Gerrie

Using a soft starter will mean replacing the entire air-con or fridge unit. The entire air-con needs to be replaced with a inverter drive air-con. They use at least 40% less power then the normal air-cons. It is in some cases worth replacing all the air-con units within a house with inverter drive air-cons to reduce the required inverter capacity when going solar.

Like Tariq mentioned, the wires getting hot to the touch ??? wires should never get that hot, check if the wire size is correct and check if all connections are tight. The 220V output wire from inverter should be at least 2.5mm2 but go for 4mm2 on longer distances. I have one Pylontech Us 3000 and have no issue on a 4KW Axpert inverter. I use 2.5mm2 wire from the inverter to the DB and than it’s about another 35meter from the DB to the microwave. I did however remove my microwave circuit over to non-essentials because I noticed through battery-view the microwave went up to 49A and pylon’s

Hi Pieter i did some reading on the forum and it seems if one would use the auxiliary output it seems to be possible to power the non-essential loads if the battery is above 60%. If this is possible I am planning a installation where the DB will be split into three namely, essentials, non-essentials and grid only loads. I want the luxury of powering non-essentials if batteries have enough capacity. I did read however there were guys complained of the aux power output dipping and loads like computers and TV’s switched off when this happened, this is something I want to avoid.

If Eskom is load-shedding at night can the non-essential loads on the Sunsynk also be fed from the batteries if their is a need to use non-essentials, or is this not possible?

I think it is a software issue with these clones it is like they switch to utility when it starts to get dark but it than sees there is still pv available it than goes to pv again and jumps around between utility and PV until it is not seeing any pv at all. I have set mine to SBU but leave utility switched off. What I done is use my clone inverter off-grid only by forcing PV and battery power during day time, therefore not feeding Eskom power during the day, I do however have a sonoff switch that control the Eskom charging at night if I need to charge the battery. Normally I do not need

Just something to look out for the RCD1 on the incoming side might trip once the neutral and earth bonding relay switches on. I am not familiar with the Sunsynk my Axpert tripped the earth leakage when it was wired like this. Maybe someone who has done done the Sunsynk can advise.

What is the 12Watts with the house symbol on the flow chart?

One thing to keep in mind is the dangerous arc that is created when switching DC under load, a proper DC contactors should probably do the trick if rated for the correct load. I would think a common could be created by connecting the negatives of different banks together and have changeover only between positives of different battery banks. It would be interesting to know if someone has attempted this successfully between lithium iron and lead acid banks.

One thing to keep in mind is a ferrule joint should rather be done inside an accessible junction box for future inspection or fault finding and not in a conduit where it cannot be seen or inspected. I prefer ferrules tightly crimped, taped up and heat shrinked for extra protection, it should be sufficient for years to come. Soldering is not recommended for ferrules as it will change the integrity of the ferrule to conductor it can become loose or even form cracks with time. When using MC4 connectors make sure you use the same brand male to female connectors because the different brands a

I agree with not having two different supplies in one surfix cable, the supply from Eskom and the supply from solar inverter should rather be kept separate and run two separate cables. If there is a fault in that one cable and the two supplies short circuit you stand a chance of back feeding into grid or possibly blow up something. I also agree with not sharing one earth, should you disconnect the eskom supply for whatever reason you also loose your earth from solar side. It might be legal to do it in one cable but I believe the decision still lies with the electrician that is goin

On top of this I occasionally also had the critical earth leakage trip due to the transient currents when switching all back to Eskom. All these teething problems were sorted and the system has been running trouble free for two years now.

Just out of interest I have done almost the same splitting my DB into three parts critical and non-critical but than the third split for Eskom only loads (dishwasher and geyser) this in my case required three earth leakages, one per section. This allow me when Eskom is load shedding the combination to have either critical or non-critical on or off solar depending on the needs at the time. I had the same issue where my Eskom earth leakage would trip when switching back to the grid due to the neutral earth bonding on the inverter. What I have done to overcome this was to create a

Inverters can trip for lots of reasons and the error code that is normally displayed on the inverter is the nearest answer one can get to this question. Two main causes is overloading the inverter or a low battery that could cause it to trip. But there could also be a problem on the wiring that cause a short circuit or open circuit.

I also experienced tripping before. There was quite a few threads before on this forum of earth leakages tripping when switching back to grid and it is caused by transient currents it is quite a common problem and it is normally solved by installing a better quality earth leakage that can manage these transients better. Earth leakage like Merlin Gerlin or ABB normally solves this problem but they are pricey. I had to remove my Onesto brand and replace it with M&G and the problem was solved.

The 242V these days from the municipalities are very common and I find voltages in Johannesburg sometimes go as high as 255V, the inverter should not trip at 242V unless it has a setting where the voltage was limited to be below that setting. Check the “AC input range” and set it accordingly. Mine is set at 80VAC to 280VAC which allows for big variances. The inverter should not trip when Eskom comes back on. That sound like something is not connected correctly. Is the inverter tripping or the earth leakage? There is a list with approved NRS097 inverters that appl