wolfandy

Never mind - found the answer myself on a Victron photo. Using several sets of connection cables on a stack linked to the same master seems to be ok

Thanks Coulomb I imported the caps myself for them to use. It is the United Chemi-Con EKZN800ELL182MM40S, which I got from your or Weber's thread on AEVA Is there a way to safely remove the cover from the inverter while it is still mounted on the wall and connected? Otherwise it is a bit difficult to do this from outside

When I have added Pylons to my setup myself, I think I used the name of the company that I purchased the Pylon from as Installer

A normal kit like this is all you need. But I see that all of them are listed as 'Out of stock'. I would suggest dropping Manie an email at [email protected] and ask what he has available The Pi comes pre-installed with RealVNC. You just need to install the RealVNC Viewer for macOS and then you can remotely log-in from your Mac (RealVNC is also available for IOS/Android, so you can also do the same with your smartphone or tablet) You can find the download link to firmware 73.00e in this thread (take the lead-acid version for your case) and follow the instruction on how to update the firmware from this thread (but do not use the files from that thread)

Hi @Coulomb a brief update: Unfortunately it was neither the ethernet-over-power adapters nor the 3rd-party aircon wifi controllers 😕 Even when I disconnected power to all of them, the noise was still present Do you have any other ideas? Do you think that the replacement caps could have anything to do with it? I cannot remember having that noise in the past and am running out of ideas what other changes I have done...

Hi Youda just wanted to ask about how you wired this. If I can see correctly from your picture, the comms ports on all your batteries are daisy-chained (so all run by a single master). But on the power cables, you are using 2 sets of connection cables with each set connected to 4 batteries. That way, you can push 240A of charging current into your batteries (instead of the 120A with a single set of connection cables for all). Is that correct? I'm also looking to be able to push more than 120A into my Pylons, so would appreciate your feedback 🙂

Thanks The inverter is a genuine Axpert (no clone), so ICC will work with it. One of my inverters is actually exactly the same model and built in the same month/year 😉 If you have not yet upgraded the firmware to @Coulomb's patched firmware 73.00e, then I would highly recommend doing so

Thanks a lot for this, Coulomb. Really appreciate it 🙂 And your knowledge is truly amazing. I did recently add power-line network adapter in a socket near the inverter to get better network connection for my Pi there. Let me take them out again and see if that brings a change And also yes, I am controlling the aircons via wifi. Even though this is rather a 3rd-party solution (Sensibo) that is an external IR sender with Wifi connection, which sends IR signal to the aircon - so I would be very surprised if that were the reason (and I've had these for ages and did not notice a problem in the past)

If you post photos from the sticker on the side of the inverters, then we should be able to help you with that. I would assume they are, but just to confirm You can either buy the complete kit (Pi and ICC software) from the ICC website or purchase the Pi separately from e.g. here and only purchase the ICC software directly from the ICC website Which batteries are you running?

I assume that your Mecer inverters are Axperts - correct? Then you could look into using ICC running on a Raspberry Pi, which you can remotely access from your Mac (or smartphone/tablet)

Correct (as I also wrote) But only for as long as your solar system is producing any PV watts. As soon as your PV production drops to 0, it will switch to utility. As I mentioned, you need to check in your situation (battery capacity and load) how much your batteries actually get drained during that time If I am not mistaken the Growatt is not able to blend PV and Utility, so if PV is less than your loads, it can only take the balance from the batteries Only other option would be time-based switching (not sure if Growatt is capable of that)

The option 'Solar First' means that the inverter will only draw on the battery when solar is available but not sufficient to power the loads. Once your solar production drops down to 0, it will switch over to utility. This means that you will only drain your batteries for the duration in the evening between solar not being sufficient anymore to power your loads and completely reaching 0 (apart from short periods during the day when you solar might drop for a short period due to clouds, etc). Try that setting and check how much is left in your battery by the time it has switched over to utility. I would expect that should still be sufficient to get you through a normal loadshedding

Hi all I am contemplating the following configuation of panels and MPPT. According to the Victron calculator, it is still fine. What do you guys think? Would it be riding the MPPT too hard?

Hi all I am currently contemplating of adding a 2nd Victron MPPT to my system. As I am not using a GX in my system, I am looking to use a Smart Battery Sense to create a VE.Smart Network to synchronise the charging of the 2 MPPTs. But I now have 2 practical questions, which I hope someone might be able to help with: I understand that the Smart Battery Sense is supposed to be connected directly to the battery's terminals. But how do I best do that for Pylons - given their non-standard terminals? Or do I connect the Smart Battery Sense to the end of the Pylon connection cable (where it connects to my DC busbar)? I am currently having 4x Pylons connected via a single Pylon connection cable (120A). As with the 2nd MPPT I might in theory be producing up to 135A, I thought it would be safer to add another Pylon connection cable (even though I don't think that the full 135A would ever be pushed into the Pylons as my load also still needs to be supplied). How would I connect the Smart Battery Sense when using 2 sets of Pylon connection cables? Thanks in advance for inputs 🙂

