LLTHB

Hi to all. Need help please. My sunsynk is not accepting my new times in the settings section. I have entered new times as per normal to allow the battery to drain at set intervals. Like to keep a certain % during the night and set it to drop every few hours. Always worked, yet now for last 2 weeks or so, it does not accept the new times, keeping the old time schedule in its memory. All help appreciated. Cheers.

Morning Bobster, please let me know if this has solved my problem - Goodwe not charging batteries unless Eskom power is present. Fingers X this patch will work, otherwise I sit with 2 perfectly functioning inverters I cannot use. Thanks. LLTHB

Hi. At one guest house we preheat the electric geysers from the inverter between 10h00 and 15h00, then the power to the geysers goes off. 65Deg hot water then flows through a Paloma Hybrid gas geyser. First person showers, the gas does not even come on. When the 3rd person showers and the temp drops below 55 Deg, the gas geyser slowly comes to life and we use gas until the next day when the solar heats up the geysers again. This system works so well for us.

Had such poor service from the agents, useless actually. Removed a perfectly good working inverter and replaced with a Sunsynk 8. I believe there is a patch available or still coming out for the Goodwe, but I could not wait. Really a lesson in how to piss off your clients and kill your brand. If I was in this industry, I would monitor a site like this and send clients with issues a message discussing contact and solution problems. Poor show. We had no Eskom in the Karoo area I live for 12 days. You think you are prepared for it, I can assure you, a 12 day blackout makes you rethink your entire strategy. And no, I cant just go off grid - 9 geysers, 7 ovens, 14 air cons plus loads of pool pumps etc etc.

Hi to all. My heading explains my problem. The Goodwe is 5 years old and it used to charge the batteries during load shedding. About 2 years ago they did a firmware upgrade and now the unit no longer chargers the batteries if Eskom is off. The inverter supplies power to the appliances etc, but lets say I am only using 1000 watts on a bright sunny day and it could make 5000 watts and charge the batteries, it no longer does this. The agents are about as effective as the ashtray on my motorbike and just speak goobledegook rubbish. Anyone, anyone anyone? Thanks in advance. Cheers.

Hi Thank you for the reply, it is appreciated. Yes, it is an ES series unit. 100% sure the unit is in General Mode. General Mode is supposed to only use excess power to charge the batteries. And it used to do this for 4 years without missing a beat. But now suddenly it starts charging the battery just after midnight. I see Goodwe have updated their manuals and it looks like the mode names have changed and they now speak about time based charging parameters that can be set like a Sunsynk unit. I will look into this further. We have had lots of low power issues from Eskom lately, whole town going down to 1 phase only 110v or so, in the Karoo the wind and Eskom are not friends I can assure you. Cheers.

Hi. About 4 weeks ago my Goodwe suddenly started to charge my batteries from midnight onwards. So, running in General Mode - batteries set to deplete to 50 % of charge when Eskom power is on. Sun goes down at 19h00, batteries on 100%. Slowly they draw down to 50% and stay there. Now, here is the problem - they should just stay at my chosen point of 50% until the sun shines and PV makes power, excess power made will now charge the batteries. BUT - now suddenly the Goodwe is charging the batteries from 00h01 each day. So now I have to buy Eskom to charge the batteries. Have Goodwe changed something, do I need a firmware update etc? Anyone else have this issue? Thanks.

Hi. I have 8 geysers and am looking for an option to see water temp and energy use. Prefer after market goods that I can install myself, expensive to get sparky in to rewire 8 geysers. Need to be able to see geyser temp and current draw on a phone app. Cheers.

Hi. My own fault. Plugged to many hot trays into the system during a long load shed. Now flashing error code 07 and will not work, have left unplugged and no load for hours, will not auto reset. How do I reset this unit? Thanks. LLTHB

Good day to all. I had 2 Goodwe 5Kva inverters in 2 of my guest houses. Recently replaced one with a Sunsynk unit as we needed to add in a generator. Both Goodwe units used to charge the batteries during load shedding. I always new even if batteries were low, come load shedding for 2 hours the batteries would be fully charged as we can only draw small amounts of power on the "essential loads" rail on the DB board. But I see Goodwe have made some changes to the app and to PV Master. Now the batteries are not charging during a power out, and to make matters worse, when the power comes back on, all the power made by the inverter goes to geysers, air cons etc and the batteries are simply last in the queue. Is any one else experiencing these issues? I dont think finger trouble is the cause of this, any input will be valued. Cheers. Howard.

