Off Grid Farmer

I used a 1500 watt Ac element connected to a timer set to go on at 10:00 to 15:00 with a separate breaker. If it is to cloudy i use my LP Gas geyser for hot water. 

So i can change the panel strings to 6 panels in series that gives me 228Voc and 9A and the other string the same and that will give me 228Voc at 18A together?

Very interesting to use only 600Wh to heat the water by 52 degrees on the 150L geyser. 

Tested the element on 12v 800Ah battery bank for 2 hours. It consumed 50.10 Ah and heated 150L water from 10'c to 62'c. The panels and inverter kept the soc at 85%.

Tested the element on 12v 800Ah battery bank for 2 hours. It consumed 50.10 Ah and heated 150L water from 10'c to 62'c. The panels and inverter kept the soc at 85%.

The estimated time to increase the water temp by 1.71 degrees would take about 1 hour if you use 300W @ 12V for a, capacity of 150L.  You can use this time or increase for other geyser capacities. 
The current well insulated geysers have about a 75Wh heat loss per hour which is about 1.8kWh per 24hrs.
 

Size always matters.  Americans would say its cubic inches that matter, the more the better

Hi all,
 
I'm currently budgeting to upgrade my solar system for my off grid setup at home. My winter PV production has not been as great as my summer production, which I'm not surprised by.
 
I do, however, want to increase the size of my solar array. What I want to know is, is there a general consensus on whether or not East facing "morning" panels or west facing "evening" panels are worth it? Or would it just make more sense to add another string of north facing panels?
 
I'm currently running a Growatt SPF5000ES, with a Felicity solar 12.5kwh lithium battery, and 1 string of 8 Canadian Solar 600W panels in series. Noticing my morning and evening production has taken a knock this winter and not sure if I should prioritise another string of 8 north facing panels, or if I should look at 4 panels facing east and 4 panels facing west. Very keen to hear what the community feels is best and most efficient/practical. Thanks in advance!

I did contact Amos, their International Rep.
None of the three versions of this model can parallel without having hardware (comms board) changes done.

It is 22A. i Don't know if the new 113 version inverters will communicate with the 40.06. The only way is to test it your self and hope for the best. Ginverter does not respond to our questions so it is frustrating to wait and see.... You could try sending a email to [email protected] perhaps they will respond.  

Thank you. Do you know if it's an 18A MPPT or whether there has been a Firmware update also increasing that to 22A.

Another thing I picked up on the new 5000ES models is that a hub is now needed for CAN/RS485 comms in a parallel config. On our current/original models this was handled by the comms cable between the Inverters. Why they continue with the same model number is beyond me as the old inverter basically needs an internal replacement of boards to make it compatible for paralleling with the latest model. 

....but yours is different firmware and internals. You cannot load 113 on a 40.06. Growatt mistakenly gives all these different inverters the same model number.
 

Latest version is 113 01 C.05  114 01 C.05 on the new Growatt spf 5000 es i bought yesterday.

Seems like no one's interested to help.
 
In all cases, I resolved my issues.
 
Contacted support in China, they sent some steps which were already executed before and nothing helped.
For some reason I was unable to access 192.168.10.100 even after resetting the device (held the key for 6 seconds and got the 3 colors blinking) and accessing it through hotspot (steady blue light). Then I was able to add the device to my datalogger list but was unable to connect to server.growatt.com (showed as offline on the shinephone app).
 
What caught my attention at this point is that after resetting the datalogger, it's name was always being set to "Left Wifi" which is a name that I gave the first time I had installed it. This is weird because it shouldn't be that way as I had reset it to factory settings and the normal behavior was to see the device's name with it's serial number instead of "left wifi".
 
When accessing the device through hotspot in the ShinePhone app again, I noticed that there is a place to enter "advanced settings" just before setting my internet connection's wifi and password. The advanced settings require a password which I got to discover that it's "growatt+date" (date is: yearmonthday, i.e. growatt20220531). I did not change anything in the settings, I only saved and the datalogger was recognized like last time but this time it was able to connect to growatt's server.

That equates to 9.9kw of panels. Panels in series requires less copper(thinner wires) at higher voltage rather than higher current. It is like power transmission high voltage at the generating units that gradually steps down to end user consumption. The only hazard with high voltage Mppt is arc fault on loose connections so care must be taken to secure all cabling properly on combiners and use adequate fuse and spd protection. Sunsynk inverters can detect arc fault that causes noise on the line F63 error code.

Sounds perfect to me
 

It can within a reasonable amount, the Amps above 22 will just be clipped, i.e. you will loose some of the potential energy on sunny days, but you will have higher yield on days that are cloudy.
My 2 parallel strings add up to ~26Amps and I have the same Inverter and it just flatlines at 22A. Although my panels are potentially 6400W, the max I can draw from them is around 5600W due to the 22A limit and the 6S giving me a VOC of ~300V but under load they are always around 230-250 and in idle around 270V.
So it's a trade off. Stay within the max voltage range. Excess voltage is the killer. Oversizing on the Amps (within limits) improves potential yield on less stellar days.

 

Your inverter spec sheet should indicate the optimal voltage to use, arrange the panels according to that.
e.g. sunsynk 5kW
PV Input Voltage 370Vd.c (125Vd.c ~ 500Vd.c) the 370V is where the mppt works at it's most efficient point

This is exactly it, also make sure you do not exceed the voltage of your MPPT / PV input as that can cause damage.
Also keep in mind that excess current could cause some issues with the inverter or cause the inverter to clip the excess current which would mean you are not able to use the full amount of power being generated by the panels.
 
The correct voltage is would what lead to better efficiency if that is what you are asking.

Just some feedback. At the end all is working well. The 300W sticker on panel showing Voc=21V is a miss print and should have been 41V.
Using 2Sx650W and 2Sx300W and then in parallel sorted it out. 
 

Thank you. i Received a email from a electronic repair shop that helped me with this problem. I'm getting fed-up with inverter problems.

Maybe send a mail to [email protected] to check if they have expanded their compatibility to include your battery type. They also stock most comms cables for the inverters and batteries that their software already supports.

Hi 
 
I have a Growatt SPF 5000 ES. Spec states Max. PV Array Open Circuit Voltage as 450Vdc.
I have ten 605W panels arriving end of July.
Some installation sites in Australia mentions that you can overload your PV supply safely up to a maximum off 33%.
So my inverter can take 5,98 max if I load the 4,5 with 33%?
Any advice?
LD

Hi
im noob to this forum and also to solar.
just completed my install of system as per the subject line.
 
quite neet…waiting to monitor the results.
 

If they are the same capacity. If not, then you can still put them in parallel during discharge (each string will contribute according to its capacity), but you have to separate them when you recharge to avoid the problem where the smaller string is overcharged and the larger one is undercharged.