Gerrie

I'm selling a 3.5KWH Pylontech US3000, I used it for just over three years without any issues still in good condition, Reason for selling I wanted to upgrade and could not get another US3000 to parrallel,so I upgraded to a 6.4KWH BSL battery. Looking for serious offer. Alberton area.

No, I have a Nokia router that is about 5 meter away in the same room as the Astute. I have reset it a few days ago and could not get it to work. Yesterday when I checked it was online again, but it lost all the usage data. I will monitor and check if it goes offline again if so I will have to replace it. The funny thing is my two Astute's are right next to each other so why only one went offline puzzles me.

I have 2 x Astute’s installed in my DB. The one has been going for about 4 months now for under floor heating and the other one only 4weeks on my solar geyser. The 4week old one has been indicating offline for 3days now, I tried to reboot it and even to re-program but it just stays offline. The manual switch on it works but without wifi. I don’t know if this unit is just a dud or is the Astute not a as good as I hoped it would be. I have 6 Sonoffs and they been going for about 3years now with absolute no issues. I like the Astute because it gives the power readings and fits nicely in a DB but 4weeks and already issues is not impressive. I’m going to try and return it to builders where I bought it but not putting my hopes on it because I’m not sure if they do returns on such items and I have to go scratch around for the receipt.

I have 2 x Astute’s installed in my DB. The one has been going for about 4 months for under floor heating and the other one only 4weeks on my solar geyser. The 4week old one has been indicating offline for 3days now, I tried to reboot it and even to re-program but it just stays offline. The manual switch on it works but without wifi. I don’t know if this unit is just a dud or is the Astute not a as good as I hoped it would be. I have 6 Sonoffs and they been going for about 3years now with absolute no issues. I like the Astute because it gives the power readings and fits nicely in a DB but 4weeks and already issues is not impressive to me. I’m going to try and return it to builders where I bought it but not putting my hopes on it because I’m not sure if they do returns on such items.

I have 2 x Astute’s installed in my DB. The one has been going for about 4 months for under floor heating and the other one only 4weeks on my solar geyser. The 4week old one has been indicating offline for 3days now, I tried to reboot it and even to re-program but it just stays offline. The manual switch on it works but without wifi. I don’t know if this unit is just s dud or is the Astute not a as good as I hoped it would be. I have 6 Sonoffs and they been going for about 3years now with absolute no issues. I like the Astute because it gives the power readings and fits nicely in a DB but 4weeks and already issues is not impressive to me. I’m going to try and return it to builders where I bought it but not putting my hopes on it because I’m not sure if they do returns on such items.

You are correct I never go more than about 10A my loads are managed with Sonoffs and Astute’s. I still have to swing the inverter cable over to a isolator the red plug was perfect with my old Axpert but the Sunsynk needs a isolator.

That photo is bit old I did install a new DB next to inverter, that was just a temporary little board in beginning to get my solar going.

The white sockets and light switch is existing things for my garage. The red plug however is a dedicated Eskom socket that feed my inverter. I did not fit a isolator like most installers do I decided on a socket so if I unplug it there is no Eskom power to the inverter and its than completely off-grid.

Yes I used the 10A Sonoff, I forgot to mention it controls a contactor that switches power on and off to the inverter. See photo, don’t look at the untidy wiring. Jacques is correct you won’t know the state of battery but it will save you a driving trip to go change settings to charge battery. It done the job for me for about two years because I traveled allot and was away for weeks at a time and could not afford to have a trip because of low battery. It helped me to keep batteries charged even in rainy weather. I actually have two more Sonoff’s that controls my auto-changeover switches. I hardly use it now because I upgraded to Sunsynk and it doesn’t need all these interventions to make life easy. The Astute would now be a better deal as it can handle 30A and no need for a contactor.

This is against the norm however the regulation mentions that the bonding is very important and it needs to be on earth leakage protection. I can't find any where in the regulation that it cannot be on a socket outlet, like you mention a industrial type socket that is rated for that fixed appliance like 32A and on a dedicated circuit should be acceptable . Than the cord should not be longer than 3 meters to ensure the safe working of the overload protection device.

I can’t say for sure but you can check out Herolds online they have a few profiles almost similar to the one you have.

I would guess, if it’s a slow Joe like myself 2 & 1/2 days. (Exclude pv panel and combiner box) 1 x day on the DB board for change over switch with ct coil, circuit breakers, labelling trunkings. 1 x day to fit inverter with fuses, battery, bond relay, trunkings, isolators & wiring. 1/2 x day for commissioning, test and COC and possibly driving around sourcing materials not on site. My thought would be about R8000 minimum, I might be way off but would think thats a reasonable price from a registered electrician with one assistant.

