wolfandy

Yup - it's a Sunsynk thing 😉 Even though I would expect other grid-tied inverters to do something similar (but have no real idea as I don't have any experience with any other inverters that can blend grid/PV)

The Sunsynk constantly draws a minimal amount of grid to be able to synchronize with the grid. In your inverter menu under System Mode on the 2nd page is a setting 'Grid Trickle Feed' where you can adjust how much that constant draw must be. Some prepaid meters are more sensitive than others, so you must play around with it. Mine is set to 10W. I have connected a 63A smart relay before my inverter grid feed - so that I can easily disconnect/reconnect my inverter to the grid. In summer, I basically run completely offgrid. But if I see that I might need grid support, I can easily reconnect with a button-press on my phone. Advantages are that I save the small grid draw and that my house does not get exposed to the grid voltage fluctuations

I would recommend setting the voltage on one of your devices a bit lower - probably on the Victron as this has the least PV connected to it. That way they don't 'interfere' with each other when they change over to float

Yup - did that in my old system setup. Was running 2x Axperts (older models) with no panels connected and a Victron 250/100 MPPT. The batteries, the Victron, and the battery input of the Axpert all just need to be connected to a busbar. Then the Victron will charge the batteries and feed the inverter during the day. With the VE USB cable you can then get ICC to display the PV production from the Victron (a setting somewhere)

If wired correctly, your non-essentials remain on your 'main' DB board and hence are wired before your inverter. Any power draw from them does not go through your inverter - which means does not impact the 5kW that your inverter can provide on the output side. Your essentials are connected to the output side of the inverter, which are restricted to 5kW of loads during loadshedding and have a 35A pass-through capability for access loads while the grid is present. I have to admit that I do not know though if this 35A pass-through is total load (as @mzezman wrote) or in addition to the 5kW inverter capacity. Maybe @Leshen can advise please? The beauty of the Sunsynk is that it is a bi-directional inverter - which means it can not only draw power through the AC Input, but also push back power through it. This means, that (if your CT coil is correctly installed) when it has access PV available (meaning when your available PV is higher than your essential load) it can push power back to your non-essentials. Hence your non-essentials can also be supplied by PV, reducing your grid draw. If your non-essential load is higher than your excess PV, it will take the balance from the grid. However, this will only work while the grid is present - so not during loadshedding. Assuming that your essential load does not make up more than 5kW of your 7kW load (not kWh - different thing 😉), it will most definitely not trip your inverter but rather: If your inverter settings do allow you to draw from batteries (SOC higher than target SOC): It will provide a total of 5kW from your PV and batteries to both your essentials and non-essentials and take the 2kW shortfall for the non-essentials from grid If your inverter settings do not allow you to draw from batteries (SOC lower than target SOC): It will provide whatever load is present on your essentials and use the remaining PV to charge your batteries. Non-essentials will be completely powered by grid (I have to admit I am not 100% sure on this. I cannot exactly recall as I no longer have anything connected to non-essentials)

Interesting - did not know that Hubble recommends different charge and discharge rates The it is connected 👍

Leave it at 5000. This is the inverter power - and you have a 5kW inverter I don't have a Hubble myself, but according to the specsheet, it can take 100A (or 105A for Rev2) for both charge and discharge. I recommend you change these settings I don't know how the Hubble behaves, but the Pylons are typically 'stuck' at 89% SOC for quite a while before making a sudden jump to 100%. Maybe just be a bit patience. Usually the BMS drops the charge amps at that point to fully charge and balance all the cells I assume you have a comms cable between the Sunsyunk and your Hubble - correct? I would assume that this is due to the BMS reducing the amps it is willing to accept at that point

Then something is still wrong with your settings or your overall setup. With 2 Pylons you can supply up to roughly 3500W without breaking a sweat (not for a full 2h though). So for your fridge it is absolutely no problem. Microwave and borehole pump depends on their power draw as well as what other loads you have at that moment. You have very good components, which when properly set up will give you lots of joy. Don't throw money at changing out the components - get everything set up correctly. I have exactly the same components and my system runs rock-stable. Either get someone that knows what he is doing out to check your system - or post pictures of everything here and we can try to provide remote support