Hi. Am I correct in assuming the best day for solar will be the 21st Dec? Is this not the day where we get the most sun? Does angle of the panels come into play at all? Thanks in advance. Cheers.

I have just written to Sunsynk. Hi Keith. Answer looks so simple, but it appears that more info is needed. I can source a 200v 4Kw unit, but it pumps out 22 amps. Can your unit handle the 22 amps in an MPPT? Is it not possible for Sunsynk to say: The following brands and model numbers of wind turbines will work with a Sunsynk 5Kw inverter: Brand XYZ, Model AB1, Version 4 Brand FXS, Model 11 etc etc, you catch my drift. We are not asking for a recommendation, just a simple what actually works and what does not work. Thanks. Howard.

Thanks YellowTapemeasure. Ok, so those are the specs for the Sunsynk 5Kw unit - 200 volts and max 400 kW. But now, where do I purchase this wind turbine - who stocks a reputable make, has experince with them etc. Cheers. Howard.

Hello to all. Ok, we are in the Karoo, lots of sun and lots of wind. Currently we have a Goodwe 5kw unit, works a bomb. We have double the amount of panels that we should have and we manually turn them on and off as the sun moves, our house is in an H shape and is a solar collectors nightmare or a dream for us as we can now harvest sun from the east, the north and the west. But we cannot add wind into our mix with the Goodwe. We have been told to go Sunsynk as they are the only units that can be programmed to take wind as well as solar. Our plan is to order 2 Sunsynk 5Kw units and run them in parallel. All so far is good and clear, we can move the old Goodwe to a new property we just purchased so incur no loss. But now, and here I really need expert advice, I want to dedicate 3 of the 4 MPPTs to solar and one to wind. Firstly is this doable, is it feasible??? How do we do it and where oh where can we get a wind gennie that will work in this layout. So in my dreams I have sun in summer from 05h30 to 19h00. Wind comes up at 14h00 and blows to 24h00. It is this wind that will be my addition, as with the new system I could just leave all the panels on all the time and not have to manually isolate them. Even 2.4Kw of wind for 10 hours a day will add up to a lot of power. In summer we run 7 geysers and about 9 air cons at night. Would be so nice to add the extra 24Kw of wind power. Appreciate any advice and say thank you in advance. Cheers. Howard.

Hi to all and thanks for all the input so far. In reply to Jaco - no, I cant handle all 40 panels at once. We are set up to use about 5Kw at a time. This we get from 20 panels on a bright sunny day, no problem. But when it is overcast, we can only get about 3.5Kw as an example. We then turn on the extra 10 panels, bringing 30 panels online and this brings us up to 5Kw again. But if I go out and forget to turn off the 10 extra panels and the sun pops out, I risk damaging my inverter as emails from Antony in earlier post show. So in a perfect world, 20 panels will be great if the sun shines every day. But this is not true so we want to put up extra panels safely. Bright sunshine - 20 panels = 5Kw Overcast - 30 panels = 5kw So we have to look at external MPPTs. In the old days you set the jets in your car for Jhb or Durban. So if you jetted your carb's for jhb, as you went down hill you could either lose or gain power as things changed, but your carburetor was dumb and was not variable. Modern fuel injectors sense the amount of air pressure to work out O2 levels and and adjust spray to optimize so no matter the altitude your car is efficient. This is the thrust of my argument - how can we put up excess panels to allow for variables like overcast cloudy days. Safely that is. Cheers.

Hi to all. Please excuse any errors I make here, I am an amateur at this. We have installed a Goodwe hybrid grid tie inverter, 5Kw unit. It was supplied with 20 panels - 2 strings of 10 connected to the 2 MPPT inputs. Due to the construction of our house in a "H" shape, we throw shade over the north facing panels till about 09h00. To get around this we have added a 3rd string of 10 panels on our east facing roof. So now at night we turn off one of the north facing strings and turn on the east facing string. So still only 20 panels connected at any one time to the inverter. At about 09h00 when the full sun is on the 20 north facing panels, we turn off the east panels and turn on the north facing string that was off, so only 20 panels on at a time. All well and good, works like a bomb. BUT, BUT, BUT - we have now learned on an overcast day, we can turn on all 30 panels and make more power from less light. All well and good. But what will happen if the clouds suddenly disappear and all 30 panels are producing max power? The installer has explained to me that basically my system max spec is a day in October where because of roof angles etc, that is the day my 20 panels will make the most power ever if the sky is clear and that is the maximum input the inverter can handle. Lets call this the "perfect day". So, all other days we can make less power because of angles, cloud etc etc. This seems wrong. On a cloudy day, we could do with 40 panels, not 20. Why can we not just put more panels up than needed on the perfect day, but each other day we could make the "perfect day" if we could have 40 panels on line all the time, but the inverter must only take what it can handle max. Does this make sense or am I lost here? Why are we limited like this?? Or are we? Any advice appreciated here. Cheers.

