Julian K

Thanks again for all this information and sharing your experiences. I think I’m really getting the idea of what I need to do now. Probably won’t get it right straight away, but hopefully several days or a couple of weeks of tinkering should do the trick, to get a set up similar to what you have done. Sounds pretty much ideal. Our outages aren’t too bad. Probably about 10 times a year, but it’s nice to be able to keep the house running and comfortable when they do occur . Our battery rarely goes beneath 40% if we don’t use any air conditioning, but definitely gets nearer 10% by morning when we do. Probably about 150 nights a year.

Thank you for your help. Seems like a good idea trying to plan using the heavier loads at different times while still benefiting the sun. That’s definitely something we’ll be planning to do. As for the air conditioning units, luckily they have already been upgraded to the inverter type, and the consumption is really only about 20% to 25% of what the previous units used. Just need to update the freezer to an inverter type now. I hope to have that done soon.

Thank you for your kind and quick reply Bobster. I actually live in Brazil and joined this forum a few years ago when I had a Growatt inverter. I realized that Brazil and South Africa seem to use similar brands in solar equipment, compared to the US, we’re both on the southern hemisphere and I personally found the people very friendly and helpful here. Solar isn’t very popular here yet unfortunately, so it’s also difficult to find knowledgeable people. I think the energy we consume a day is very similar to yours, around 15 kWh a day, usually a couple of kWh more a day in the summer when we have the air conditioning running. If the battery is full at sundown we can usually run the air conditioner until early in the morning when the battery reaches around 20%.My ideal scenario would be to use solar as much as possible during the day running the house, while charging the battery, and go into the evening with a full battery. Maybe with a quick extra charge from the grid early evenings? Start the next day again on solar and re charging the battery using the panels. If necessary with a quick top up from the grid if really necessary. We really don’t want to inject any energy surplus into the grid as it’s hardly profitable, and there’s a lengthy and expensive bureaucratic path to follow before it’s even allowed. We just want to make sure we don’t send anything back to the grid, as we have a lot of power outages and we don’t want to electrocute anyone working on the power lines. Have you any idea if the scenario I described would be possible to do automatically? Without switching any switches etc? On the old Growatt we used to have we always seemed to be switching between grid and battery depending on the weather. To be honest, I don’t even know if the Deye inverter has this option to easily switch between the two. I really hope it can do both: be programmed to something similar to what I want, but also have an option to ‘quick choose’ between sun, battery or grid. I still need to try and find that out. Anyway, thank you again for your last message and I hope you have a good weekend.

Hi, Unfortunately I have been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and probably don’t have very long to live at all. Not long ago, my wife and I moved house which has an 8000W Deye hybrid inverter, 6000W in panels and 9,6 KWH in two batteries. I myself only have very basic knowledge about solar systems and I haven’t really had the energy to see how our system works. My wife has no knowledge whatsoever and we would really like to be able to leave the solar running with as little interference as possible, i.e. have a system that just takes care of itself. We have too many panels for our needs, so would like to run the house during the day using the sun, while also charging the batteries to be used when the sun has gone down. I have tested here that some nights we get by without using the grid, but the batteries are at 20 or 30% in the morning, so I don’t know if it’s a good idea to discharge them so much during the night. We also don’t want to send energy back to the grid and don’t have cheaper energy rates at night. I was hoping someone could help me to use the right settings so our house can run autonomously without my wife having to do anything. I have looked for someone in my area to help but no one seems to know much about Deye inverters. I’m pretty scared of having to leave her and running into problems or to be left in the dark. Any suggestions would be really appreciated, so thanks in advance.

Hello, I have been using a 4,8 kW LiFePO4 battery with my Growatt spf3500es off grid inverter with no problems at all, until today when I disconnected the battery to put it on a new rack. When I reconnected it, also the data cable for the bms, the inverter didn’t accept the Li setting anymore (setting 5 on the inverter), got error code 4 and the inverter shows 0,0% charge, which is not correct as I charged the battery to 90% before, and using the USE2 setting it show 51,2%. The inverter turned itself off. Without this setting, I can’t use the SoC percentage for the inverter to switch back to grid. I usually have it switch back to grid at 25% SoC. I now only can get the battery working by manually setting the charge and float voltages. (USE2 on setting 5). I would love to get the inverter back to working how it was, so any suggestions would be very welcome. Maybe it’s a typical Growatt issue? Or maybe someone could suggest a ‘back to grid’ voltage if I can’t use the 25% setting. I’m quite sure this battery is a 15 cell battery: the working voltage is 42V to 54V, the advised charging voltage is 53,5V to 54V. What voltage would be around a 25% SoC? Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Hello Mauritius and thank you for replying. The dip switches on the battery are conform what the manual said. I have so many cables similar to these lying around. Do you happen to know how I can see if one is suitable or not? The connection is exactly the same as I use for my Internet modem.

Thank you so much for your quick reply. Maybe I should try this for now and try and get try to the BMS sorted out somehow later. Do you happen to have the voltage settings for charging, float, back to grid etc?

Hello, my name is Julian, I am completely new to this forum, and I live in Brazil. I hope it is not a problem that a foreigner is using your South African forum, but I didn’t know where else to go. Where I live, not many people have solar yet, and it is difficult to find knowledgeable people who might have answers for people like me, who are not very experienced in dealing with solar and solar equipment. Over the last three or four years, I have been teaching myself the basics on YouTube and have had a 3,3 Kw system running for the last two years with a Growatt hybrid, inverter, and eight lead acid batteries. until now, I have not had any problems, and have enjoyed the benefits of having a lower energy bill, and being the only person in the street with energy when we have blackouts, which are quite regular. The problems started this week when I decided to change my eight lead acid batteries for one LiFePO4 battery. My inverter is a Growatt SPF 3500 ES, and my new battery is a Narada 48 NPFC 100. What ever I do, I can’t get the system up and running again. I’ve tried with, and without a BMS, followed all the instructions in both manuals, but I keep getting alarms when I set my battery as lithium. Alarms 4 (low battery voltage) and 20 (BMS error). When I manually set the parameters for the battery and don’t choose lithium and don’t use the BMS the battery voltage is higher like it should be, and the inverter works for a about 30 seconds before shutting down. In these 30 seconds the solar panels, try to send energy to the battery, but it looks like they keep being disconnected. The voltage is OK, but every time they build up some wattage, it’s like they are being turned off and go back to zero. in this case, I also get an error code 19, which is battery disconnected when it definitely isn’t disconnected! I really don’t know what to do anymore, my system was working perfectly before, and I thought it would be better and easier using a lithium battery with BMS. Hopefully I’m just making some kind of stupid beginners mistake, and I really hope someone on this site with more knowledge than me can maybe point me in the right direction, and tell me what I might be doing wrong. By the way, I am using a normal ethernet cable, like the normal ones used for Internet modems for my BMS communications. That is Ok isn’t it? Any help or tips to get me a step closer to get the system up and running again would be really appreciated. Thank you in advance.