Are you running a single inverter or a parallel setup? I am running 2x 5kW Sunsynks in parallel and have never had that error message

He has a different type of geyser than what you are thinking of. He has a 'Durchlauferhitzer' or instantaneous geyser or tankless water heating - where the water is heated up instantaneously as it passes through the geyser. So no large storage tank of hot water, but just a small device that heats water as it passes through. Hence the significant power draw required. A small unit for a handwash basin is usually around 3kW and larger ones for showers anywhere between 11kW and 33kW

The constant battle between the upgrade itch and sanity/reasoning 😜 My YTD grid consumption is around 700kWh (vs a bit over 13,000kWh total YTD load). More than 50% of those 700kWh result from the 3 winter months Jun-Aug. While the itch is constantly there to add more panels (eliminate winter months grid usage) or add another battery (get away from the small now-and-then grid usage early mornings after the kids played lots of PS5 the night before), the financial investment for either one of these options would be more than R20k. And with my YTD grid usage, the payback period is simply too long for that to make any sense. So sanity prevails (for the time being) 🙃

Agree with the others. We need a bit more details. Do your Pylons last you through the night? In summer, around what time are your batteries fully charged again? And in winter? Are your afternoon/early evening loads high, so that you need to start using batteries before the sun has set? Additional panels will help you in winter (assuming that you currently struggle to fully charge your batteries) - but in summer will be a waste. More batteries always help (not having to cycle you full pack down so deep, extending life of your whole pack), but in winter you will struggle to fully charge them. Just beware that I don't think that you can mix your US3000 with the UP5000

Your battery is at 100%, so the system does not have an 'outlet' for the additional PV capacity. It hence 'restricts' the PV production to what is required by the load. You will see that you PV generates as much as it can when your battery is not fully charged. Also not that the PV ramp-up to a sudden change in load is not instantaneous. You will see a slight lag in PV production when you suddenly increase your load (e.g. switch on the kettle). In the meantime, your inverter will draw the balance from the other available sources (usually battery)

Danke @uwachs For our non-German speaking forum members, here is the English data sheet for the inverter So this is a 3-phase inverter, something I personally do not have any experience with From what I understand from the spec sheet, it lists Grid Output 21.7A per phase - which means 5kW per phase and 15kw in total (which makes sense for the 15kW model). But I do not see anything anywhere in the specs that talk about AC Passthrough, so I do not know if your inverter is able to pass AC through or if the 15kW is your total load limit. I do not know enough about 3-phase inverters to understand how loads are wired up to them. How are your high loads distributed across the 3 phases? Could it be that your load on a single phase exceeds the 21.7A limit? I am hoping that someone else here in the forum with better knowledge of 3-phase inverters can help

That should be possible. The first thing to check in your inverter settings is the battery discharge rate that is set. This should be set to 200A. If your inverter needs more power, it will take the balance from the grid. However, please note 2 things that I do not know for your inverter: What is the max rating of your inverter? Even though your batteries might be able to provide 200A (10kW), what is the rating of your inverter? What is the 'AC Passthrough' of your inverter? An inverter usually cannot pass an unlimited amount of power through from the grid. For example, on my Sunsynk 5kW the AC Passthrough is 35A (7.7kW). That means that between PV/batteries and grid the inverter can max provide 12.7kW Genau 👍

Thanks @mien - the screenshot help That was exactly my suspicion. No idea why installers wire things up that way. Makes me wonder how well they actually know their stuff... +1 @mien For your understanding - and that you can educate your installer: The MPPT in the Sunsynk has a startup voltage of 150V (as per the Sunsynk spec sheet), which means that the MPPT only starts up when the voltage on your panels reaches 150V. Now it appears that the MPPT actually does seem to start up a around 125V - otherwise you would not be generating any PV at all currently. The max MPPT voltage is 425V, which means your installer can easily combine the strings into a single string (resulting in 260V) and you will still be well within the limits of the MPPT. The other positive effect of this will be that you will start producing PV a bit earlier in the morning (because the 6 panels reach the 125V/150V earlier than your 3 at the moment) and also produce a bit longer in the evening. You can probably add another 3 panels to that string if you want (finances and roof space allowing). Only upside out of all of this is that your installer has already pulled 2 sets of cables from your roof to your inverter. So if in future you want to add more panels and put them on your 2nd MPPT, you don't need to pull any additional cables.

