LouisM

I have a sunsync 5kw hybrid plus 3000c pylons. I struggled getting the bms communication going and ended up taking a normal 3m ethernet cable and removed all the cables with a side cutter at both ends except 4 and 5 which is blue and It's twisted pair white blue. Nothing some insulation tape couldnt fix. Now I have comms finally. All Dipswithces on 0001 . March 2023.

Just like we all waited a lifetime for the internet to finally work at speed, so do we wait for the day where we have batteries, or storage, to which none of this matters. I'm looking forward to that day:-)

Thank you for the replies, I am more confident now to connect as per option2, Hopes this helps others too 🙂

Basic question, is the batteries not draining flat through the night and then the BMS cuts them off?

Hi All, I am struggling to find info on the internet about this. I have 6 pylon US3000C all in parrallel with BMS cables connected. The question is , having no main busbar, only pylon cables, what would be the most sensible method to uplink the batteries to the inverter. I have 3 options basically that I can think of. Please disregard all cable lengths in my drawing, My uplink cables are the same length. The question is about where to connect the uplink cables to the battery to. Not an Option. I can use 1 + and 1 - cable at the opposite end of the bank. I prefer to overengineer stuff, so I want to go with a double cable uplink to the inverter. So this is not an option. Option 1. I can use 1 + and 1 - cable and another 1 + and 1 - at the opposite end of the bank. This doesnt feel quite right, although this is the only method I see people use. Option 2. I can split the banks in 2 (3+3) and have 1 + and 1 - cable at the opposite end of the bank for each bank. This to me feels optimised and that is what I would like to do, but I suppose my convcern is whether I will confuse the BMS. So this is my question, if not then why not 🙂 Thanks for the inputs.

So Manie from ICC solved this entire consumption issue for us now on the Axpert King. His pi based software will switch the inverter to eco mode (I call it bypass cause that's what it is) in the evening, avoiding just about all self consumption from the grid, (its about 20 or 30w ish at most), and back to online mode during the day (SUB, USB, SBU), allowing you to benefit from your PV in the day and bypassing all the power hungry draw at night. Batteries is still activated in eco mode if mains fail. I'm on online mode->SUB during the day and eco at night. And this has now completely solved the issue for me. Thanks Manie for all the hours of struggling getting this done. https://iccsoftware.co.za/

(Topic: Running form utility at night and avoid self consumption but retain benefit of solar during the day on Axpert King 5Kw. May2019 ) Just today I came to the exact same conclusion as RichieRich. Put the inverter on ECO mode in "Operating logic" in WatchPower (software bypass basically) after PV is low or lost at a preset time in the afternoon and back to "Online mode" early in the morning and almost all self consumption is avoided. Online mode will retain the benefit of the panels during the day as my "Output source Priority" setting is set on "Solar->Utility->Battery " Why this is not a built in function in Winpower is beyond me and what exactly Auto mode does (and why auto mode doesn't do exactly this) is also beyond me. One can simply enable "Bypass Function" in WatchPower and physically switch the power button on the keypad every night and every evening but that seems like a lot of work and also if there is a power failure during the night the batteries wont activate. The best solution here is to get WatchPower to add this, failing that then ICC , failing that a software utility that interface to the unit directly and changes this, failing that 'll create a Macro exe hack job and publish it here as soon as I'm done. I reiterate, hack job so no guarantees given.

I meant to say …….and the occasional excess power gets discarded as I imagine it cant be used at 220v without another inverter.

Thanx Yoda, its my first attempt at solar so Im learning as I go along

To draw from batteries instead of the grid to avoid the self consumption wastage is certainly a sensible suggestion, and it does work well as I tried it for 2 weeks. My Eskom cost was reduced as far as evening consumption goes and little wasted energy. Its just that the financial Maths for me don't add up, unless I am missing something but every time I look back at the graph I just cant see how to get past this point even if I try to wish it away. I'd love to learn that I am wrong though. I have 8x Narada 200NDT AGM batteries that cost R48K. The Narada Acme range cycle graph I found randomly suggest that using my batteries each night with a DoD of 50-70% will give me 350-500 recharge cycles, that's just 1- 1.5 years! Using a timer and reducing the DoD to say 30% increases the cycles to about 900. Still, its pretty bad odds as one doesn't use nearly as much electricity during the evening. I can save about R10+ per night by going to batteries and even less if I use a timer. So my logic tells me if the Grid is available to stick to it during the night and save the batteries for when you actually really need them. Hopefully in that scenario they should last 10 years plus.

