Wetkit

DeepBass9, I like all your idea's. Perhaps start thinking how to combine all of these water system into one, like the Europeans do. Every bit of heat (wood stove, solar panels, genny) is pumped into a single large storage vessel, say 500L to 1000L. From this tank you run the central heating and hot water. Hot water is taken from the top and central heating from lower down. Great work and keep it going!!!

@SBBS, I think you not following the discussion, or is it me? Anyway, the 3 Axperts you have is fine, no issues there. The only problem is that they cannot work from a common PV setup. Each inverter needs to have it's own PV strings. Now due to the common and shared DC bus or battery bank for a better name, the 3 Axperts will still "share" the PV between them, so you not going to loose anything. In actual fact, you should gain a little bit. The axpert will only switch to mains if the battery bank is low, not when there is no PV. With the Axpert, you either run on batteries or mains, not both. Only a true Hybrid can do that.

Ok, so to get back to point 1. What I have found was that even when the "Export to Grid" is switched off, the inverter still feed back a small amount of power to the grid. If this is to detect if the grid is alive, I am not sure. Under Parameter settings there is a heading for "Feeding grid Power Callibration". Normally this is Zero, but I have mine now set at 85W. Now my pre-paid meter is not tripping anymore For the price this is still the most flexable system money can buy!!!

So removed the pump yesterday and it was full of gunk!!! Used an old bottle brush and all is looking fine now again. Also installed a 2nd steam release valve and relocated my water bypass line. Will see if that works better. The guy an SunScan where I got the steam release valve from said that the Wilo pumps does have this problem of collecting gunk and should ideally be cleaned every 6 months.

Hi Guys, Looking to increase my current PV footprint, so looking for panels that match my existing install. 235W x 9 should do the trick, or less. Thanks

Latest version of Infini SolarPower software can be found here... http://www.ostrovni-elektrarny.cz/index.php?page=podpora Please note that with every software update, the power generation history is lost

By playing with the "Load supply source (PV available)" and "Load supply source (PV not available)" you can make the inverter react diffrently. I am still trying to find my sweet spot

To answer cvzyl, the NRS standard only showed up since version 1.09 of the Solar Power software. I am not sure if the unit also needs a firmware update to enable this? Version 1.10 also have some new Indian standards which I can select and enable, but NRS is still refusing to work

Ok, so some new progress with this system as well. I felt our home water consumption was still too high, so where else we wasting water? Do we really use 100% good drinking water to flush our toilets??? At the same time I started looking at grey water seeing I already had a storage tank. First thing was to find a suitable place to collect the grey water. Luckly for me I had just such a location. At this position I could collect the washing machine water and both bathrooms. Only missed the bath of the main bathroom, but we normally shower, so not a great loss. Took a week of planning an a week-end of building and all the grey water is now pumped into the irrigation water tank. Biggest cost was the DAB sump pump for R1600. It's got a level switch, so was easy to set-up. Next was to use the irrigation water for the toilets. This took much more planning and head scratching. Luckly my plumber found a way to do it that was not too expencive and took only 2 days to install. We installed a new water point at each toilet. I used the same pressure pump for the toilets as for the irrigation. Only thing I added here was a pump pressure/flow controller. This enable the pump to start and stop automatically according to water usage. Well, as all my projects goes, here I also picked up issues. Water from the well point was very brown and dirty. This started to stain the toilet bowls and caused all the water valves to not seal 100%, so pump basically ran permanently. I have now had to install 2 x 150um sediment filters before the pressure pump. On the toilet water I have installed a further 2 filters, 50um for particles and 10um to remove most of the brown colour. Still busy deciding if the replacment filter cost will offset the water saving cost. At least I know if our water is now shut-off the toilets will still work :/

Right, some more feedback regarding my system. The flipping weather is playing havok. I have been running the full summer with the 80% shade netting over the 2 flat plate collectors. Now since April 2016 I have removed the netting as we frequently had overcast days. Problem is the water still came out too hot and have been causing airlocks!!! So for now I will look at cleaning the pump and installing a 2nd steam release valve. Also been thinking about a heat exchanger so I can use the excess hot water to heat the pool water. Either that or to shed the extra heat in my irrigation water tank. So far I have only switched on the electrical element to test my setup. To date never needed it

Ok, so the timer is only for the output of the unit. Not really sure how you use that function. Perhaps what you are looking for is "Grid tie with Backup(IV)". Here you can set your peak times, but you also have different priorities for each time slot.

Tried other standards and they work, but NRS just give me an error, something about "not possable" or "not valid".

Ok, so mine shows the same as yours then, 3.10 and 0.31. I am trying to enable NRS 097 to work on mine. What do I need?

Any update or progress here? How do I see what firmware I am running currently?

For now I manually update my score monthly. Takes me 5min

I get the idea that the load might be too big for the batteries alone. When the PV is connected it helps support the load and the battery. I have my min battery voltage set to 45V. The reason for this is that once the bank gets to this level and the load is disconnected, the battery bank recovers again back to 47V.

Ok, the best option would be the Imeon. For the plain and simple reason that it is certified for RSA use. I think the Imeon can work without batteries, but not sure if it can run on PV only. Mike??? I have the Infini 3kW and have run that unit in the past from only PV alone, but try to start something like a pump and it will fall over.

Perhaps try to only charge the batteries from only solar or mains, not both. I know that caused me some issues in the beginning.

MaurizioZA, not all the pumps run at the same time. Pool pump run say from 10:00 to 14:00. Irrigation pump from 14:00 to 15:30. Wellpoint can only run when irrigation pump is off. Also I am NOT allowed to feedback to the grid due to my stupid pre-paid meter, so that is switched off. The graphs on my unit have never showed it to go over 3kw, so will have to check on my Home meter. But I do get about 20 alarms a day Mike, do you think the MPPT will draw more than it is designed for? My panel amp limit is 8 amp, so with I'm still ok with 2 strings. So rather up the voltage by adding more panels to the existing strings?

@bushman10 ,great list of equipment there! Must have cost a packet!!! What is your current consumption per month?

Hi Mike, you sure about the 1 MW per month? 1000kwh is a lot!!!

According to the City of Cape Town, ANY solar device using direct Eskom power needs to be registred. It is from there that installers install the change over switch to get past the problem. So now you can run either solar or eskom. You are not allowed to have the inverter connected directly to eskom power, even if the inverter cannot feed any power back. I have asked the council about UPS's, but the answer is the same, as soon as the UPS have solar back-up, you need to have it registered

Seems like Mercer might also have the smaller 5Kw Infini available at R40k ex vat. It is still a hell of a lot of money. I was hoping for around R35k max For that price I can go and buy 2 x 5kw Axperts and another battery bank.

Well, that is good news for you!!! Perhaps now you can tell us what you going to install?

@Sidewinder, you know that you can set your solar controller up so that it can also regulate your panel temp, meaning you can set it to 100C and it will start the pump to "cool" the panels down? Nice install.