True

Moin 🙃 Your Pylons have a combined discharge rate of 200A (8x 25A), which means they can provide around 10,000W. I don't know your inverter, so I do not know if it can blend battery and grid power - as well as how much the total passthrough of the inverter is. Are you maybe also exceeding this? If after dark your load is higher than that 10kW and your inverter tries to draw more than 200A from the Pylons, their BMS will probably go into protection mode to prevent damage One other note on the battery setup: I see that you have 2x connection cables from the Pylons to the inverter - great. However, I would recommend changing the way they are wired up. Split them into 2 sets of 4, with the + cable on the battery on the one and and the - cable on the battery on the other end. That way the batteries will get a more even charge/discharge. Keep the link/comms cable across all of them as you have at the moment to have them all controlled together

Thanks - good point. Let me have a look by chance

Thanks Standard (crossover) Cat5 or do I need to get one made with straight pinout?

On the SolarMan app, go to 'Devices' and then select your inverter. On the new page that opens up, go to 'Statistics and then click on the graph. This will open a new screen, where you can click on 'Parameter Selection'. There, select 'DC Voltage PV1' and 'DC Voltage PV2'. On the resulting screen you will be able to see if your panels are connected in 1 string (only voltage showing on one of the above) or 2 string (voltage showing on both). Maybe post a screenshot of that graph here, so that we can see what voltage your string(s) run at. Overall your productions seems low to me (assuming that you do not have shading on any of your panels)

Hi all am contemplating of re-arranging my Pylons, which would have them stacked across 2 racks next to each other. I already have 2 set of +/- connection cables, so that is not the problem. But to maintain the BMS link between the Pylons, the stock link cable would be too short. What can I use as longer cable? A normal Cat5E or Cat6 with a straight pinout? Or does the stock cable have any crossed wires or so?

That's also the way I am running things. But am using Sonoff POW Origin316 (16A). There are also 20A and 25A options for even larger loads. For the pool pump, you can probably even get away with a 10A I change my On/Off times for the devices between summer and winter to match my solar production profile. And if there are any odd days (e.g. strong overcast in summer) or you need to pay special care to loadshedding, then it's just a press of the button on your phone to switch things off.

I've gone the 2x 5kW route because of the extra MPPTs compared to the 8kW unit I'll drop you a PM with my installer details Absolutely. Start small and add batteries/panels/inverter as you can afford. I started off with 1x 4kW inverter and 1x Pylon battery - and by now have 2x 5kW inverters and 5x Pylon. Just beware that it becomes an expensive addiction 😜 I started off with some things on the non-essential side, but have moved everything across to essentials by now. I use Sonoff POWs to control my heavy consumers, but time-based rather than automated based on load amount or loadshedding. For loadshedding-related control of consumers, look at the Sonoff Smart Loadshedder

An MPPT does have a bit of a lag and cannot respond instantaneous to significant changes in load. It is normal behavior that in cases like that the battery provides the balance of power for a short period of time. If you look at my dashboard from today, you will see similar behavior that my PV (yellow) always lagged when there were sudden spikes in load (blue). On the right you can see that in those cases the balance was taken from the battery and thereafter the battery was recharged The reason why your system also added Grid power to the mix around 12:15 is because you do not seem to have sufficient batteries to provide the full load requirement from your battery at that moment (load higher than battery discharge rate). I do agree, however, that a 10 mins delay before PV kicking in to contribute does seem too long I could well imagine that with your string voltage below the MPPT start-up voltage, this could be the reason for the slow PV response So yet another reason to get your panels combined into a single string If finances and roof space allow for it, you could still add further panels on the same string to get closer to the 425V (while making sure that you don't ever exceed this though...). I am running at 380V