Thanks for the feedback, @Coulomb and @Gnome It's difficult to describe. I have uploaded videos of the noises (turn volume up 😉): Speaker - https://streamable.com/gi3288 Inverter - https://streamable.com/nd9c97 No. 4kW of non-aircon loads (kettle, pool pump, vacuum, etc) does not produce the noise - but 1.8kW of aircon load does Today I noticed that actually both inverters are producing the noise I don't really now how to describe it. Hope the videos above help No, I do not notice flickering in any of my LED lights anywhere in the house Yes, both of them are I also have old PF0.8 models Both are similar in age (about 1 year apart). But please note my comment above that now it seems to come from both inverters I cannot remember having had this problem in the past. The only thing that I had done was replace the caps with your recommendations from the AEVA forum. Could that have anything to do with it? Both aircons are mid-of-the-range Daikins, so I would hope not Do you know where to get something like this locally? At that price, I would be happy to give it a try

Hi all I am getting a high-pitched, pulsating noise when I am running my aircon(s) that are connected to my Axpert inverters. The noise is not present when the aircon(s) are switched off. The aircons are each on separate circuit breakers. I can pick up the noise in 2 places: At the upper end of one of my Axpert inverters (the other one is dead silent) In any of my sound systems around the house (not only in a single location, so e.g. also in bedroom system if only office aircon is on) Especially point 1 above makes me believe that the Axpert is the source. What do you guys think? Has anyone had something similar before? @Coulomb: I am strongly hoping that with your infinite experience and wisdom you have come across something like this before and will have a solution 🙂

How many cells per panel? 60 or 72? And how are they wired? How many in series and how many in parallel? And what is the MPPT voltage rating of your Axpert? 145V? Great. But then I would recommend the following to ensure that ICC is switching between modes based on the SOC from the Pylon BMS instead of the Axpert based on voltage readings: Set 'Back to Grid Voltage' to 47V Set 'Back to Discharge Voltage' to 58V Enable 'Using SOC for Control' on the battery tab and set your desired SOC values (keeping in mind that if your batteries will not fully carry you throughout the night the Axpert's self-consumption will still be drawn from the Pylons even while running on utility) As mentioned by @Bloubul7, this is a calculation 'error' and not something to worry about. I get the same

Do you have the Pylon comms cable for ICC to receive data from the Pylon BMS? If yes, then I would change the 'Back to Grid Voltage' and 'Back to Discharge Voltage' to make sure that the Axpert's settings do not interfere with ICC switching modes (assuming that you are then also using 'Using SOC for Control' on the battery tab) Sorry to hear I will leave it to our resident expert @Coulomb to answer, but I doubt that it can be caused by any of the settings. What I can see in your screenshots above is in line with what I am running in my own system What panels do you have and how are they connected?

If you have 3x US3000, then your stack can combined take up to 111A for charging (3x 37A). I would hence say that your 50A setting on each inverter is spot on. No need to reduce that

Hmm - ok, then it cannot be the battery having to settle in anymore What is the current difference between the batteries that you are seeing? And difference in SOC?

I would say that this is too high for normal charging of the Pylons. Recommended values here in the forum are 52.5V for Bulk and 51.8V for Float A minor difference in SOC is normal in my experience. Here a screenshot of my pack just now. Notice how the voltage is basically the same for all batteries, but the SOC differs. However, they all get to full at one point. When I added my last battery, it would also at the beginning sometimes not get 100%. Usually I would say to give it a few more weeks and it should balance out Is this also the case if you connect it by itself? And does the voltage increase over time or always remains at the same 51.x V? This apparently is normal behavior for the Pylons. Plonkster wrote a detailed explanation for the why somewhere here in the forum

This question has been asked many times - and no one has a good answer... (see fan section of this thread for more details) Changing the direction of the fans results in a significant improvement in temperature. I've just had this done on my Axperts and I changed from temps in the high 40's with external fans stuck to the chassis to temps in the mid 30's without any external fans

Cool - happy to hear that you got it sorted Power and SD card problems are apparently not uncommon with the Pi. But have to admit that I also did not think of that at the time... I've got the 4GB version of the Pi and have moved directories with frequent writes into RAM to reduce the number of writes to the SD card (see here for details and other tips on extending the life of the SD card)

For how long has your new battery in the system? New batteries take a few weeks to be 'run in' And how is your cabling done? Cables to inverter from Plus on your first battery and minus on your last battery? Otherwise that could also explain what you are experiencing

Use the search function here in the forum and you will find the detailed answer Short answer (if I remember correctly): If the Pylon is only used as backup and is in standby (not charged/discharged) for a certain period of time, it produces that error message