Dougiedanger

Done

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Hello everyone! 

I am a Masters student at the Nordakademie University in Germany and I am looking for participants for my dissertation survey and ALL of you who are in this forum are exactly the right people! It's about people who are interested in renewable energies. I am interested in anyone who uses the available technologies - or maybe has even had an idea how to improve the set-up or played around a bit with it. As long as you care just a tiny bit about renewable energies, you are perfect for my survey! 
If you have already read this far, please take part  
https://forms.office.com/e/9Q0z7r21W8

The survey is of course anonymous and the results will only be used in the context of my master thesis. You only need 5-10 minutes of your time. You get loads of good karma for taking part and the additional good feeling of knowing that you helped out a student.  

Sunny greetings from Hamburg, Germany
Freya 

PS: this post is authorised and I am extremely grateful for being allowed to post my survey here and I hope lots of you will take the chance and take part!

Please find the Entry Forum. Good Luck!
https://app.viralsweep.com/sweeps/full/fe8327-133315?framed=1
Hi All !
Please enter to be randomly selected to win this great Victron kit.
We have decided not to bulk email this out to all 21 000 + forum members as we feel it is fair that regular users should win this prize.
Good luck. We very excited to give this one away.
Kind Regards
Powerforum Store

Good afternoon Vaughan,
Compliments of the season to you too.
I have a similar setup to you in terms of size and age. 
My Must 3kva, 24v inverter is hooked up to 4 x 205ah SLA Trojan batteries. These were my second set of batteries, my first set (2 Chinese 280ah) although first use when installed had stood for a few years without any care so didn't last long coupled with my poor understanding at the time of how to use and care for LAs.
I went the Trojan route as at the time I couldn't find a decent 24v lithium option and decided to get decent lead acids as a compromise.
I installed them with an HA02 balancer and I also purchased a Victron BMV712 which I used as a warning a cut off to ensure the batteries don't discharge more than 40%.
I have also taken to adjusting the bulk charge and float voltages twice a year to deal with the temperature fluctuations based on the data sheet for my particular batteries.
It was interesting that when I installed the BMV I found a 0.7v difference between what the inverter was reading the battery voltage at and what the BMV saw, the BMV was accurate the inverter was not, so I used that info to adjust the charge parameters accordingly so I got voltages at the terminals in line with the battery data sheet.
This set of batteries are coming up on 3 and a half years old now with no significant loss in performance, although they are Trojans and should mange that easily. The next 3 years will tell me if what I have been doing is of use or just a waste of time!
Lastly it does take a long time for the batteries to get fully charged, from say 70% SOC it takes probably 5 hours to get to where they are not accepting any further charge.
 

Congrats @hoohloc - Well done again - Well deserved!
Jay

Just received my gift today and so excited to give it a try. Thank you powerforum 🥳

Not sure who has come across this on Supersport? 
Second round on today and is a very interesting format with some big racing names involved. 
A electric racing SUV with a difference, amazing how they throw them around and how they perform. 
The have a 40kw usable battery developed by Williams Advanced Systems.
Just thought this would be of interest for some forum members! 

Think you would need to be cautious with this from solely a battery point of view. Assuming that is a Pylontech it is recommended to only discharge them at 0.5c, even at 1C you can only draw 2400w max, so if you are distracted when one of those bigger ones is on and it clouds over you would be pushing the battery close to its maximum rated discharge. 

If the inverter is set to use Solar when available, it will use solar supplemented by battery power when the solar yield does not meet the demand requirements. That means if it becomes fully overcast the battery will provide most of the demand until it reaches the preset low voltage back to grid value.
Yes it should be on the data sheet

Think you would need to be cautious with this from solely a battery point of view. Assuming that is a Pylontech it is recommended to only discharge them at 0.5c, even at 1C you can only draw 2400w max, so if you are distracted when one of those bigger ones is on and it clouds over you would be pushing the battery close to its maximum rated discharge. 

Think you would need to be cautious with this from solely a battery point of view. Assuming that is a Pylontech it is recommended to only discharge them at 0.5c, even at 1C you can only draw 2400w max, so if you are distracted when one of those bigger ones is on and it clouds over you would be pushing the battery close to its maximum rated discharge. 

A friend of mine asked me to have a look at his system as to why the batteries were not lasting. 
He has a Must 5kva, 48v inverter, 1800w of panels wired 3s4p and 8 x 100amp Forbatt gel batteries. The system is just over a year old. 
I said upfront knowing what l have read and learnt on this forum that his batteries had probably been trashed by over depleting them. 
Anyway had a look today and found several settings that I felt were off... 
Bulk charge set at 55.7v, data sheet suggests each battery should be 14.4 to 14.7
Float was at 54v, data sheet 13.4 to 13.7
His low voltage cut off was set at 44v.
He also had a Bmv 700 connected with capacity at 240ah, charged voltage at 52.8v and tail current at 4%.
All these settings above I feel have messed his batteries up but just wanted confirmation. 
I have corrected the settings in line with the data sheet and my experience with my own bank and as 3 of the batteries were showing only 10.5v under load I have reduced his bank to 4 batteries from the 8.
The batteries now are only taking a charge of around 1 amp measured on the Bmv and my test meter. Is this expected? 
Are they all history or can I do anything to get some additional life out of them whilst they look at a plan to replace them? 
 

