JayMardern

The API is working. There were more changes to the token and authentication processes.

The crew for the SolarSynkv3 add-on implemented an update yesterday. That solution is currently working for sunsynk and other generic pv.inteless dongle setups.

All of these solutions are all still so fundamentally flawed relying on the cloud for data access.

I need to start moving my friends and family over to direct local connections.

At night we simulate powering-essentials-only-from-battery by specifying 700w (our average essentials load amount) in the time-of-use 'Power' column. That slot also has a 50% SOC target: so at night, the battery is allowed to slowly discharge down to 50%, with a maximum draw of 700w. If a geyser (or other high-power item) gets powered on at night, the balance above 700w simply comes from the grid. This achieves what @Sidewinder mentions above in terms of allowing us to gradually drop down to a battery SOC 'checkpoint' so that there's always left-over-battery for an unexpected outage. (The next slot - until just before sunrise - is set to 30%, again with a 700w battery limit). This also ensures that we consume most of the energy in the battery (which hopefully came from sunshine the day before) - and also makes battery capacity available for spare sunshine the next day; whilst also going easier on the battery (low-ish current drawn over a longer time).

At night we simulate powering-essentials-only-from-battery by specifying 700w (our average essentials load amount) in the time-of-use 'Power' column. That slot also has a 50% SOC target: so at night, the battery is allowed to slowly discharge down to 50%, with a maximum draw of 700w. If a geyser (or other high-power item) gets powered on at night, the balance above 700w simply comes from the grid. This achieves what @Sidewinder mentions above in terms of allowing us to gradually drop down to a battery SOC 'checkpoint' so that there's always left-over-battery for an unexpected outage. (The next slot - until just before sunrise - is set to 30%, again with a 700w battery limit). This also ensures that we consume most of the energy in the battery (which hopefully came from sunshine the day before) - and also makes battery capacity available for spare sunshine the next day; whilst also going easier on the battery (low-ish current drawn over a longer time).

@Paul0 ,
I may be completely wrong, but is your CT coil installed in the correct location.
What you want the SS to do, sound almost like "normal" behaviour, which I have seen at a few of my buddies places. I can't vouch for it, as I do no have non-essentials.
Question: You state you don't export, so why is solar export ticked?
Also, What is the point of using timer settings that stays at 45% mostly. In my view, they should ramp down during the night, at certain time "checkpoints", and then slowly ramp up again during the day to ensure you have more or less a full battery going into the night. If you system can go through the night from 45% @ 17h00, then I suppose it is fine. Fortunately, we are having extremely low Loadshedding occurrence, so currently you may get away with these setting comfortably, but as soon as the rainy season starts, then you might just come up short.
The snapshot clearly shows the non-essentials (a geyser) being used. As expected, the usage during night time comes from Grid, rest from PV.

The BMS of the batteries can instruct the inverter to force-charge if there's an alternative power supply from which to charge. Not all batteries implement this though.

You'll see this indicated on the LiBMS info screen which will include something like "Request Full Charge" when this is occurring.

The BMS may be doing this to protect the battery since LFP batteries for example need to hit 100% on a regular basis for cell balancing/SOC measurement purposes (my own AM5's risk losing their warranty this doesn't happen once a week at least). This would also explain why getting to 100% 'fixes' it for you.

Here's an example of what it looks like in the LiBMS screen, note the 'Request Force Charge' indicator on the 4th image:
https://powerforum.co.za/topic/23770-batteries-wont-go-under-20-soc-sunsynk-12kw-3ph-hubble-am2s/

