superdiy

I try to.

There will be a way, it is just a bit more effort than to simply use an allen key. I've tried a magnet though, initially, before the grease was added, it worked, but after the grease was added in and around the ball, the magnet on its own failed.

Yep, voltage reading is taken on those same wires. I would also not take apart a new meter, and that is why I only loosened the shunt PCB and traced that side of the circuit.

The battery % indication is not at all an accurate representation of the state of charge of the battery. Same problem with the Axpert inverters. If you've for example specified the float voltage to be 55V, then the inverter "sees" that as 100% charged, but under no load the batteries are actually 100% charged at about 12.7V x 4 => 50.8V. Now, if the PV disappears and the inverter starts running from battery power and the battery voltage drops to 50+ V, the inverter reports that the batteries are only 60-70% charged, although they are actually still fully (100%) charged. Best is to monitor the battery voltage, but remember, the voltage will drop quite a bit under heavy loads as well, but even if it drops to 46V under heavy load it is still not an indication that the battery is fully discharged - when the heavy load is taken off and the battery voltage does not recover to above 48V, only then the battery is running low. Best solution to this is to fork out some cash and to invest in a proper battery monitor e.g. one of the Victron products.

The purpose of a fuse is to isolate a circuit at a specific voltage after it went open circuit because of a fault condition. A car fuse is typically designed (rated) for 32V (if I'm not mistaken) and that means that if you have 32V or less across the fuse when it opens up, it will isolate the 32V or less, but it might not "stop" a higher voltage from arcing over. You can use car fuses of the appropriate ampere rating for 12V and 24V inverter systems, but not for 48V systems and not for PV connections. The reason why you smelled burnt plastic were maybe because of a bad connection somewhere in or close to the fuse or fuse holder which caused it to overheat. Keep in mind that in case those "car" fuses "blow" because of a fault condition, they might not be able to isolate the PV circuit if the PV voltage is much higher than what the fuses are rated at.

I'm not sure what the size of the balls are, but the cap screws are M8. I think the balls are 6mm diameter. I just took a cap screw with and asked for balls to fit inside the "hole". Needless to say I was frowned upon.

Yes, the infini is a true hybrid, the Axpert is not. Different Axpert models are available though, some with PWM and some with MPPT.

Local ball bearing supplier. They sell the loose balls.

I also though of doing something like that, but then decided against it.

Welcome to the forum, doppies. On the first screenshot, you have to change the setting "When battery voltage < 56 the AC starts charging" to something much lover, e.g. 48V otherwise your batteries will be charged constantly during the specified period (0:00-04:00). On the second screen change the value next to X: to something like 0.7A. Monitor the charging current on your infini, mine never goes below 0.5A, so I've changed that setting on mine to < 0.7A for 60 minutes - then the charger actually switches off. I noticed that your batteries will be recharged using eskom from midnight to 04:00 (if the battery voltage is below 56V, which will be the case). Maybe you should monitor the battery voltage just before midnight (before the charger kicks in) and determine their state of charge and if they should perhaps be able to last throughout the night until the sun can start charging them in the morning. Otherwise just adjust that setting from 56V to 48V for a start.

They can steal anything - any anti-theft device is simply put in place to retard the process or to deter the thief.

A hybrid inverter does very much the same, it is just a all-in-one solution instead of having a few different components. It also combines PV and/or grid and/or battery to supply the load. It can also grid tie, if configured to do, and in the case of the infini you can enable or disable grid export and even specify how much should be exported to the grid. I'm not sure about the possible configuration options on the Imeon, but the infini covers all of the above. Both the infini and Imeon will also still supply the load when the grid fails, unlike standard GTIs.

The Victron battery monitors BMV700 & BMV702 are supplied with a 10m 24 AWG 3 pair UTP (patch) cable, but my preferred location for the display was almost 20m from the shunt. I decided to experiment with a longer cable, but feared that the additional cable length might have an effect on the measurements, especially when the backlight is on and/or when the relay and/or buzzer draws more power and that proved to be the case. For my experiment I took a 30m piece of CAT5e 24AWG 4 pair cable and initially connected 3 of the 4 pairs and left the 4th pair unconnected. The difference in the displayed voltage readings with the backlight on and the backlight off were about 0.03V, compared to the readings on my Fluke. The difference in the current readings were about 20mA (backlight on compared to backlight off). I then removed the PC board from the shunt and traced the circuit to determine on which wires the positive and negative battery connections and the load connection of the shunt, were running. Since I had a pair of unused wires in the 4 pair cable I then started, by first adding one wire of the unused pair in parallel with the positive (power) wire and then both wires of the unused pair, but the measurements stayed the same. I then added the unused wires in turns in parallel to each of the 2 wires running from the one side of the shunt to the monitor and did the same with the wire running from the other side of the shunt to the monitor. A notable difference was only seen when one of the unused wires were connected in parallel with the orange-white wire. I decided to make use of the additional wire pair (brown & brown/white) and connect that in parallel to the orange/white wire to effectively lower the resistance of the orange/white wire. The result was much more accurate readings and less difference in readings with the backlight and relay either on or off.

Don't even mention that!

Most of the time 4mm2 bare copper wire is used.

Loctite not needed - I've added a little bit of grease to each one and you really have to spend some time to get the balls out of the holes, not even a needle or a pin gets the ball out.

Welcome to the forum flatfourfan.

All the professional installations have separate copper wire running from panel to panel and which is eventually earthed. I think I've read somewhere that that is a requirement, but I might be mistaken.

Look at my pictures in the gallery. I put a ball-bearing into the head of each cap screw - that prevents somebody from loosening the cap screws with an allen key or screwdriver etc. etc.

I do apologize, I've misread the "Equalization and Cycle Service" as just service, as in the periodic "Service" / "Equalization process". It is strange though that they even mention Equalization for VRLA batteries.

Exactly

Where did you get this from?

They only give the float charging voltage - nothing mentioned about bulk charging current or voltage, and nothing mentioned about absorption voltage. The graph is also for "standby use". You'll have to try and get more info from the suppliers / manufactures / web since you're cycling them daily.