JayMardern

Assuming it's like the Sunsynk (same OEM!), you need a minimum 5% range between On and Off. So to drop below 100% on Aux On, you need to also drop the other value (Aux Off is what it's called on Sunsynks) as well - that is, you should be able to do 94% to 99%...

Indeed - voltage drop under load isn't unheard of (and it gives me lead-acid-battery PSTD, where when measuring the SOC of an LA battery requires knowing it's current load, since voltage is inversely proportional to output!), but it was pretty noticeably in our case. Also now that I think about it, it was a large load indeed - post-load-shedding was 7kW of geysers, plus 3kW battery of charging; the Mrs would often flick on the kettle after, etc. This is why Eskom has requested users delay charging their inverter batteries post-load-shedding as it's not great for the grid to have this level of inrush... We eased this post-load-shedding load by keeping the geysers off at night (and during the day they're on just one at a time, and powered by solar); and we used the Sunsynk's time-of-day settings to step SOC down as the evening progresses such that when load shedding ends, the battery no longer even charges at all most of the time; instead waiting until the next morning to charge via PV. The difference has been significant. And of course this reduced overall consumption as well; so it was win-win!

These models will disconnect from grid automatically (swapping back over to battery) if supply drops too low - the exact voltage can be specified in the Grid menu. The inverter then re-connects when voltage comes back into target range. So the inverter is built to handle this. Since some equipment can be sensitive to low voltages (fridges for example), this also protects those devices. We suffered from this issue in the past; what helped us was moving our geyser heating to the day and keeping them powered off at night when the grid is most sensitive. Our local supply used to drop more than 15V when both our geysers were on after evening-loadshedding. Since no longer doing this, we no longer have our Sunsynk automatically disconnect from grid in the evenings due to low voltage. A side-benefit is our lights (which are dimmed through voltage) stay at near-full brightness after grid restoration as well.

You'd set this on the inverter, On the 'Battery Setup' page is a setting called 'Charge Amps' which controls charging current. Assuming a ~50V battery, it sounds like you're currently on 50A (since 50A * 50V = 2 500W). You can increase this 'Charge Amps' to charge it faster; just check the spec-sheet of your battery first to make sure you're not exceeding the maximum allowed charging Amps of the battery.

This is 100% possible with just standard geysers. The only caveat is regarding the use of SmartLoad/Aux: this port contributes to inverter maximum. So if your geyser element, combined with your standard household load, exceeds the inverter/battery maximum (5kW), you'll trip the inverter. So for example if your house pulls 3kW (someone boils the kettle?) and you have a 3kW geyser powered on via SmartLoad/Aux, you'll trip. Hence in your case, calculate your expected household loads and when you do, it might make sense to stick to 2kW geyser elements if you'd like them on SmartLoad; and you'd then set geyser timers to have them switch on sequentially to keep under the inverter limit and maximize solar utilization. In my case I run a 5kW Sunsynk with a 4kW Geyser (far too big for SmartLoad/Aux) and a 3kW (also a bit too big). Swapping out the latter element to 2kW would make putting it on SmartLoad feasible. However in my scenario they're both currently on non-essentials (nothing is connected to SmartLoad yet) and because the inverter is able to push back excess solar capacity to non-essentials, most of their heating takes place from solar when it's sunny anyway, with Eskom contributing only when solar is insufficient or the household load peaks above 5kW. The only real down-side of not having them on SmartLoad/Aux being that they can't run when the grid is down (eg, during load shedding). So both options - non-essentials and SmartLoad/Aux - are available to you; but just pay attention to your load-vs-geyser-element-size if you go for the latter option as both battery and inverter need to be able to handle the combined load.

Brilliant, for anyone in future who stumbles on this thread - this affects both Deye and SunSynk models - and both first and last row must be updated to resolve it,

A step in the right direction; but we'll have to see if the rates they offer are reasonable; and more pressingly (since feed-ins often exclude prepaid users), if said rates allow users to offset the rather high fixed post-paid charges on CoJ. If the numbers don't balance, then it'll be a tough sell (and it'd then make sense to stick with prepaid and forgo this).