As Youda suggests, do share your average daily load requirements, since feasibility hinges entirely on consumption.
Try provide a busy Winter vs Summer day; and do Weekday vs Weekend. You can probably pull this from the Deye app.
My anecdotal experience with the same inverter hardware as you (2 x 5kW) and a similar kWp solar array (20 x 455 = 9.1kWp, vs your 8.7kWp); situated in JHB and assuming sufficient/continuous load throughout daylight hours:
Summer peaks at around 60kWh production per day Winter peaks at around 40kWh production per day Summer is far less consistent than winter due to rain (which doesn't happen much in winter); with a rainy spell dropping production by as much as 90% if it's gloomy out. In contrast, moderate clouds (where it's partly cloudy but there's still glare - and no rain on the forecast) only drops production by around 20-30%. The killer is rain clouds. Winter water heating is more power-intensive since the base water temperature is cooler and people tend to use more hot water when it's cold. This seems to be around a 30% increase in our use-case. We achieve at minimum the following targets based on the last year:
Sufficient production to run essentials in daytime 99% of days (10kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night 95% of days (20kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night, and heat our main geyser 80% of days (30kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night, and heat both our main and secondary geyser 65% of days (40kWh per day) A few other points related to your post:
If you go gas, consider running it in parallel to electric as @zsde suggests so that you can heat your water for free when the PV is good. The last time I did the math, having to heat my water electrically for around one third of the year (like I do now) was dramatically cheaper than using gas the full year. Cooking is the same (since much of our kitchen use is when the sun is out). Also ask yourself if going off-grid electrically is going to make you reliant on the gas grid instead? If so, it might not be worth it (since an electric grid collapse would likely yield a later collapse in gas/fuel as well.) Going off-grid is a somewhat diminishing-returns exercise. At low consumption it's far, far easier, though. Provide consumption figures so we can assist! Prepaid electricity is often the most cost-effective balance between minimizing your system ROI and minimizing your reliance on the grid: we spent a week without power last year in spring and with the exception of everyone sharing the same geyser for a day or two, no-one noticed. If your electric bill is just a few hundred a month, work out how long it'd take for a generator to pay for itself.  

Yeah, I've spent time with hardware from both Deye (colleagues) and Sunsynk (my own) and functionality is the same on-inverter, the only difference is terminology in the menus. And colour scheme! 🙂
My installer mentioned he preferred the Sunsynk app to the Deye solution when he did the second-half of my installation last year; especially with regards to modifying settings from the SS app. Maybe this has changed since, though. Sunsynk also has a nice API which is quite clean and well documented.
But indeed, if none of that matters (or you're going Home Assistant or the like) I'd just go for whatever is cheaper at the time.

It's not that bad: like Bobster mentioned, 5kW goes further than you think as long as you keep cooking and heating under control.
Our household ran 5kW for about a year before adding a second unit in parallel; and we had no idea when there was load shedding unless we needed the stove/oven. And while 5kW limited what high-power items could be done on the UPS side, there's of course no limit on what you do grid-side (ie, on the non-backed-up side) - so if you keep your loads under control, you can still zero-export-to-CT to your non-essentials; since both the Sunsynk and Deye models discussed here can zero-export to the grid port.
So even though my geysers weren't on the UPS side, they still got mostly heated from PV when sunshine was available. And when loads exceeded 5kW, the balance just came from grid. So the cost savings were impressive - very impressive - from just the one 5kW unit, mainly thanks to zero-export-to-CT. And load shedding was a non-issue.
I might've considered moving the smaller geyser onto the UPS side (with a heating element downgrade to 2kW) if I'd stuck with a single inverter. But in the end we doubled the solar-panel-count and and needed the MPPTs of a second inverter. And with the second unit, all our high-power items could go onto the inverter's Aux port since the backed-up load maximum was now 10kW.

Here is an example how way out the SOC can become when using volts as a measure of SOC. Switching the inverter or grid off and on again can upset the reading reported for SOC.

I have monitored it for a few days now.
The combined two packs are 666Ah on common busbar. The interter knows the capacity is 666Ah. The inverter is set to AGM% mode.
The SOC estimated by the inverter is constantly about 3-4% lower than the combined Averge battery packs, reported for the Averge master BMS.
So I recon if I use the Inverter SOC in the timer settings I should be safe enough.

My understanding is that it uses the Voltage specified in the Battery settings as the 100% point, and then does coulomb counting down from there by measuring amp-hours exiting/entering the battery and deducting that from the "Batt Capacity" specified.
I ran in AGM% mode for a few weeks as well (whilst waiting for a battery firmware upgrade) and was pretty impressed with the accuracy, although letting the BMS handle it via LiBMS comms it is still preferable since without it you lose communication when errors occur and other features like dynamic charge/discharge rates that the BMS supplies the inverter.
For instance my BMS limits the Max Discharge if one of the batteries in the bank depletes before the other.

Does this imply they'll force all solar users onto Time of Use? Or is there a possibility that post-paid (with it's larger network fee) might be an allowable alternative?
I understand the need to have solar users 'pay' for using the grid as a battery, but Time of Use simply isn't going to work for everyone and, as @GreenFields mentioned, might leave those unprepared with sticker-shock when they get their bill if they still have some night-time use. The same might apply for users who don't have the spare battery capacity for this.
For my own setup, we'd set a large 'Power' allowance (and a low target SOC %) during those peak times (in the Sunsynk 'System Mode' settings) to permit the battery to drain during those times (and then leave the target percentages, in the timeslots afterwards, high as a reserve for load shedding) - but not all inverters support this level of control.
Seems somewhat unfair to owners that didn't see this coming... unless they can perhaps offer a non-TOU alternative that is more in-line with regular post-paid.

