!!

Ok, so the first thing that I saw was your very high charging current. Should that not be around 46Amps? 460AH * 0.1C ? Next one is your floating current is again on the very low side? 3Amps? Your invertor will charge your batteries at 59V until the charge current drops to 3 Amps for 30 minutes. This could take a very long time!!! Only at that stage will the unit report 100% SOC and drop the charge voltage to Float. Please monitor your system on a sunny day where you did not discharge your batteries during the night. Then see at what amps the batteries settle at once the voltage reach 59 Volts for some hours. Then make that amp value your new floating current, or say 1 amp more than that. Otherwise you never going to reach full 100% SOC on the system and might even overcharge your batteries! If you have General Mode (Self Use First) configured, the invertor will not use mains to charge your batteries, so once solar power is less than consumption, your batteries will start discharging again. Again, just me, but I would also lower my discharge current to say 42 Amps. That should offset your 2000W normal draw nicely. Remember, this is only a limit for while there is mains power. When mains power is lost, you would still be able to draw the full 4600W from your batteries. Perhaps you also need to look at your DOD settings. Your on-grid and off-grid values is the same. What could happen now is that during the night your batteries drain down to 50%, normal operation. If after this you now have a power failure, your system would not work, as your batteries is already down to 50%. Perhaps look at setting your on-grid DOD to 40% and your off-grid DOD to 60%? That will give you and extra 20% safety for power failures at night. During the day with PV power, it should not really make a huge difference.

Hi Guys, I have 16 Trojan T105 batteries that is EOL. I have asked around in Cape Town and the best I could get was from a golf cart shop that offered me R50 per battery. Surely there must be somebody that would give me more from them? I have tried the battery shops, but they not even remotely interested. FNB that imports the batteries, also said as it's imported units, they will not give me anything for recycling them. Thanks.

Ok, glad I am not the only one with this problem of the Conlog meters disconnecting the supply. Yes, you can goto CoCT and buy that meter, but then it will cost you R17k AND you have to go onto the solar tariff, which in my mind does not make financial sense at all!!! Also, when you on the Solar tariff, you are not allowed to export more than you consume. You also not allowed to have a negative bill, so you will always have to pay the Muni something. Perhaps for a business it might work, but not your normal home user. With the Infini you can try and play with the "feeding grid power" calibration value. Try using a negative value there. I have the exact same problem with my Goodwe Unfortunately Goodwe software does not allow a negative value for the export, so that is a bummer. Perhaps if we ask them as a group they might consider changing it? I have now added a 100W lamp before the Ezee meter. That has helped me during the day, but unfortunately now you have that constant 100W draw at night too. 2nd thing I have done was check my minimum draw at night. That was 500W. So then I limited the battery output to 10Amps. In effect the battery then could not export enough to trip the supply. Once the 2nd option was working fine, I put the light on a day/night switch, so during the day the lamp would burn and at night it would switch off. The above solution worked great for me for the past 2 years, but now I had to replace my batteries. Now unfortunately with the lithium BMS system, I cannot limit the output amps, thus back to running the 100W lamp 24/7. Is there really not somebody with good contacts at Goodwe that could help us with the software? Surely that should really not be such a big issue to change???

Why not just install the SR868C8 controller and get it done correctly the first time!

Finally some good news and feedback from my side. The fist time I tried the software upgrade, I only had the batteries connected. As my batteries is nearly dead, perhaps this was why the upgrade failed? After connecting both solar PV and the batteries, the upgrade worked first time. After the upgrade, I was still unable to select Pylon US3000 battery. Finally figured out it was EzManage app issue. Used PV Master app and all good. The connected the coms also failed as suggested by my supplier. Battery to CAN and Invertor to CAN. Only once Invertor end was connected to BMS did everything start to work correctly. I must say it was an extremely stressful exercise. Extremely relieved all working now.

Well, not good news. Contacted Goodwe support. They told me to contact my supplier directly? Contacted my supplier, and they basically referred me back to the upgrade procedure here from Sengen Solar. Bad news is that the upgrade fail and now I have a blue brick Hoping my supplier can help me......

It is just that nothing is simple with the Blue stuff. Anything you want to add, needs an expensive cable and some other type of box to communicate with. The GW is more of a single solution out of the box. Set and forget.

Eish. My supplier says there should be no issues using Pylon3000 with a GW5048D-ES. Firmware 12123. SN does start with a 9. This is after I have asked him many times to confirm. Just shows you. Ok, so first recommended step is to update firmware to 151508? But then I suspect there is still no selection option for the Pylon3000, thus you have to select what? I am running General mode, self use first. Would like to get the most I can out of the battery The box is not opened yet, so should I rather aim for Pylon2000Plus, as these are supported?

not been able to get that working myself

I am sorry, but if you doing solar, it is to save money and power consumption, correct? So why still have an urn running all day? Is that not really counter productive? Rather get a 3ph instant water heater!!!

Hi Nadeem, This was only for the 3kw Infini. I am not familiar with the 5Kw unit, sorry.

Ok, some foto's from another install that was done for work, using similar products.

Ok, so what I used to mount the panels is equipment used in standard commercial electrical installations. The product is called Unistrut or P1000. You can buy it at any Electrical retailer or directly from Cabstrut. Mounting the panels was done with spring nuts and large washers. The spring nuts fits into the Unistrut and the washer is used to keep the panel tight. Since I did the initial install, I have also seen a product that is not expencive that clips onto any PV panel and then clips into the Unistrut. Only disadvantage is once fixed, nearly impossable to remove the PV panel.

Sorry guys, traveling in Africa for work, so not much time or internet available

My meter is the BEC44.

Ok, so I finally gave hope getting my Infini to work correctly as a ZERO consumption unit due to my pre-paid meter tripping. Due to recommendations by other persons I know I bit the bullet and got myself a Goodwe 5048-ES unit. Everybody that got one has no problems with their pre-paid meters. To make a long story short, once the Goodwe was installed and running, my pre-paid meter started tripping again After spending many hours with customer support and the manuals, I came to a very small clause in the manual that stats that even when power export is disabled, the unit can still push back up to 100W max. In the end I had to run about 200W of load before the meter. If the invertor does overshoot a bit, the 200W load should cover that and prevent the pre-paid meter from detecting reverse flow and tripping. So, for those of you with an Infini can now also start running ZERO consumption as an option. For me running ZERO consumption is the best compromise. Please note that the City Of Cape Town pre-paid meters is programmed to be very sensitive of reverse flow. The bigger the flow, the quicker the meter will trip. Once detected the meter will disconnect power for 30 seconds. If this happens 5 times within an hour, the meter will disconnect you for 30min. That is for the Conlog meters. The Landis meters might even go into tamper mode. Then you need a tech to come reset it and you have to pay a R2k fine!!!

Are you talking about a pump flow controller? Many years back the pumps worked with a pressure tank. Pressure in the tank was maintained with a rubber bladder and the pump was controlled from a pressure switch. The newest systems does away with the pressure tank and you just have this big blue egg that sits on the pump outlet. It works on flow and pressure, giving you much better control over the pump. http://www.water-booster-pumps.co.za/controller-water-booster-pumps.php

Right, just some more feedback to date. System running very well, but I have to keep cleaning the flap type non-return valve and pump every 3 months. Seems like the calcium is depositing too quickly. For now the copper pipes is working very well and I can run the water temp up to 75Degrees now. To try and use less water, I have installed a hot water loop and pump for the house. It works, but I am unable to stop the water circulation. Anybody done anything like this before?