Jaco Venter

Interesting but will wait for more feedback

Hi @Gerlachplease send me a message if you still looking for sensors?

Hallo @Nellis.Theron It might be that the voltage detected from the inverter is lower than 47.5V while the kettle is turned on. Are you making use of the inverter settings (29=47.5V) as your Back to grid? Are you making use of the inverter to detect when to switch from solar to grid or are you using ICC battery monitoring software? If you only use the inverter to detect the voltages to switch you may have to drop the "Back to Grid voltage" lower. Have a look at the Voltage trend to see if it is the case.

Hi there Is the Microcare MPPT still available?

AE Solar panels are over rated in any case. Canadian Solar panels perform much better.

Try PiShop in Meyerton. Bought Charger from PiShop and they also have batteries. I bought batteries from "Home and Toys" (China shop in Vanderbijlpark.)

@Deamon EmonPi should be good enough for what you want to do. I bought an IotaWatt which can measure 14 current streams and has a voltage reference. The IotaWatt is not set up as yet but will be able to reply soon with results.

Hi @KLEVAwhat about these unit avai;able from the PiShop They also have other PWM chargers.

Hi @DeepBass9 I might be speaking out of turn, but I actually think we make the charging of lithium batteries more complicated as what it is. I think it is crucial to have the correct floating voltage set and not to boost these batteries. The BMS (Battery Management System) of these batteries will do the rest. I commissioned my system and the batteries were not fully charged, although the Victron Battery monitor indicated it as 100%. I am making use of the ICC software to trend battery state only. As the system reached 100% during the day the batteries will accept the energy (kW) coming their way up to a point where the batteries actually reach the real 100%. I reached this point after I decided to charge the batteries with Eskom power one Friday. I charged the batteries at a rate of 50A from Eskom and at about 20:00 the Friday night the batteries were fully charged. The Amps drawn from Eskom suddenly dropped to Zero. Since then my batteries did not react strangely to high loads or give strange alarms since SOC (State of Charge) was actually much closer to reality. I had to disconnect the Victron battery monitor to install a bigger fuse on my battery system and after startup the monitor indicated full batteries again although it was at about 80%. I'm slowly catching up to the real 100% again but have not reached it yet as I do not want to pump Eskom power into the batteries again. Yes I agree that the Microcare MPPT's Voltage range for float needs to be changed to accommodate for lower Voltages as my batteries actually require 51V (12.75V x 4) as floating charge. I did a test whereby I set the floating charge to 52.8V and 53.6V respectively and on the ICC software it actually indicates that the float charging voltage is around 50.5V in both cases. (The BMS must have something to do with it) While you use the battery power every day say between 90% and 50% I do not think that you need anything else as to focus on floating charge voltage. It might be a good idea to charge it once every few months to real 100% but other than that I'm fairly happy with the way my batteries perform currently. Hope this help. Should anyone have a different view please share it with us?

Hallo @Solaris what is the step changes? 0.1V or smaller? For example can you decide between 12.5 and 12.6 ? Im also struggling with Microcare at the moment.

I sent my 100A MPPT for the same exercise and received it back without any changes. They are currently still busy to do some programming and testing and they told me they will sent me the PIC's on Monday. It actually make more sense now as surely @Solaris inputs was used to program the PIC's. Hopefully I will receive the PIC's during the week and then it needs to be installed. I have two MPPT's and it also needs to be changed on the Inverter as the Inverter settings is also not accommodating for LiFe as the voltage changeover settings is not fine enough (2V between settings). I used PostLink to courier the 100A MPPT and it cost me R207 from Vanderbijlpark to Microcare.

Most probably, as the load is not close to the max. (I presume) I found that the King performed more stable over weekend as the load in my house was more stable and lower over weekends.

Dit word ook aanbeveel om al die strings se drade ewe lank te hou om die sisteem gebalanseerd te hou.

Yes it will, it is actually marked to show which side is going where. If the shut is mounted with the coms cables on the right, the negative from the battery must be connected on the bottom and the top of the shunt must be connected to the inverter. Also make sure setting 5 on the BMV is set to 1.05 for Li-ion and setting 6 is set to accommodate losses. (95% might be close)

Hallo Mike The ICC software make use of the BMV values to determine the SOC.