markus_m2

Just recently got myself a used BMW i3 .... LOVING IT!!!!
Now going back down the rabbit hole of having to upgrade the PV System to account for the new consumption ... and that consumption is quite something!!! Since plugged in our household consumption has more than doubled! 🥴 Totally worth it though, looking forward to an upgraded system 😁
Anyways, not that I have much experience, the only thing that I checked out was the battery SOH - and in the case of the BM you can't actually check the SOH itself, but rather the "capacity" of the battery which is apparently not an accurate indicator of SOH, but does give a good idea of where the battery is at ...
I turned down 2 i3's due to poor "capacity", both between 40 - 60,000km.
Third one I checked had over a 100,000km, beyond my comfort zone and wouldn't have been on my radar to check out, but stumbled on it by chance - according to the "capacity" reading it was well over 90% "SOH", waaay better than the previous two that had done only half the km's, so I bit the bullet and am super chuffed so far (been two weeks)...have since run the battery down to 5% and the range driven indeed does correspond with the capacity reading, so all seems great!
The capacity reading on the BM can be found through a "secret menu" - although the ease with which this menu was found through Google makes it "not so secret" 🤣

Hi Markus, yip, you are correct. I climbed into the roof and replaced the extension by simply splicing in a 5m length of 1mm Cabtyre (I had no network cable around). Voila, it works perfectly in that location. To confirm my suspicions, I took the "dodgy" sensor cable to another THR on opposite end of home and subject to more interference, and it did exactly the same (cutting between 31-36 deg). If I remove the OEM extension the sensor works perfectly on it's 0.5m cable.
It is beyond logic that the OEM extension cable caused specific range failures on 3 out of 3 extension cables, but that is what I have found. I do not suggest anyone buy these RL560 5m extenders, if they want to use full range of sensor. My suspicion is the wire is too thin (thinner than sensor cable) and/or subject to interference.
Thanks again Markus, hope Sonoff upgrade this RL560 product and remove existing stocks. 

Had same issue on my own extension cable...blanked out between roughly 28deg and 42deg....
Extension was made up of good quality UTP cable, about 15m. 
Tried many tricks to fix this, and what eventually did it was changing to STP cable! Seems the cable needs the shielding...
@Muchachos you did mention using an extension although it sounds like the original Sonoff extension? Weird, that should work..how many meters you extending?

Ain't that the truth! 🤣

Absolutely agree!
While many companies do use sly marketing, this is completely devious and dishonest...

Absolutely agree!
While many companies do use sly marketing, this is completely devious and dishonest...

"Hybrid inverter 6.5kW combined AC load & DC charge"
This is extremely devious marketing. I would not do business with them. Walk away, if you still can. 

Sunsynk 5kW updated yesterday 09 Oct 23, same version
SW Ver.M 3.3.8.4 / S  1.5.1.5 / C E.4.3.3

My bet is on you exporting power and being charged for it...
Make sure your CT coil is correctly installed and disable export to grid.

My bet is on you exporting power and being charged for it...
Make sure your CT coil is correctly installed and disable export to grid.

My bet is on you exporting power and being charged for it...
Make sure your CT coil is correctly installed and disable export to grid.

My bet is on you exporting power and being charged for it...
Make sure your CT coil is correctly installed and disable export to grid.

Yep, tried it according to https://github.com/irekzielinski/Pylontech-Battery-Monitoring/blob/master/README.md
But couldn't get it working ... somewhere between the D1 Mini, the RSS232 to TTL and the battery I couldn't pickup any comms - eventually ran out of time without it working, sorry can't give more reasons what the issue was...
 

For anybody else wondering about the different IMP ratings, here's the "official" reply from Goodwe:
So, unlike Sunsynk where a firmware upgrade seemingly bumped up the Max input current, this Goodwe came out with an "upgraded hardware" version down the line...

Also in for one ...

Yes congrats @Gefahrlich...pls write a review of the install and operation 😉

Personally I wouldn't bother with seperate panels and seperate geyserwise mppt...that'll limit those panels to only heating water (wasted potential once water is done heating)
Rather invest the money in more panels connecting to your main system and have that heat the water.

Personally I wouldn't bother with seperate panels and seperate geyserwise mppt...that'll limit those panels to only heating water (wasted potential once water is done heating)
Rather invest the money in more panels connecting to your main system and have that heat the water.