The Time Of Use settings in the screenshot seem to indicate: 'Allow discharge down to 80%' from 18:00 to 20:30 (last row); then 'Allow discharge down to 65%' from 20:30 to 04:00 (first row) And based on the spreadsheet, the SOC did not seem to follow the latter; by 04:00 it should have been well below 80% - and instead it only seems to have adhered to the next timeslot (discharge from 04:00 down to 60%). That discharge should've been actioned from 20:30. This is the exact behavior I've seen when first/last time-slots aren't started/ended at midnight - where the last row (and sometimes the first) then doesn't get adhered to...

In technology-land, if you wait for the next-best thing - you'll be waiting forever. Further to @madness_za's point, it's also often the case that new hardware takes time to actually start shipping after being officially announced - and when they do, SA typically isn't first to receive shipments.

Set your 'Time 1' to start at midninght (00:00) and your last time to end at midnight. I've seen similar behaviour to you on my SunSynk 5kW (which is almost exactly the same hardware as yours - same OEM) when not starting/ending the times on midnight. Presumably something that needs to be addressed in firmware.

Aaaah, ye' old backwards CT coil. Tail as old as time, 'tis. Glad you're in business!

Cloudy day here in JHB - haven't seen the sun all day - yet because they're not rain-clouds, production is a full 75% of normal (3kW vs 4kW) at present. Astonishing how the type cloud makes such a difference, presumably because there's no rain forecast so these (thinner?) non-rain-clouds block much less irradiance than when rain is in the forecast (even before it actually rains). So I'd guess that any automation based on whether could treat regular 'cloudy-all-day' days like today different to 'rainy-all-day' days since the former reduces production by just 25% and the latter annihilates it by 80%!

I should’ve linked to the earlier post for clarity, my bad! We had similarly bad production a few weeks back as well (once again, when it rained), this was definitely worse though! I'm not sure what’s more surprising: how little difference light cloud cover ends up making (reduction by less than 20% even on mostly-light-grey cloudy days) or how large a difference rain clouds make (reduction by more than 80%!) Our off-the-grid aspirations are in danger 🙂

2kWh is half of my entire day's production yesterday - so in an outage on a day like that, there wouldn't be sufficient to run a heat pump as well as the essentials. (Heck, my own peak production - at any point in the day - was just a measly 500W! Not enough to even start up a 2kW heat pump without grid 😐 ) Sunny weather like today is a different story of course: today, leaving a regular geyser powered on for twice the time required for a heatpump may use double (or more) the power for the same amount of water, but is still 100% PV since production is sufficient (over 4kW today) for several hours. Enough to heat 350l almost entirely using solar with just a basic pair of geysers. But rainy days like yesterday are really, really different...

This will depend on what your load looks like: exactly 5kW doesn't sound that likely, though! Perhaps put it back to how it was until your installer has confirmed that the CT coil is installed in the appropriate place, if that's incorrectly positioned you might be exporting unintentionally (we've seen that happen on these forums before!)

Back to normal my side as well; currently at 20.5 kWh; on track for 26-30 units for today from my 4.55kWp PV Array. We missed you, Mr. Golden Sun. This has got me thinking: in an extended outage during bad weather, we can still more-or-less scrape through on essentials use (because those are usually low power), but what are our options for backup water heating? We perhaps wouldn't want to swap over to gas permanently (gas is way more expensive than free-energy-from-the-sun!), but what about a stand-by gas geyser to cope with extended outages in inclement weather for occasional use? Is it feasible to pass electrically-heated water through a gas water heater - that gets left off the rest of the time?

I'm pretty sure this wiring is the issue, As a side-note, I've used the CBI, Smart Life and Tuya apps with this same CBI Astute controller (complete with it's annoying flashing light!) - and it works perfectly under all 3 apps. It's a fantastic piece of hardware IMO.

