Rclegg

You can run the pool pump off the solar. My pool runs from sunrise when there is enough PV generation, until like 16:00 when the light is low and pump switches off. All on the solar 100%. The ICC software and PI is in my option well worth the investment.

Out of interest what have you decided?

The Pylontech 3.5Kwh is what I would recommend. 80% DoD - 6000 cycles. They are around 20k. Design life is 10 years.

Nice, love the setup! The Home Assistant setup can be a whole rabbit hole on it's own. This is my current HA Dashboard: Got Sonoffs on a lot of the lights. But planning to extend that to every light in the house being on a Sonos or Sonos Mini. But as you found out, neutrals need to be there. Got my Pool pump on automation as well. When PV is greater than 1600w - the pump comes on. Have fun playing and tweaking with the system!

Welcome @Kodlan

yeah, added the settings, saved. Closed the app. Opened. Won't let me turn it on. (API keys wrong, for the purpose of screenshot )

Finally getting my HA setup nicely:

Tried to setup this today. Got the account and API key. On ICC however, it won't let me turn it on. Entered the details under PVOutput and the switch to the right doesn't work. Any ideas?

It doesn't "need" it no. But it helps so much to get a visual on what is happening and it reads the Pylontech battery much better than the Inverter can and make decisions based on SOC of battery. Eg when to switch to Solar Vs Grid. Also has better control over your battery voltages and cut off voltages etc.

I have this inverter and Pylontech battery. I honestly recommend using the ICC software + Pi to manage communications between battery and inverter. It allows you to also setup / change a bunch of things remotely and not need to go to the inverter. Here's my setup:

Yeah dude, I am super pleased! Battery is fulled charged now too!

Thats charge current as output to the battery I believe. As soon as battery stops charging, it goes to 0.

So, yesterday I ended the day off with 89% left in my Pylontech battery. Loadshedding then started at 20:00 last night. I was super happy to be able to run the house off the battery for the 2:30hrs - grid came back and didn't notice for a few mins. 😂 This morning, started off perfectly! Had peak generation of 3.3Kw before 9:30am so that's pretty decent! Running my pool pump now as well. I will be putting more load on at noon to see what peak generation is. Very happy with the setup and load shedding atsarts at 12 today - won't even notice. 😂 Thanks again too everyone for helping! Now need to get Home Assistant running and some automations for power usages.

That appears to be the case, yes. It does not enjoy anything under 200volts on the MPPT. It ran my loads for around an hour before the sunset - it has not been capable of doing that since I had it installed over the weekend. I will see what it does tomorrow. But it looks very promising! Thanks again for your assistance earlier on in the day, much appreciated! Yeah, I can see that happening already. I want to get to 4 x Pylons. Then I don't need to worry about someone putting the kettle on. 🤣

Dude, I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow!

Right, it seems we have success! 😀 The MPPT was definitely not happy at under 180v. Load has been low and the inverter has stayed on Solar! Panels are now in two series of 6. Which seems to be the ticket. The graph also looks a lot better and more stable. The heavy load at the end is because someone turned on the kettle and there was not enough PV generation for that. I know its at the limit of the Pylontech - will be getting another pylon at the end of the month. Thank you every one for all the input and help. IO really appreciate it and learnt a lot out of the system, @wolfandy - Can I PM you at some point to see how you did the pool setup? Now to try get the battery to charge to 100% before load shedding comes by tonight.

Display version - where do I find that?

71.80 Thanks for your input, much appreciated. We are reconfiguring the panels as we speak to be 6 Panels in 2 strings, yes. If this isn't the cause of the issue, do you have an idea why it won't pick up loads that are low? If my load is 2kw, the inverter normally goes to solar. At 800watt load, it goes to battery.

The panels are the CanadianSolar 410W Poly ones.

Hmm, I might be exceeding that with the current configuration? As the panels would give 30Amp in current config. Will be changing the panels config over today. With two string, max AMP on those panels will be or so I believe.

Hmm I think we are on to something now. Each time I increase the load in the house, it goes to solar as expected. But load has to be over 2kw Noted. Will be turning off the combiner box. Yeah 2 strings, 6 panels each. That should get me to 10amp per string and 300 volts - more or less. Each panel is around 49 volts Thats exactly what I would like to do when this whole thing is working. Thanks for the info.

That would be correct yes. MPPT hovers at around 160 or so odd. Maybe I need to double the voltage by going to 2 strings of six so around 300 volts?

3 Strings of 4 Panels Inverter limit is 450VDC I think I turned the pool pump on to use the extra PV energy. Every time our house cleaner turns the hoover on, inverter switches rot PV and uses 2.2kw of the generation. Im confused.

Thanks, that I did not know, very helpful! No there was zero cloud cover at that point. Not sure what it is doing there either.

Okay, so I have noticed something interesting. If the house load is high, like 2.5Kw - then the inverter uses the solar to power the loads. But normal load like 800 or so, then it uses batteries. I wonder if this is due to not enough volts from the panels? Thinking I might see if 2S6P works?