As Youda suggests, do share your average daily load requirements, since feasibility hinges entirely on consumption.
Try provide a busy Winter vs Summer day; and do Weekday vs Weekend. You can probably pull this from the Deye app.
My anecdotal experience with the same inverter hardware as you (2 x 5kW) and a similar kWp solar array (20 x 455 = 9.1kWp, vs your 8.7kWp); situated in JHB and assuming sufficient/continuous load throughout daylight hours:
Summer peaks at around 60kWh production per day Winter peaks at around 40kWh production per day Summer is far less consistent than winter due to rain (which doesn't happen much in winter); with a rainy spell dropping production by as much as 90% if it's gloomy out. In contrast, moderate clouds (where it's partly cloudy but there's still glare - and no rain on the forecast) only drops production by around 20-30%. The killer is rain clouds. Winter water heating is more power-intensive since the base water temperature is cooler and people tend to use more hot water when it's cold. This seems to be around a 30% increase in our use-case. We achieve at minimum the following targets based on the last year:
Sufficient production to run essentials in daytime 99% of days (10kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night 95% of days (20kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night, and heat our main geyser 80% of days (30kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night, and heat both our main and secondary geyser 65% of days (40kWh per day) A few other points related to your post:
If you go gas, consider running it in parallel to electric as @zsde suggests so that you can heat your water for free when the PV is good. The last time I did the math, having to heat my water electrically for around one third of the year (like I do now) was dramatically cheaper than using gas the full year. Cooking is the same (since much of our kitchen use is when the sun is out). Also ask yourself if going off-grid electrically is going to make you reliant on the gas grid instead? If so, it might not be worth it (since an electric grid collapse would likely yield a later collapse in gas/fuel as well.) Going off-grid is a somewhat diminishing-returns exercise. At low consumption it's far, far easier, though. Provide consumption figures so we can assist! Prepaid electricity is often the most cost-effective balance between minimizing your system ROI and minimizing your reliance on the grid: we spent a week without power last year in spring and with the exception of everyone sharing the same geyser for a day or two, no-one noticed. If your electric bill is just a few hundred a month, work out how long it'd take for a generator to pay for itself.  

As Youda suggests, do share your average daily load requirements, since feasibility hinges entirely on consumption.
Try provide a busy Winter vs Summer day; and do Weekday vs Weekend. You can probably pull this from the Deye app.
My anecdotal experience with the same inverter hardware as you (2 x 5kW) and a similar kWp solar array (20 x 455 = 9.1kWp, vs your 8.7kWp); situated in JHB and assuming sufficient/continuous load throughout daylight hours:
Summer peaks at around 60kWh production per day Winter peaks at around 40kWh production per day Summer is far less consistent than winter due to rain (which doesn't happen much in winter); with a rainy spell dropping production by as much as 90% if it's gloomy out. In contrast, moderate clouds (where it's partly cloudy but there's still glare - and no rain on the forecast) only drops production by around 20-30%. The killer is rain clouds. Winter water heating is more power-intensive since the base water temperature is cooler and people tend to use more hot water when it's cold. This seems to be around a 30% increase in our use-case. We achieve at minimum the following targets based on the last year:
Sufficient production to run essentials in daytime 99% of days (10kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night 95% of days (20kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night, and heat our main geyser 80% of days (30kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night, and heat both our main and secondary geyser 65% of days (40kWh per day) A few other points related to your post:
If you go gas, consider running it in parallel to electric as @zsde suggests so that you can heat your water for free when the PV is good. The last time I did the math, having to heat my water electrically for around one third of the year (like I do now) was dramatically cheaper than using gas the full year. Cooking is the same (since much of our kitchen use is when the sun is out). Also ask yourself if going off-grid electrically is going to make you reliant on the gas grid instead? If so, it might not be worth it (since an electric grid collapse would likely yield a later collapse in gas/fuel as well.) Going off-grid is a somewhat diminishing-returns exercise. At low consumption it's far, far easier, though. Provide consumption figures so we can assist! Prepaid electricity is often the most cost-effective balance between minimizing your system ROI and minimizing your reliance on the grid: we spent a week without power last year in spring and with the exception of everyone sharing the same geyser for a day or two, no-one noticed. If your electric bill is just a few hundred a month, work out how long it'd take for a generator to pay for itself.  

