Gerrie

It is possible that the tester neutral is not making contact inside of the socket outlet, sometimes if you wiggle the 3-pin plug top it might come right. I often find this when the socket outlet contacts are worn. It could also be just a loose neutral.

Selling your house will require a COC and normally if the COC is older than two years the bank will ask for a new one. It might be worth getting the electrician that is going to do the solar COC to check the rest of the installation to make sure that all is in order especially if you might be selling soon. In some cases changes need to be made on the DB board to split circuits depending on your inverter and needs.

5KW is is a good option and is normally big enough for most homes. When i installed my system i started with only a 4KW system and only had 2 x 330W pv panels but soon realized the two panels worked all day just to get my 4 x 120A gel batteries charged by the afternoom. I then added two more which were now four panels and that was enough to run my house off-grid during the day and have the batteries charged by afternoon, that small system kept me going for more than a year. Only than i added two more panels again as that was my original plan to add two panels per year with the money saved on

Looking at industrial 3phase applications of about 50KW. What inverters are preferred and what type of batteries makes more economical sense?

Well done very neat installation.

It is possible that a fuse is blown or a loose connection on the roof at the pv panel combiner box. If you have strings not working it might do as you experience on that one inverter.

I have never used revov before but have heard they are second life batteries, that is basically second hand batteries that are re-built into a new enclosure. These are batteries from electric vehicles that are re-used in a second life. I personally would not buy them unless the price is very low.

I agree with Achmat it might be the battery that trips and not the inverter due to the battery being a bit under sized for your loads. One way to check your loads is to download batteryview on a laptop and plug your pylontech battery directly to the laptop. You can leave it running for at least 24hrs and it will show you when you draw big loads and see any alarms in the pylontech’s log. It should even show you those previous trips that happened. I initially used batteryview for the first three weeks when installing my pylon battery. That helped me to check all my loads and any alarm warn

Some inverters like my own Axpert clone need the bonding between neutral and earth before it would trip with the E/L tester, without the bonding it will not trip the earth leakage.

This would be easy to install on the old type geyser thermostats where a piece of wire and screwdriver would do the trick, but the new thermostats plug in with male pin lugs into the elements female plugs. Some intervention would be needed to tap-into those female element terminals. Everyting these days are made more complicated and less handyman friendly.

2.5mmsq x 3 core cable would be big enough for a 5KW system as it will generate a maximum of 22A. The distance is also very short so there should be almost no volt drop. I don’t know if Swellendam gets much lightning but if so it might be worth earthing the shed with a ground rod and bonding your inverter to the same earth. Depending on how far you discharge those pylons at night, I would rather add two more panels to make sure those pylons get a good charge during daytime. A nice to have is a remote keypad inside the house so you can still see wha

Three panels might not push out enough voltage for the RCT Axpert as it need 120VDC minimum you might have to get a fourth panel to get a voltage of above 120VDC. I don't know the growatt specs if that can run on three panels.

For me normally the shortest route to prevent long runs of cable. Even if the bosal protrude through a roof tile as long as it is properly secured inside the roof to minimize movement and then properly sealed with a UV resistant sealer at the hole where it exits the tile, than a round galvanized junction box on-top of the roof with a rubber seal in the lid. From there you can direct a flexible conduit or armored cable or whatever is UV resistant to the fusebox and from there again to panels. Going around the eves might present a bit of a hazard as someone doing other maintenance work can

I just realized this morning how viable my solar installation is. We had no Eskom power since early morning hours and my son is now busy writing finals today online started 9 till 12. Thanks to my battery and my solar system my son can proceed without the extra stress that Eskom is causing other students. Luckily these load shedding sprees that Eskom has been handing out did not have much power over my solar system to cause us much inconvenience.

This is quite a common problem. There is a transient current when switching occur that can causes the earth leakage to trip. Normally changing to a better quality earth leakage it will solve the problem, I had a similar problem when switching back to grid my Onesto Earth leakage sometimes tripped I then changed to ABB and problem disappeared.