PierreJ

Hi, Could someone please recommend a good solar installer that does installations in Paarl? Thanks!

This online estimator uses the weather for previous years at your location in order to estimate yields going forward: https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php It's the best one that I'm aware of, and it's free.

I really really tried to get off the grid, but failed. The winter weather here in the Western Cape doesn't make it financially viable. I've got 12kWp on the roof, and 20kWh of battery capacity. There are days, sometimes multiple in a row, where my yield is in the low single digit kWh. I would need to triple my battery storage to be able to outlast such days. So I'm grudgingly paying for my grid connection each month, even though for 8 months of the year I buy almost nothing.

"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.

Do you perhaps know when (or in which firmware version) this was addressed? The reason I ask is because I am seeing some spurious alarms at one of my installations and I'm wondering whether this is the same issue. The install is less than a year old, so the firmware of the batteries is fairly recent. These are the kind of alarms I am getting from time to time: The alarms resolve as fast as they happen, and there's nothing in the battery event logs.

Dewald, I just wanted to say that you very much for the fan. I installed it this afternoon and everything is working perfectly again.

Awesome, thank you very much! I've sent you a private message.

Do all the models use 4-pin fans, and is the pinout and connector the same?

That is correct. The left fan span spins freely when flicked, so it doesn't seem to be an issue with the bearings or some kind of mechanical blockage. Yes, I would prefer to replace it. The current fan is 80x80x25, 12V @ 0.55A. I can't find the spec for the fan, so I don't know how much air it moves, but I assume a fan with similar wattage will move a comparable amount of air. I notice that SegenSolar stock replacement fans for the entire range of Kodak (Voltronic) inverters that they sell, but they don't give any specs on them so I don't know which (if any) will fit. I believe the mapping of the Kodak product names is as follows: OG 5.48 = Axpert VM III OG-PLUS 5.48 = Axpert King II OGS 5.6 = Axpert VM 4 OG 7.2 = Axpert Max 7.2 OG 10 = Axpert Max II Do you know off-hand whether the fan of any of the above inverters will be suitable? Thanks!

When I opened up the inverter case I was fully expecting to be met with a mountain of dust, so I was already armed with a blower, switch cleaner and lubricating oil. However, for an 8 year old system it was remarkably free of dust. Unfortunately for me it looks like the issue is electrical and not mechanical. The fan turns freely, and if you flick it it spins for a while before coming to a stop (even when no power is applied), so the bearings seem intact and there is very little friction. It's a 4-wire PWM fan, so I'm suspecting something in the driver circuit has died. I haven't opened it up yet, but perhaps there's a transistor or capacitor in there that's shot? Is this something that happens? Thanks for the help.

He's got it the wrong way round. They must run in the same conduit, and if you have multiple strings in the same conduit then you need to tie the conductors of each string together at regular intervals for easy identification. From SANS 10142-1 2021, under the "Additional requirements for photovoltaic installations", page 237:

I've got a PIP 4048MS inverter that started throwing error 01 (fan trouble), so I opened it up and noticed that the left fan is not spinning. After swapping the two fan headers the right one keeps spinning, so I assume the left one has failed. (It was manufactured in May 2015, so it's about time for things to start going wrong.) The fan is an ADDA model AD0812XB-A7FGP. Here's a link to it that I found online: https://www.elecok.com/adda-8025-12v-0-55a-ad0812xb-a7fgp.html The problem is I've been unable to find it locally, and it is not listed at www.adda.com.tw, so I suspect it may be discontinued. Is there a similar fan that is more readily available that will also work? Thanks!

I think you can get away with undersizing the contactor in the N-E bond, because it would normally not be required to break the fault current. I would expect the carrying capacity of a contactor to be substantially greater than its breaking capacity. That said, I wouldn't do this myself.

In my experience if high voltage alarms persist with a Pylontech battery module then there's an issue with one or more cells, and a firmware update will not solve it. I would dump the event and cycle data of the battery module using BatteryView and then e-mail it to [email protected]. They usually take a couple of days to reply, but I have always received great service from them. If the battery module is indeed faulty they will guide you through the RMA process. Edit: Looking at the VRM graphs that indeed looks like it could perhaps be a software glitch. The same advice applies: Send the logs to Pylontech and ask what to do next.