As Youda suggests, do share your average daily load requirements, since feasibility hinges entirely on consumption.
Try provide a busy Winter vs Summer day; and do Weekday vs Weekend. You can probably pull this from the Deye app.
My anecdotal experience with the same inverter hardware as you (2 x 5kW) and a similar kWp solar array (20 x 455 = 9.1kWp, vs your 8.7kWp); situated in JHB and assuming sufficient/continuous load throughout daylight hours:
Summer peaks at around 60kWh production per day Winter peaks at around 40kWh production per day Summer is far less consistent than winter due to rain (which doesn't happen much in winter); with a rainy spell dropping production by as much as 90% if it's gloomy out. In contrast, moderate clouds (where it's partly cloudy but there's still glare - and no rain on the forecast) only drops production by around 20-30%. The killer is rain clouds. Winter water heating is more power-intensive since the base water temperature is cooler and people tend to use more hot water when it's cold. This seems to be around a 30% increase in our use-case. We achieve at minimum the following targets based on the last year:
Sufficient production to run essentials in daytime 99% of days (10kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night 95% of days (20kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night, and heat our main geyser 80% of days (30kWh per day) Sufficient production to run essentials day and night, and heat both our main and secondary geyser 65% of days (40kWh per day) A few other points related to your post:
If you go gas, consider running it in parallel to electric as @zsde suggests so that you can heat your water for free when the PV is good. The last time I did the math, having to heat my water electrically for around one third of the year (like I do now) was dramatically cheaper than using gas the full year. Cooking is the same (since much of our kitchen use is when the sun is out). Also ask yourself if going off-grid electrically is going to make you reliant on the gas grid instead? If so, it might not be worth it (since an electric grid collapse would likely yield a later collapse in gas/fuel as well.) Going off-grid is a somewhat diminishing-returns exercise. At low consumption it's far, far easier, though. Provide consumption figures so we can assist! Prepaid electricity is often the most cost-effective balance between minimizing your system ROI and minimizing your reliance on the grid: we spent a week without power last year in spring and with the exception of everyone sharing the same geyser for a day or two, no-one noticed. If your electric bill is just a few hundred a month, work out how long it'd take for a generator to pay for itself.  

Assumptions:
all the panels are facing north, with a slope at least 15° no shading of panels with trees, buildings etc daily consumption around 10 000 Wh (based on 40% of 15kW battery remaining in the morning after a cloudy day)  
Looks like you will be good, even during winter:
https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html


 
There will be a couple of days when your battery will run flat (below 20%), but you can bridge this with a genset easily.
Just really watch your daily consumption:
With the assumed 10kWh/day it's okay (as seen above). With 15kWh/day of consumption there will be 4% of days with the empty battery. And 20kWh/day is not feasible with the current system (you would need to double the amount of panels and add another 5kWh of battery at least). Good luck!
Youda
 
 
 

Through summer depending on loads in the evening like Aircon or how long the microwave works every morning my battery are are in the low 70 to 60% .
In winter as the days are shorter any thing from low 50 to 60% .
Batterys are charged to 100% in summer around around 9:30 am 
Best is never allow your battery's to discharge under 50% for battery life and rainy days . 
Sound like to me you need one more battery to go off grid but normally adding batterys means solar panels as well 

We are blessed with sunny winters. 
Instead of considering a gas geyser, a 150l electric geyser is around the same price.
Consider that in series with your current geyser. Both can be heated to max temp during the day in sequence and should give you more than enough hot water.
Your solar in the day is free energy. Gas geysers consume quite a bit and that would be an extra expense.

Yeah Aux is essentially just a conditional connection to Load; so it’s going to trip the inverter if we exceed the limits.
Useful for running high-power devices during outages/load shedding; but still requires peak-usage management to prevent trips. Would be nice if there was an option to cut Aux first in the event of an overload, to prevent a full trip…
 
That said, if all you want to do is use excess solar for those high-power devices, you can leave them on non-essentials, install the CT coil that comes with the Sunsynk/Deye, and excess power will then be fed back to the non-essentials, since these models are bi-directional inverters. This is what many of us do; it’s pretty fantastic and allows a well-designed system to pay for itself relatively quickly. 