20% is about right this time of year...as mentioned, give the sun some time to climb higher. At 30deg tilt you'll be styling around September;-)

Disclaimer: I don't have much experience with aux (yet, by next week my father in law's geyser will be on aux)...
I would do as you're suggesting- all non-essentials on aux, wire and program correctly, but include a change-over switch to Eskom. That way, you manually manage your loads while on aux (and correct setup will disconnect aux below certain battery level), but you still have option to connect direct Eskom in case you need to run beyond pass-through limitations (seldom, but best to future proof from the start)...
Best of both worlds 😉

Disclaimer: I don't have much experience with aux (yet, by next week my father in law's geyser will be on aux)...
I would do as you're suggesting- all non-essentials on aux, wire and program correctly, but include a change-over switch to Eskom. That way, you manually manage your loads while on aux (and correct setup will disconnect aux below certain battery level), but you still have option to connect direct Eskom in case you need to run beyond pass-through limitations (seldom, but best to future proof from the start)...
Best of both worlds 😉

Did you pay your license fee

Firstly note that the following discussion is only valid for resistive loads such as elements.  This will not work when your load is inductive such as a motor or 50Hz transformer.

To de-rate a heater element you could do so in three way:

 1. Use a transformer to reduce the supply voltage.  You would NOT use a transformer in the conventional sense, but use the secondary wired in SERIES to either decrease or even increase you AC voltage.  (Wired in phase would add the transformer voltage, 180deg out of phase would subtract the voltage) This works well but is very expensive.

2.  Use a simple diode, mounted on a heatsink.  The diode will only pass every other half-wave.  It results in pulsating DC.  This is cheap to do.  It has the disadvantage of not reducing the peak current but only reducing the average power.  It is also 50%.  Nothing more, nothing less.

3.  By connecting a non-polarized capacitor in series with the load.

I will cover (3) here:

Let's assume you have a 230VAC 3KW element.  We can calculate it's current as  I = P/V  = 3000/230 = 13.0A.  We can also calculate the element's resistance:   R = V^2 / P  = 230^2 / 3000 = 17.63 ohms

Let us assume you only want to run the element at 50% power.  That means you would need to connect a capacitor in series that has a impedance Z (at 50Hz) that equals the element's resistance.

So let's see what capacitance will give us an impedance of 17.63 ohms at 50Hz.

Z = 1 / [ 2pi.f.c ]   where pi = 3.14159,  f = 50Hz and c= capacitance in Farads    ... (1)

We can re-write (1) as

C = 1 / [Z.2.pi.f]
    = 1 / [17.63 x 2 x 3.14159 x 50]
    = 1.805 . 10-4  F
    = 180 uF

So you would need a 180uF non-polarised capacitor rated for 250VAC.  You could obviously connect a few smaller capacitors in parallel.  If you do, you could add a switch to select more or less paralleled capacitors and thus have some pre-set power settings to select from.

A small capacitor will have a high impedance and the element will see very little current.  To increase the current, you need to reduce the series impedance and thus increase the capacitor size.

Note that no electronic component is ideal.  For instance, a capacitor is not JUST a capacitor.  It has a certain internal resistance and even an internal inductance.  We talk of a capacitor's ESR = Electrical Series Resistance.  You get so called low ESR caps that are used in power supplies, etc.  The ESR will cause the capacitor to heat up.  Now, I have absolutely no idea how much ESR a motor starter capacitor has.  Remember that motor starters only have to work for a very short time.  I can't comment if a 180uF motor start capacitor would be happy to pass many amps of AC voltage on a continues basis.  The capacitor might not be so happy and have a short life expectancy.  One would need to try it and just check that the capacitor doesn't get too warm.



 

The more I reas this forum the more I realize I don't know 🤣
Awesome stuff....

My Goodwe runs my UP5000 mixed together with 3000 and 3000C and 2000Plus', basically a mix and match of Pylons collected over the years, NO PROBLEM!
Telling the inverter what battery you have literally just sets an additional level of charge / discharge and DOD limits over and above BMS comms (at least I don't see any other advantage to setting the exact same battery type in Goodwe settings, maybe someone can correct me on this?). 
I.o.w. what @P1000 mentioned is correct, a single UP5000 has the same charge / discharge current limits as two US2000 (doesn't matter normal or C).
If, for example, you have a UP5000 (50A max) mixed with a single US3000 (37A max) giving you a combined max 87A charge/discharge, set the Goodwe to 3x US2000, thereby setting max 75A; slighly lower but helps with the longevity of your batteries 😉