Assuming the main house has the inverter at it's own breaker (and that house - or part thereof - is treated as the essential load), the simplest option would be to move the CT coil to the main breaker instead (that supplies both houses) and let the inverter Zero-Export from the main house like that; effectively treating the second house as part of the non-essential load - and supplying it with excess just like any normal non-essential load. This would then be a typical System Mode setup: "Zero Export" Ticked "Solar Export" Unticked "Limit to Load Only' Unticked 20W Grid Trickle Feed This is a really nice way to utilize excess PV - and is also pretty low-risk as it means that regardless of the load being pulled by the second house, this second house can never trip the inverter, since it'll supply only what it can - and allow the grid to handle the balance.

Check once you've used the hot water tonight and you should see both Power and Current produce values above 0, for as long as necessary to re-heat the balance of the water. Voltage will always remain at supply-voltage when the geyser is connected.

4.2kWh from a 4.55kWp PV Array [10 x JA 455W] here in JHB. Enough to scrape through on essentials - but not enough to do much beyond that! Yesterday was slightly worse - we can see how the cloud-cover (especially when they're thick rain-clouds like the last two days here) hammers production:

It’s mentioned on this forum (and I’ve seen it happen myself on the Sunsynk which is also made by Deye), check that your first and last time slots are midnight. That is, the first and last text boxes on the Work Mode page must be 00:00. I’ve seen similar behaviour otherwise. If this is already the case then contact Deye…

Last week's JHB weather was sobering for a lot of us; I saw PV drops of up to 80% some days. Essentials could've been scraped-through; water heating and kitchen-appliance-use was a total bust though - that all had to come from grid. Relying on generators and gas simply shifts reliance from the electric grid to fuel distribution 'grids' instead (though it certainly assists Eskom). When initially investigating solar I remember seeing a video from a US installer that recommended 4-5 days' worth of battery backup to cater for inclement weather in fully-off-grid scenarios, and at the time I thought they were insane. Turns out they were onto something...

Yes! Low-flow/low-pressure roses are absolute magic; we use them on both showers. Even under the cooler weather this past week, the thermostat trick has held up nicely. Our issue is that select family members like to spend longer than they should in the shower as part of their daily unwind process; wasting both water and energy in the name of 'relaxation'. I'd complain bitterly to them - if I wasn't one of them!

You're welcome! Your concern makes sense; three things ended up helping my side: I've set a 2.5kW (i.e., 50A - instead of the maximum-allowed 100A on my battery) charge speed so that I only charge as slow as needed to go easier on the grid when power is restored; this means that even under Stage 6 we're fully charged between outages - but we don't draw too hard when we do charge I've moved my geyser heating entirely to the day (by pushing up the thermostat and powering the geysers down completely at night - discussed this a bit in this thread) since night-time is peak-time - so the geysers don't run at all at night anymore; this saves the grid 7kW worth of evening peak load! I've set some of my later-night battery SOC percentages down to 80% (and even later-evening is 60%) so that if power is restored late in the evening when we don't need a full battery, then if the battery is above those percentage values for those timeslots after load shedding, it doesn't charge at all (and then it charges from PV the next day instead). Again, this saves some grid load (2.5kW). My area suffers from low-voltage supply post-load-shedding, so by dropping my post-load-shedding demand like above, it saves us from seeing the severe voltage dips (and all the dim lights that go with it!), since voltage sags with load; and hence lowering load reduces the voltage sag. And it avoids hammering the creaky old grid too hard. And of course it saves cash by biasing those loads to day-time (when the sun can do the supply)!

If 'grid' is unticked and there's no PV, then the battery will definitely (slowly) drop since it's providing for self-consumption. There's no way to maintain 100% indefinitely without a source of power while it's powered on. Is there a specific reason you don't want to tick 'grid' for these timeslots? (Assuming you don't mind using a bit of grid to keep it at full? This is what I do in my after-sun-down timeslots.)