Hi Everyone
I work for a company that is developing a modern, next generation solar monitoring device and need to make sure customers have a good experience with all the various inverter models and brands.  We have a beta program where you get a free device couriered to you if you have an inverter that is listed in our beta program.  We have now started to engage users running Voltronic inverters (Kodak, Mecer, InfiniSolar, RCT, Full Circle Solar, etc).  If you would like to receive a free device by joining the beta program and adhere to the requirements below, please send me a private message with a brief description of your solar setup and which country/state you are located.  Note that the beta program is on a first come first serve basis per inverter model.  The inverters that are still available are:
Axpert MAX Any of the InfiniSolar inverters Axpert King Axpert VM Some information regarding the new monitoring device:
There is a web and mobile app that is significantly better than anything that is currently available for Voltronic inverters. It will read your entire inverter cluster if you have multiple in parallel. You can access it remotely via the internet or locally via your home network.  It will still work if your internet is down. For hobbyist it's open in terms of reading data and has automatic device detection/integration for home assistant. If you are currently using the typical hobbyist Raspberry PI setup that is connected to the inverter via USB with your own custom scripts or software this will be a drop in replacement. Requirements:
You like spending time exploring the latest and greatest tech and wouldn't mind giving us some feedback on your experience. Your powerforum user/profile has existed for a few months or years to prove you are a legitimate community member.  If you have made posts it's a bonus. You will connect the device to your home network which has internet so that you can explore the remote monitoring capabilities. You have an inverter listed above. You have solar PV connected to the inverter. You still have your inverter cable to connect it via USB. Not required but bonus if:
you are a solar installer you have a battery with an RS232/console port. you already have a USB to RS232/console port cable. Unrelated: Congratulations to everyone on powerforum.co.za!  I did quite a bit of research and found this to be the most active community of users with Voltronic inverters.

Until recently, the 150/35 was the smallest MPPT that could be used in a 48V system. There were smaller MPPTs lower down (100/15, 100/50, etc) but they could only be used up to 24V. The 100/20-48 changed that, it can be used in a 48V system. But you'd probably need two of them in your case 🙂
The Smart MPPTs have bluetooth, of course, but internally they have a slightly different architecture too, a different system-on-chip (aka cpu) setup. To the average user that probably doesn't matter at all. But there is also this thing called a current clamp, the newer MPPTs have a hardware clamp, which means that when the maximum current is reached it is held down in hardware. The older MPPTs handled this in software. If there was an overcurrent event (which could happen when you have cloud edge effect or the light level shifted very quickly), these older MPPTs stop charging and ramp up from zero. If you intend on oversizing the array, the newer ones are more suited for that.
The 150/45 is therefore in a different class to the 150/35, but it is of course also reflected in the price 🙂
 

I use these 48V versions. There is a 100/20 that is 12V/24V as well.
They work very well and is a perfect match to 4x 330W panels (2s2p). Mine produce around a constant 970W if the sun is shining around mid day which is very close to their 20A max (20A x 50V = 1000W) Very happy with them.
 

Haha, did I proof-read my post? Yes. Did I notice the mistake? Yes. Did I expect someone else to notice it? Yes. Did I fix it... no, of course not, I was only half-way through the coffee recharge 🙂
 

That model's been on the market for close on three years now... 🙂
It's the smallest model in the "new" hardware platform and on a technical level a more advanced product than the entry-level 150/35 (although, now there is a 100/20-48 which is the new entry-level model). I have one in my home system... no complaints. It's like a Toyota Camry, boring but just works.

The inverter charger should go to float when the charge current goes below a threshold, usually around 10A but it can vary a lot.
Perhaps it was going to float tio early when utility charging?
Staying at absorb voltage too long is unlikely to hurt Trojans much, as long as they don't run dry. 

I am in Zim and our power network is truly stuffed. At my home our transformer burnt recently so they connected us to the next closest one so we are not at the end of the line and we consistently get power down at around 160v at peak times in the morning and evening and rarely above 200v. I have been careless and haven't put a voltage regulator ahead of my inverter so am expecting that it will pop in due course, just hoping that I can get some protection before it does.
The low voltage also seems to consumes plenty more units of power.

Hi all, happy new year, hope it was a good one! 
Been following this post with interest, being from Zimbabwe where daily 17 plus hour power cuts are the norm now (although today we have had power the whole day, first time in over 5 months!).
What I have noticed is the majority of installers here have jumped on the lucrative solar bandwagon don't know their product very well at all and mislead customers as to what the system can do, generally not enough panels and batteries and no help on how to manage the energy that you have. 
I have managed with a pretty small system, although I need to add 2 more panels to get my batteries recharged during the day so I don't have to double cycle them by recharging on the grid at night. Have done this by becoming very energy conscious and using sonoffs on my fridges etc. 
Saying all that, what I miss the most when the power goes out is my fan! Mossies and heat!! 
 

Start here 🙂
That paper covers many of the issues you raised. Things have moved on a bit since then, but that paper still gives a good overview of what is achievable without even adding PV modules. You can of course also add PV which will extend the amount of time you can remain on battery.
In practice you might only run the generator at night, but with a Victron setup you can charge the batteries with any remaining power, thereby loading the generator to a more or less constant load. Then you can coast through the "na-nag" as we say in Afrikaans (the after-night, aka early hours of the morning) on battery and either have a short generator-run at breakfast time, or wait for the sun.

Just when they though with Carte Blanche expose, no one will touch these, maybe only in SA, the thieves just expand their market.
https://rekordcenturion.co.za/lnn/776752/crime-syndicates-steal-mobile-service-providers-blind/