That only applies to applications made from 1 October 2023. Someone at CoCT clearly didn't get the memo.

Here is the notification CoCT sent out a week ago:

From the first of October CoCT will treat all applications as grid-tied, i.e. from then onwards your inverter will have to be on the list of approved inverters. You've therefore got two weeks to file an application to add solar panels to your existing inverter under the "Passive Standby UPS utilised as a standby hybrid SSE" installation type. If you fail to do this now, you will not be able to (legally) add panels to it later.

Victron has been dragging its feet getting its larger inverters NRS approved. Currently the largest Victron inverter on the approved list is 5kW, so if you've got your mind set on a Victron setup and you need more than 5kW then you need to install multiple inverters in parallel. There are >5kW inverters on the approved list from other brands.

It depends very much on the season. In winter when the solar day is short and you want your panels to be performing optimally, you really really want them to be pointing north. Looking at an annual average doesn't give you the whole picture.

Done

Good point. It's possible that the BMS in one battery could go crazy and report a pack voltage that is higher than it actually is, but for two to do it at the same time seems unlikely. My money is on the charge voltages according to the logs being accurate, and Pylontech's contention that the inverter charge voltage was set too high therefore correct. Whether that gives them the right to refuse the warranty claim when the BMS is supposed to protect the battery is a different debate. They do cite in their warranty document that the warranty is void in case of "failure to install, operate or maintain the product in accordance with the Product Instructions". The last two words are capitalized, so one would assume it refers to a specific section in the battery manual, but no such section exists. It's clear that the batteries were already toast by the first entry of the event log, given that one of the cells were at 3.75V. It's odd that there are no prior entries, unless the event log files are not complete.

If you clear the eeprom it might raise suspicion when you do try and claim under warranty. The number of times the eeprom has been erased is logged, so they can see that it has been done. If you go into the console and use the soh command (I think - memory is a bit fuzzy) it displays a whole bunch of statistics, amongst others the number of times the eeprom was erased.

As I understand things they are claiming that the high voltages reported by the battery BMSes on the two batteries that failed were the cause of the failure, rather than a consequence of it. I think there's an easy way to prove or disprove this claim. I'm assuming that all four batteries were connected in parallel, and therefore the voltage across all of them should be the same. If you were to extract the logs from the other two batteries that are still presumably fine, then that should tell you whether the inverter did in fact raise the charge voltage beyond 54V. If there is something wrong with the inverter and it did attempt to charge the batteries beyond 54V for an extended period of time then Pylontech may be within their rights to refuse the claim. If it only happened once or twice, then I would say they need to honour it. I am following this thread with interest, becase I am also sitting on a couple of Pylontech batteries that were accidentally overcharged beyond 54V during commissioning. It only happened once, due to misbehaviour of the inverter after a firmware update, and the BMS disconnected the batteries. However, I am fearful that Pylontech will refuse to honour the warranty if the batteries were to fail a couple of years down the road for an unrelated reason, simply due to this one incident that is in the event logs.

You can extend your solar day in summer by pointing some panels east and some west. In winter it is better to have all your panels pointing north. However, in summer production capacity is generally much less of a constraint than in winter, so my advice is that if you have unshaded roof space pointing north you should fill that first. Only once you've run out of unshaded roof space pointing north should you look at adding panels pointing east or west. The exception to this may be if you're not going to be cycling your battery and the potentially excess production in the middle of a summer day is going to be completely wasted. In this scenario I would consider pointing some panels northwest and some northeast, but east and west is going to disappoint in winter. My north facing roof is filled with panels and I also have a couple pointing west. In summer the panels pointing west extend my solar day by about an hour, but in winter they perform very poorly.

Yes, that would pass CoC. Given that you've only got two US3000C batteries their BMS protection should kick in and disconnect long before you blow the 120A fuse. Below are characteristic curves for size NH00 fuses. These are for the ETI brand, but it's fairly typical. As you can see the 125A fuse will carry 200A for almost an hour before it blows: