Wilfred

Very true @Bobster, Immediately my kids learned that there are no more manually heating the geyser, they know how to operate the geyserwise. I have to say, within a month of solar, because we struggled in the beginning with bad batteries, all of us learned the system. I started to understand why the system tripped and we worked around that, for eg. turning on a hairdryer while the geyser was running as well as the pool pump, etc. I also changed the housekeper’s iron from a 1600W to a 1200W until she can get into it to be finished with ironing at 14:00. Well she did, and I will give her 1600W iron back soon, she is crying everyday about that iron . She is also starting to understand why she can not use certain things at certain times, and I mean when we have cloudy/rainy days. Our system is working very well now, I believe it took around 2 months to have everyone realize what they can and what they can’t and when. I tinkered with a lot of things and believe I found the sweet spot. Our area has a power outage since 20:00 last night, no problems so far, 13 hours in, but the sun is shining and the system is doing what it is supposed to.

No one said that people should work for free, I sure don't want to work for free, but damn, that is a huge profit margin and it don't seem like the customer is really getting his monies worth. OUCH! 10kva - probably close to R50k, 4 batteries most probaly close to R25k, 20 panels around R30k, installation R20k-R30k, lets say all in all R150k-R180k system for R500k, double OUCH! Also work out the Return on Investment, if the system can pay itself in more or less 5 years it seems decent, that is without load-shedding losses though.

Welcome, Lots of things to consider. Therefor, slow down and take your time to plan your system. As mentioned above, gather quotations and do your research. Most suppliers will sell you what they have in stock, not saying it is the worst items, but you might be able to get something better for similar value. Lots of experience on this forum, whether it is bad or good experiences, all of them was lessons learned, plenty of advice going around. Plenty to learn and use to your advantage. No idea how much research you have done so far. I started off by getting info regarding energy usage, when, what and how much. If you want to go totally off-grid, backup is essential. As well as some other gadgets. It can get expensive quickly. Best thing about solar, as mentioned above, you can start small and build from there, but you need to know what your end goal is and plan accordingly. My office is at home, for me it was a necessity as load shedding was costing me plenty in lost time and I was scared that we will have more load shedding on the way. Now all of a sudden I am 95% off-grid. Plenty of fun. Yes, there was a couple ups and downs, I am on solar for about 3 months and I am not looking back. Reaping benefits everyday.

Ok, with the settings on those, I am totally lost. I have 0 experience and knowledge with the setup regarding Gel batteries. Many of the active members on the forum will be able to assist with those settings. The pictures I posted earlier should be sufficient to get the parallel setup going.

To check firmware, scroll through the LCD display until you find U1, I think that will be the firmware. What batteries are you using?

You should have received a manual with your inverter as well as with your parallel Card/s. I also forgot to tell you that all inverters in parallel should have the same firmware. Also see image attached, if you still struggle, I have a couple of manuals downloaded on my laptop which I will pm you if needed.

Hi, Keeping in mind that everything else is perfect...... So in short... What comes to mind is the current sharing wires between the inverters and the parallel cards and cables between the inverters. All inverters should be connected to the same battery bank. Usually at setting 28 on the inverter you have a option between PAL, SIG, PH1, PH2, PH3. You need to set it up as PAL, this mean it will run in parallel to the other inverters connected. Make sure all of the inverters are set at PAL (parallel) Usually setting 01, 12, 13, 26, 27 and 29 will change on all slaves as soon as you change it on the master inverter. Master inverter should be the inverter that starts up first. Order don't matter. Hope this was what you were looking for.

Hi, For those who still struggle, received a mail from Pylontech: 1. inverter pin: RS485B——3, RS485A——5 battery pin: RS485B——8, RS485A——7 2. Connect to Master battery RS485 port, RS485 baud rate 9600 the ADD setting for baud rate 9600 shall be “1000” (default is “0000) (master battery) 3. section reference numbers from the 05 - battery type: “USE” or “PYL” (have to be PYL in my opinion) 4. set low dc cut-off voltage: 47,5v or 48v (won’t matter if the communication works as 02, 12, 13, 26, 27, 29 become self regulated by the batteries) 5. after turning off the inverter manually, all batteries shall be shut down and restarted The above is for the Axpert VMIII / KING 48V/5KW inverters. regards, Wilfred

Hi, Geyserwise basically is a timer with a degree setting. Example, I set my geyserwise to run from 8:45 - 10:15 to a temperature of 60 degrees Celsius, if it reach that temperature before the end time it automatically cut power until it will drop 4 degrees and will provide power in that block of time again if need to. If it don’t reach the temperature in that time then it is just off until the next block of time kick in. So I would say it is not a normal timer like a swimming pool pump timer.

Also remember that there is a lag between power drawn and how fast it can be given from your solar panels, for that small time difference, your batteries need to carry the load until your PV can supply the load. Also your inverter can handle a short spike but not continuously. unfortunately you have to spread out your loads. Try to never push it over the limit of 5kw. IMO geyser wise works the best for timing your geyser. Also the use of “load shedding” relays or similar cheaper relays can help to “block” a big load while another big load is already in progress.

@Coulomb no problem, so many names, enough to confuse anyone. the low voltage error is on the inverter not connected to the batteries directly. I am going to disconnect the cable for now until I can have the firmware updated. I really hope that at least the communication between the two inverters will be resolved, thanks

You mean “Synapse” ?

Thanks @Coulomb I should just bite the bullet and run the firmware update to 71.80 and be done with it.

I have found that in SUB mode the inverter try to push back to grid when batteries are full. I however have not found that the inverter is pulling anything from grid for self consumption what so ever, my settings have mostly been on SBU and use the batteries at night time. Current grid usage past two weeks was 34-35kWh per week (oven on grid), before solar we used an average of 32kWh per day. After I have changed the inverter/s to SUB mode on a rainy day during this week, have decided to never use that setting again as it try to push back to grid, and my meter do not allow this and I am also not setup to feed back to grid anyway. System is running very well in SBU mode and uses the grid when the batteries are at low SOC (if setting 16 is set to SLb), at around 5am, grid will disengage as soon as PV produce enough power. It switches to grid at midnight for an hour if setting 16 is set as SbL. I can manage this by just changing setting 11 to a lower value if I want to.

Hi, I have 2x Synapse 5.0K+ inverters in parallel. Running 4x US3000 Pylontech’s. I have finally connected the cable from the RS485 port on the main battery to the Li-ion port on the master inverter. Setting on master inverter 05 set to PYL, Inverter 2 aka slave set to USE otherwise it will give error 61, no communication. See images attached. The battery light on the LCD keep blinking and don’t stay solid anymore (on inverter 1), I believe this indicate that it is communicating. I have discovered the following: Inverter 1 (master with cable to Pylontech), setting 02 change back to 10A, maybe because 11 is also 10A, no matter if I change it back to 40A, it will revert back to 10A. 12 at 48v and 13 at 51v (happy with these 2, was set as that before the cable), 16 set to SbL/UCb (will change that back to SLb soon), 26 and 27 was set to 53.2 (was the same before, happy with that), 28 PAL, 29 at 47v (was manually set to 45,5 as I believed the BMS will sort it self out and then I can just avoid error 04 noise, besides it should go to grid as per setting 12 at 48v). The lowest the batteries have ever discharged at any given day in the last 21 days was down to 21% (47v), there was always grid power available so it could just charge from grid if need to, this was also before the cable connection. Inverter 2 (slave), setting 02 is set to originally at 40A, setting 11 at 10A as before, setting 12, 13, 16, 26, 27, 28 and 29 same as inverter 1 although I can change them as they are not locked like inverter 1 that is connected to the batteries. The battery light is not blinking as inverter 1 and also don’t have the addition BMS/Group 1/battery count 4 in the display as inverter 1. I have also found that inverter 1 although batteries are full and PV are available will run the load from the battery while inverter 2 will still charge the batteries while running the load from PV as well. I know that inverter 2’s array supply or produce more kWh daily than inverter 1’s array. I have found this even before the cable was connected. I have ICC connected to inverter 1 currently and only get info from the connected inverter, also have the pylontech cable connected from the console port to ICC. Firmware still 71.70 Couple questions: 1. Should I care that one inverter is doing things different from the other inverter as shown in the display pictures? 2. Should the automatic cut-off value just be ignored by me and should I just set the buzzer to silent so that it don’t bother me? 3. Should I change inverter 2’s setting 11 to the lowest setting of 2A and up the one connected with the cable to 40A to force it to 40A? I believe it will revert back to the setting on 11 as the lowest setting, therefore if the grid kick in it should charge at 40+2, which is close to having both set to 20A each (would have been happier to have the total charge from grid closer to 20A in total). Because of the SbL setting the grid kick in at midnight regardless of SOC. If both set at SLb they will only go to grid if PV is not available at around 48/47v and/or 20-22% SOC. 4. Is it possible to set one inverter at setting 16 to SbL and the other to SLb? 5. Is it advisable to have both inverters setup the same? Or can I play around with different settings on the 2 inverters, meaning setting 02, 11 and 16, the other settings I would rather keep the same meaning 12, 13, 26, 27 and 29. 6. Should I rather have the inverter with the highest yield array connect to the pylontech batteries via the RS485 cable? 7. Is there a way to have both inverters connected to the batteries with the RS485 port to the Li-ion port in the inverter display? Thanks in advance, looking forward to some comments or advice.

That is odd. post your settings so that the guys with the know how can help. regards

How do your load and PV watts look like at the same time? A bit of Ironing at that time maybe?

Directly, from the console port (front of battery to RPi), I believe it is as accurate as it can be, I have no other means to check it, unless you guys can assist. I use that cable they developed for ICC/Pylontech. I am still struggling to have the data from both Kings being read. I have a 2nd Rpi available, but have to buy the software and then somehow consolidate the data. For now I have the "correct" battery data with half of the setup data on the other side. Last night I plugged the cable into the other inverter to monitor that for a week or so. I know my one array produce a bit less than the other, due to shadows in the morning and afternoon. My guess is that one array will get at least 1-2 hours less full sun than the other. I am not willing to chop off trees, I am however willing to break down part of a wall though

ICC, But something odd happened with my data last night. ICC must have lost something somehow. Show my grid watts went up to 1 044 310 watts, I am pretty sure if that happened something would blew up.

Will be more than happy with 10 years

Oh yes, the batteries will hover on 89% for an hour maybe 2 and then jump to 100% SOC.

To be honest, I don’t even mind for the system to go on-grid for an hour at midnight. My current weekly use is around 34kWh per week from 32kWh per day. I have lowered the grid charge rate from 20A per inverter to 10A per inverter and only have to decide if I will lower it further. This change have not yet reflect on my usage as I only did it like a day or two ago. Only thing that is on-grid bypassing the inverters is the oven. Most of our loads are during 8am to 3pm daily with much less loads over weekends. It previously was well later than 3pm, but when you go solar, you learn to change use and usage times I am trying to reserve 14:00 to 16:00 for battery charging time, unless you have a day like today with midday rain. Still went in with 86% SOC at 17:30. The beep will be any moment now when PV will be 0 watts, everyday between 18:15 and 18:45, not that it help a lot after 16:30 anyway.

Hi, Interesting to follow this. I have checked my cycles before and saw that they don’t go down exactly every 24 hours. I guess they will still cycle even if they are not taken down completely and get fully charged. I have 4x US3000’s, installed late afternoon 29/10, installed the ICC Pylontech cable on 1/11. The cycles were as follow: 1/11 = 2 2/11 = 3 (03:18) lowest SOC 34% 3/11 = 4 (20:22) lowest SOC 38% 8/11 = 8 (19:16) lowest SOC 21% highest 57% ( the weekend with the crazy clouds) changed settings to SbL to test the difference, the grid kick in at midnight for 1 hour (due to Axpert King firmware craziness), after a week I lowered the grid charge to 10A per inverter, to limit the grid consumption. 14/11 = 12 (05:32) lowest SOC 60% 17/11 = 14 (05:08) lowest SOC 70%, we were away over the weekend so not much loads over the weekend. It seems that the less loads you have and the less the batteries have to work, the longer it take to turn a cycle. So far I am happy, if the batteries will last 6000 cycles at 80% DOD, then my batteries should theoretically last more than 16 years lol if you want all the available data from 2/11 to today, I can send or post it

I came across this post by accident. Ever Since I changed my inverter to SbL from SLb the charge kicked in a couple minutes after midnight. Since my inverter keep loosing time and it is about 5 minutes behind this can explain why it switch to charging the batteries at that time (+- 00:05). It only charge between 30 minutes up to an hour, regardless of the battery SOC. When set in SLb it will go to grid at around 22%-25% SOC (at whatever time it happens, can be between 03:00 and 05:00 and will continue to charge until the PV produce enough watts to carry the load. I have seen/found a manual somewhere where these inverters can be set at a certain time through the LCD menu to change the priority by the hour although my inverter do not have this function. I see that Coulumb has mentioned the “hourly priority” above. I am still monitoring this and will compare with my data from the previous weeks as I am trying to minimize my grid usage as well as getting the batteries full before PV fall away in the afternoon. I changed from SLb to SbL as we had a couple days last week with many clouds and could not get the batteries fully charged in those conditions, I hoped to have similar weather conditions on the 2nd setting to see if it will influence the batteries SOC and cycles. I will also compare the grid use between the two settings to determine which setting will be the best for minimal grid usage. My system never go back to grid except for the times mentioned above.

How does it look now? All good?