This is correct
 
When grid is available, AUX follows the same supply rules as UPS, which (when on-grid), is governed mainly by the table in the System Mode-System1 screen. Think of AUX as just an extension of UPS, separated by a Relay/Switch, which is powered on/off according to the Aux screen settings. If you drop the battery percentages in System Mode-System1 and specify a maximum allowable battery power draw under 'Power' for the appropriate time-slots, the inverter will supply both Load and Aux from PV supplemented by battery, within those limits; and will only hit grid when those limits are reached. You can then use this to cycle the battery down during the day (I go all the way down to ~15%), and then target closer to 100% as sunset approaches.

Let me ask: you're saying that Solar Power (W) is an 'And' condition? Meaning that (with 'On Grid Always On' un-ticked) if Solar Power (W) is above zero, the SOC Batt Percentage condition has to be met AND there has to be the specified amount of Solar Power (W) available)?
And for this Solar Power (W), is this amount being drawn from solar at the time? Or is this including spare availability (eg if batteries are full and house load is 900W - thus the system is only pulling 0.9kW - but the array could be generating 4kW if demanded, if you set the Solar Power (W) value to 2kW - will it power on? Or does it have to be currently-in-use PV that gets measured?)
These are questions we asked a while back on this forum (without clear answers) so having someone around who's got this working is helpful, here!
 
As an aide: I've been thoroughly enjoying watching my geysers heat, stove cook and pool pump when the grid is down thanks to this little Aux port...

'Essentials' would be anything wired to the inverter Load/UPS port; 'SmartLoad/Aux' would be anything wired to the Gen port; 'Non-Essentials' would be anything not directly wired to the inverter at all.
Non-Essentials hence needs grid to be powered up. In these grid-based scenarios, Non-Essentials would usually then work hand-in-hand with the supplied CT coil to get powered by the inverter (typically with excess capacity - depending on setup) using the same idea that regular grid-export uses: the Inverter just uses the Grid input as an output where necessary; with the CT coil preventing that export from leaving your premises by measuring demand and matching inverter supply (via the Grid port) to that demand; basically turning your house into the local 'grid'; hence the term 'Zero Export to CT' that gets used to describe it.
 
Hence in a fully-off-grid scenario, you won't use anything under Non-Essentials...
 
SmartLoad/Aux is then simply an extension of Load/UPS, separated by a switch/relay which the inverter turns off and on based on the parameters set on the SmartLoad/Aux page. Therefore, you're bound by the same maximum load that the Load port has; so a 3kW load on Load/UPS plus a 3kW load on Aux (6kW total) would exceed your 5kW rating and trip the inverter; whereas if that Aux load was a regular non-essential, that last 1kW would instead come from the grid without the inverter tripping.
 
In my case I've got both my geysers on Aux (in a 10kW [2 x 5-kW-inverter] parallel setup); but I still have to be careful that the timers they're connected through don't turn them on simultaneously - or I'll trip if the kitchen is busy at the same time.
 
As @Kalahari Meerkat explains, you can then set the battery thresholds to have the port - these 'Smart' loads - only turn on when you have spare capacity. You can't limit the power through the port, you can just decide when it must turn on by setting the battery on/off and Power thresholds.  So in @Kalahari Meerkat's example, his Aux port will turn off when his battery dips to/below 45%, and then turn back on when the battery rises 50% again.
Whatever the draw on that SmartLoad/Gen port is, is what will be drawn: there's no limiting from the inverter; hence keep an eye on your maximum Load + SmartLoad not exceeding 5kW.
 
 
 

The Megawatt-Hour-Per-Month Club? Yes please! All-time-high was last month (October) at just under 1.3MWh though the average is around 1MWh p/m even in winter.
System (details in signature) payback time will be under 4 years. Now (whilst load-shedding is on standby and prices are black-friday-good) is the time to upgrade: if your're on the fence, pull that trigger! Will add some more batteries on my own system with the profits once it's all paid for itself 3 years from now.
 

The Megawatt-Hour-Per-Month Club? Yes please! All-time-high was last month (October) at just under 1.3MWh though the average is around 1MWh p/m even in winter.
System (details in signature) payback time will be under 4 years. Now (whilst load-shedding is on standby and prices are black-friday-good) is the time to upgrade: if your're on the fence, pull that trigger! Will add some more batteries on my own system with the profits once it's all paid for itself 3 years from now.
 

I surely can't be the only one here that has broken the 1 Megawatt-Hour for the month 😜

I know I’m being pedantic to point that out, but the Deye Work Modes have run me in circles for MONTHS.  Zero Export but Allow Export? Whaaaaaat?