Plonkster you right, KISS. We are going to look at another MPPT solution.

Thanks Plonkster and TTT. Agreed 100%, except for the design and actual layout of our house. There is a period from 10 to 2 that no sun is shining on the East or the West panels. Steep pitched roofs, layout of house is in a "H" configuration. Our panels are at right angles to each other. Looking at the house, the center faces exactly north, with East and West at 90 degrees to this. So with a high vertical sun in summer, it will only shine on the top edge of the East and West panels. Our spread sheet calcs show 80% of the power comes from the main panels. 20% will come from East and West. So the East panel will only help from sunrise to about 10h00. And, the West panel is still in shadow at this time. And the West panel will only generate from about 15h00 onwards. By doing it the suggested way, we only have one panel on line in the brightest part of the day. Seems to be that switching is going to have to be done. cheers.

Hi Plonkster, thanks for the replies, well informative. The inverter has 2 MPPTs - the main panels are in 2 banks of 10, each bank uses up 1 MPPT on the inverter. These panels bring us to just shy of absolute max input if the sun is shining and we at midday, all is running well. We cannot now just flip on the West panels or the East panels as we will go over max input allowed into the inverter. Parameters: We have four sets of panels, only 2 can be online at a time. 2 equals the max the inverter can handle. Four incoming wires from the 4 banks of panels come into the garage. Our inverter has 2 MPPT inputs. Recommend the best way of being able to isolate the 4 panels and then be able to bring online only 2 of the 4 panels at a time. Our intention: At night, we will switch on East panel and 1 main roof panel - 2 online - West and 1 main roof panel off This allows us to catch the early morning sun as it rises and supply power to the laundry geysers and washing machines. By 10am, the sun will have moved past our East gable and the best power is now from the 2 main roof panels. So we will isolate East panel, leaving only 1 panel on line. Then we will turn on the 2nd main roof panel - 2 online, East and West offline By 15h00, sun will be more to the west, so will isolate 1 main roof pane,, leaving only 1 panel on line. Then we will turn on West panel - 2 online, East and 1 roof panel offline. It is the isolating and switching off of the incoming lines from the PV panels that we need advice on. Cheers.

Hi to all. My first post, and I hope it is of the standard required on this forum. I have been lurking for a while to get a feel for the personality's on the forum. We are in Prince Albert in the Karoo.Our main house has gables on either side of the roof we are putting our solar panels on. This leads to shadows been thrown over the solar array in the morning till about 9 and starting in the arvie from about 4.This shortens our solar day by about 6 hours in the summer and 3 hours in the winter. A lot of generation time.Option 1 is of course to bash the house down and rebuild. Option 2 is to add more panels, lets call them East and West and the main panels we call Center.We can only have maximum 20 panels on line at a time in 2 banks of 10 panels each.Our Center panels are 2 x 10 - total 20 and this pushes in the max amount allowed of DC power to the inverter.But in the morning we want the 10 panels on the East roof to come into play, so we want to turn off one of the Center panels and turn on the East panels - total of 20 panels on line. This will be from 05h00 to 09h00.After 09h00, we want to turn off the 10 East panels and turn on the second bank of Center panels till about 15h00 when we want to turn off one bank of center panels and turn on the 10 West panels. So all day we have a max of 20 panels on line at any one time.So now we come the crux of the matter.High voltage DC 3 way switches or any other suggestion to be able to allow us to configure any combination of 2 of the 4 banks online at a time - BUT NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE 3 OR 4 BANKS ON AT ONCE.Any legitimate advice and input will be welcomed.I am posting this post on other sites as well as someone out there has had this problem and solved it, I am loathe to pay school fees on this. Need to know what worked on other sites.Thank you in anticipation for assistance and advice. Cheers.