superdiy

That should be a breeze for the 5K.

That's the easy way. I did not have a 5K to sniff, I had to try various scenarios and Mike had to test all of them until I got my first successful reply. Thanks again Mike. They've appended a kind of checksum in front of all the commands as well as query and setting indicators, and that is apart from the standard crc checksum appended to the end of the commands.

Affini - another new player? It should be infini! Jason, if you can add more at a later stage, otherwise please add Energy Manager for infini and BMV (and maybe Axpert) - still busy with development.

My 2c. Under load you cannot look at battery voltage to determine SOC - the higher the load the more the voltage will drop because of the internal resistance of the batteries. When you remove the load, the voltage should also recover to a certain degree, depending on mow much it was discharged. If you get to 44V and the BMV still have not reached SOC of 80%, then it can be one of many things, e.g. 1.) BMV not calibrated with correct battery bank AH value. 2.) One or more batteries in the bank is faulty. 3.) Battery cables are too thin and/or too long and therefor the voltage drop over the cables is too high. 4.) Bad connection(s) in battery cabling causing voltage drops. I assume you are referring to the remaining capacity in the bank at that point in time - 40Ah - that is a SOC of 20% of DOD of 80% (80% discharged) Under severe loading the voltage readings might differ substantially depending on the position of the BMV - if it is closer to the inverter the readings might be closer, but if it is closer to the battery bank and you have long/thin cables between the bank and the inverter, the readings might be further apart. On no-load the readings should be close together, but might still differ a bit depending on the calibration of the inverter and BMV. The Axpert's SOC indication is pointless, as discussed many times before. It is based on a voltage reading only. The fact that the mid-point voltage indicates a 7% difference worries me a bit - that means that some of the batteries are charged / discharged more than others which indicates that one or more of the batteries might be old or starting to fail.

I've had a similar experience a few days after I've installed my infini about a year ago. It was a Saturday afternoon and we had loadshedding. It was after 16:00 and PV generation has dropped to about 1KW at that time. My wife was busy vacuuming floors and at least 2 TVs, fridge(s) and / or freezer as well as other parasitic loads like dstv / electric fence / PC etc. etc. were running from the inverter. Without thinking about loadshedding, I started vacuuming the car at the same time. After a few minutes my vacuum cleaner stopped working and I thought it was the intermittent lead connection again and switched it off, checked and fiddled the lead and switched it back on again, vacuumed some more and a few minutes later it died again, I fiddled again and it started working again. A few minutes later it stopped again and then I investigated some more. I noticed that the time on the digital clock in the garage was reset and went to ask my wife if the power went off while she was vacuuming and she confirmed it happened a few times. I then realized that we've probably overloaded the inverter and it self-recovered. Then I checked the load on the inverter and saw that while she vacuumed the total load was about 2.2KW and when I started my vacuum cleaner as well it went to about 3.7KW and after a few minutes the inverter tripped and about a minute later everything started up again. I have also recently tested the overload capability while the grid was available - I loaded the inverter with a total load of just under 6KW for about 10 minutes without any issues.

Hi KLEVA, that is for the infini 3K, unfortunately the commands for the 5K is way different.

I'm also new to PVOutput and have 2 outputs at this stage. If understand it correctly an output is PV/energy data for a specific date - either a summary for the day or multiple data uploads throughout the day e.g. at 5 minute intervals. If you are only up for 3 days and you have uploaded daily data (outputs) for those 3 days, you'll need to upload 2 more day's worth of data before you can join the Southern Africa team.

Yes, you will be losing. If it was a true hybrid inverter the PV and battery will be combined. Unfortunately the Axpert is not a hybrid and therefor switches over to another source if the current source cannot supply the required load. Depending on how exactly the inverters handle the draw from battery / charge the battery / DC bus thing, it might mean more "shallow" cycles. With all 220V appliances the load will never be balanced. Are you still connected to the grid since you mention "switch over to battery" and not "switch over to grid"? If not, it will make more sense to re-configure the inverters to run in parallel instead of in 3 phase. The inverters will then split the load equally between them and each inverter will draw exactly the same from each set of pv panels and you will not have the wasted pv and more battery cycling as described above.