Hi Guys, some basic design question which must be a common issue for a lot of people. I have a Axpert King 5KW and 14x330w (7p x2s) Canadian solar. So I'm a little overbudget on the max PV input of 4000w. I pointed 10 panels north. later realised I need PV earlier in the morning and later in the day, so added 2panels to the east and 2 west, which helped flatten my yield curve and was definitely worthwhile to do. I'd like to add more panels as I only reach my production limit midday, but the inverted I have has a 4KW PV max input. So the yield would fluctuate during the day from 300w to 3500w depending on clouds etc. So more panels I suppose will always be better to increase my minimum yield at any time. My question to the experts is, is there any way to put more panels east and west to improve my minimum yield without popping my inverter at the occasional maximum yield. Obviously I can just get a bigger inverter but I was wondering if there is any other hardware one could consider to add. I know I can parallel 2xinverters but the high self consumption of 120w-200w on Eskom on my current one makes me very reluctant to do that as that's just to much power to waste during the night. Essentially I want all power up to 4KW to go to the inverter PV input and the occasional excess power goes either to the grid or to my geysers maybe, which is connected pre-inverter. Surely there must be hardware around that can do this. Thx 🙂

I have a Axpert King 5KW since Apr 2019 and had the exact same concern as you with the Efergy meter indicating self consumption when using the grid(no load no batteries) to be about 300w - 600w, which is crazy and had me quite worried. I did note all the explanations on that matter though on the forum. In the last 2 weeks our street prepaid meter in Waterkloof Ridge PTA was replaced by council with a Conlog prepaid which has a instant usage indicator *50* and using that (and many many flicking breakers on and off for hours) I determined my billable self consumption on the Axpert is 120w-200w, fluctuating. Its better than I initially though but still it is much higher than the advertised 75W and I'm not very pleased with the 15 hours of night draw(4pm -7am in May) at that level. In the day with my 'panels it's not an issue. I quite like the Axpert King BUT I have some complaints on it, so let me just get it out of my system. 1. No support by Mustek to speak off, they just ignore the question you sent them and honestly that rather infuriates me. A product without strong support is a liability. 2. No support by Voltronic, they just ignore the questions you sent them and its even a mission just to download WatchPower itself. 3: The WatchPower software is really basic and quite feeble with numerous bugs and limited help and users are left to just figure it out on their own. It feels like some Chinese teenager was paid $500 a couple of decades ago to just string a few lines together and then he left to go and work at his real job. 4. The high self consumption which almost makes one question if its worthwhile to spent 15hours @ 200W during the night to gain 9 hours of usable solar in the day. hmmmm. 5. Lack of a normal web based interface via LAN , even if I had to pay a little more. I mean it is the year 2019 already and their still plonking along with RS232 and 1990s software. At least there is a USB port that does work with WatchPower. The Bluetooth has a really short working distance. 6. I would have loved if the PV input was 5000W as well and not 4000W, which limits my endeavours a little. Ignoring the above, the machine otherwise works quite well. But ultimately, I'll rather spent more and buy something else with better software and better support.

11May2019 - I have a Axpert King 5Kw 2019 and WatchPower 1.13 , win10 and USB cable and had the same problem and wasn't very impressed with the software either way. Seems very basic a quite feeble. Emailing Voltronic is a futile exercise. It seems all serial numbers in the world was in my list except for mine? Eventually I watched a YouTube video that said to Install MPPtracker software as well as WatchPower...https://www.power-software-download.com/MPPTracker.html BUT 2. It still didn't work until I opened the WatchPower shortcut with right click - "Run as administrator". It worked for the first time ever. 🙂 You can also do the following on the shortcut for a permanent solution. Right click, Properties, Shortcut TAB, Advanced, click Run as administrator So whether MPPtracker is still needed I'm not sure, but run as administrator was definitely needed . Also both WatchPower and MPPtracker shortcuts will open the same program, sometimes WatchPower sometimes MPPtracker. Restarting the pc seems to bring some sense back. Hope that helps and let us know. 😞 Stupid Chinese programmers 😞 WatchPower 1.13 Data Logging not working datasheets charts