That breaker is a good price, who sells them?

What I done before when I still had a Axpert type inverter which is allot like your Must is, I installed a Sonoff wifi switch on the 230V mains “IN” to inverter. Set it to UTI . With this I could basically switch the Eskom to inverter on or off with my phone. So my inverter would run on battery and solar during the day (also setting the timer) and when I suspect rain I would switch the Sonoff manually on with my phone which started charging the batteries. It worked great I also have CCTV at home and could see if its cloudy or raining even when I was far out of town. This is a very cheap option for less than R500 if you dont want to spend thousands.

Welcome to the stresses of self generated solar power😂. I think there are thousands of us in the same boat we don’t know what to do with the excess power. Once batteries are at 100%, geysers are on temperature and inverter set to Export “Off” I just think Eskom why?

A Ups is still the best for critical equipment that you cannot afford to switch off. You could install a inverter with battery back-up upstream from the UPS as a double back-up to always keep your UPS batteries charged and will increase your back-up time during load-shedding. With a inverter back-up you could down scale the batteries a bit on the UPS as the inverter will be the primary back-up and UPS the secondary back-up.

The COCT document seems a bit one sided and they are pushing people to rather go for grid tied systems because when it comes to off grid system they only have one option of a stand alone system. If I understand that drawing correct you basically now need two DB boards. One for Eskom and one for your off-grid inverter. They could of at least also included a Off grid interconnected system, whereby you have a change-over switch to select between Eskom or Inverter mode. The two supplies are anyway than not connected to each other. Surely they could of come up with a better usable options for off-grid installations.

Hi Lee the Astute still need overload protection, It is basically just a fancy wifi timer that measures load connected through it. I still have my normal geyser circuit breakers upstream from the astute.

MKRandburg did you find the issue, was it just the device restart status that was set to ‘on’ like Don suggested? I had almost a similar issue this morning, we had load-shedding so my essentials were al powered by inverter but my wife wanted to use the tumble dryer which is on non-essential, I have enough capacity for one big appliance at a time so I switched the non-essentials over to the inverter as well but soon the inverter tripped, thats when I realized my Astute’s for the geysers and the underfloor heating that is on non-essential side switched on directly when power up. It was on restart status ‘on’ I set it to ‘off’ and inverter was happy the rest of the day.

In my opinion a proper quote would be when a electrician comes to the site find out the exact requirements, do a proper materials list, measures cables, check what fixing brackets is required, check if the DB board is in reasonably good condition to do the necessarily changes because a COC is required once done. I’m sure there are more things that I’m not mentioning, Doing this takes time and money and either the electrician or customer will have to pay for this. Many electricians loose many hours doing unsuccessful quotations. They then give a thumb suck quotation, I would ask those type of quotes would they be willing to give you a proper breakdown once they are finished and charge accordingly to their set rates. This is just my thought in electrical work.

If you have no space in your DB you can mount a small surface DB next to your main DB. Normally you would need a double pole change-over switch to switch between inverter and utility. Than you need a feed from inverter and a feed to inverter breaker, these can be single pole as the change-over switch is already a double pole. You also need indication lights to show there is alternative power to the DB. In my case I installed a bigger DB because it normally does not look good when adding more DB’s to make space for other breakers.

Beautiful setup, I done the same thing going Axpert to Sunsynk although I have 6 x 330W panels on one string and added 4 x 450W panels on the second string. I ran my underfloor heating during the day with the extra PV and realized I needed slightly more Watts and added a fifth 450W panel. After adding the fifth panel I saw a big jump in efficiency compared to only the four panels, It seems the higher voltage makes a big difference and was well worth it. So if you can you should consider adding that fifth panel. Only problem I have now on hot days when I don’t need the under floor heating is there's no place where I can dump that exta watts, so it goes to waste.

Thanks, the comms cable is black not easy to see on photo, plug into can port.

You can also use the ATS 240V terminals on the inverter where you can get 240V supply for your bonding relay. The ATS has a built in delay to prevent nuisance tripping when Eskom returns after a power failure.

I believe these above is the correct setting from BSL manual, but than there is another training video but I cannot remember where I found it that recommended the settings like below for 1 x battery. Batt Type must be Lithium, Batt capacity 125A. Discharge recommended current 90A. I have set a 8 KW Sunsynk with 3x6.4KWH BSL’s like below and its been going fine since January. float - 54.5V Absorbtion - 55V equalization - 54V