380 / 400V

He specifically asked: "and if one inverter starts to draw 3000 watt, then the inverter will switch to battery mode."

If the load on any one of the inverters is more than what the panels (connected to that inverter) can supply at that point in time, that inverter will switch over to battery and use battery only - not partly battery and partly solar PV. As Plonkster has explained, the other inverters should then try to compensate for the drop in the battery voltage (on the DC bus) and start charging the batteries by using the PV connected to each of the other inverters.

Not in this case, the load will not be split because his inverters are not running in parallel, they are in 3 phase configuration.

That's not good news!

The installation was upgraded a few times. More batteries and another inverter were added.

Thanks viper, missed that one.

She asked about the "bypass" sign and acknowledged Chris' post regarding "bypass" in the Axpert manual. I'm pretty sure she had Axperts.

Great idea.

I'm curious to know what these battery charger switches were - the Axperts were supposed to handle battery charging.

Yes, your installation regarding the solar panels is incorrect. Panels are not to be shared between inverters - each inverter must have its own set of panels connected to that single inverter only. By connecting the current panels in the correct way (1860Wp per inverter) you will most probably have more switch overs to grid, since the Axpert inverters are not true hybrids capable of combining loads. If you had something like the infini 10KW 3 phase inverter it would have used the PV panels optimally and combined grid and PV to supply loads bigger than the available PV, but unfortunately you already have the Axpert inverters. To prevent more grid usage / battery cycling, you basically have two options: Add more PV panels - up to 3KW per inverter Replace the Axpert inverters with a 10KW 3 phase infini (or similar) inverter

I think it is exactly that - the calibration option on your inverter had to be adjusted until it does not feed back at all. It is the same with the battery voltage calibration - you have the option to fine-tune it.

On the 3KW infini we have drawn more than 6KW for minutes at a time while the grid was available - the infinis are true hybrids and can combine power sources to supply the load. The inverter inside the infini is only capable of supplying 3KW and a bit more than that for a few seconds while running from PV and/or battery while the grid is not available, but if the grid is available the infini can supply loads of much more than that for longer periods at a time. If I'm not mistaken MaurioZA has peaks of 266% (8KW) in his logs for his 3KW infini. The 5KW infini should be able to do the same and therefor you should not worry too much about peaks of more than 5KW for a few minutes at a time when the grid is available.

For the 5KW?

The bundled software is called SolarPower - not the best, but working. Mike is an installer and has successfully completed many installations using different components. What he meant by "The Itron has not been problematic at all for me." is that he has installed infinis for clients with Itron meters without any problems.

Hi Green Bum Welcome to the forum! I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge: I cannot really comment on the use of pre-paid meters; I know some people had problems initially, but I think if you disable the "feedback to grid" option you should be fine - maybe others can elaborate on that. The infini cannot be connected to a grid tie limiter - the only option is to disable the "feedback to grid" option. No comment I assume you are referring to the bundled SolarPower software you use to configure and monitor the inverter with - it is useful although it contains a lot of bugs, but I'm busy writing software to communicate with the infinis and surely other in future will too. For your type of load the 3KW Plus infini will be perfect. While you still have the grid available, you don't really have a problem with the load limit of the infini, because it will combine power sources (Grid, PV and battery) and supply loads of more than 6KW (tested to 8KW) while the grid is available, so even if you have spikes above 3KW while you have grid power you will be fine. According to the specs it consumes more in the region of 60W - some people used stuff like the effergy meters which measures apparent power instead of real power and therefor got readings in the region of 200W. I'm not aware of that statement and would like to know why that is said. I think you've covered most, except for the batteries, but there you have plenty of options - a discussion on its own.

I hope that thing is far away from you and your family.