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Ben Harper

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  1. Like
    Ben Harper reacted to Nexuss in Explain this strange battery graph   
    The top and bottom battery in a stack will have the least resistance(because of the daisy chaining) and thus provide a little more current than the middle batteries. that along with different age /cycles on batteries will either cause the pause at 89% for balancing or not , i hardly every see the 89% pause anymore as i cycle past 2 balancing points every day . Atleast thats my theory haha!
  2. Like
    Yes you can, there is a list you can choose from within the settings, and Pylontech being one of them.
  3. Like
    Presumably the isolation in the cimm port has broken down somehow. It's by far not the only time I've heard of this. My guess would be the small transformer on the comms board. In this model, it would be in the removable display. An isolator should fix the problem. 
  4. Like
    Another way of looking at this, could be to see if the prevailing wind direction over your property is across the panels. i.e the wind/breeze can enter that gap between the roof and the PV panel.
    If not, then increase the height to improve circulation.
  5. Like
    Yes, less space = less chance of the Cape Dr. to take your panels!
    The down side of less space is poor ventilation, and poor ventilation = rising temps of the PV.
    High PV temps = lower PV production. So it's a tradeoff. 
    If you can get the gap as high as possible, within the limit of the equipment you have/going to use, then just make sure it is over engineered. e.g. adding additional/(M12 vs M10) hanger brackets. Saving a few 100 R's is just not worth it, especially down in WC region.
  6. Like
    The MPPTs will be totally independent, so as far as I know there is no requirement or advantage to "balancing" them. The whole idea of multiple MPPTs is to handle arrays with different light levels and therefore different power throughput. 
    Many people run with panels on one MPPT and none on the other with no problem. That's the ultimate unbalance. 
  7. Like
    Ben Harper got a reaction from BritishRacingGreen in Kodak OG 5.48 inverter   
    Hi @WernerM,
    You should be able to find a manual for your inverter. You'll want to read through the various settings available to understand them. There isn't actually very much.
    Basically, what you'll want to do is:
    Set the "voltage point back to utility source when selecting “SBU”" - try 48V. Probably setting number 12. Set the "voltage point back to battery mode when selecting “SBU”" - try 50V. Probably setting number 13. Set the charger priority mode to "Solar First", aka CSO. Probably setting number 16. Set the output source priority to SBU. Setting number 01. You have a little bit of a problem here, because your inverters don't have the ability to switch between SBU and SUB on a timer. The newer ones have this timer mechanism, which allows you to switch to SUB when the sun goes down (eg 17:00), and then switch to SBU a little later (eg 20:00). Being on grid power at dusk ensures that you'll be able to "survive the night" on battery power, and by the time the sun rises the next morning, you want your battery to be at say 20% capacity remaining, and then charging and loads must be powered by the sun.
    Your setup has a classic problem of being able to power 10kw of loads, but you don't have enough battery juice to power all that load between sunset and sunrise.. so your only hassle-free choice is to leave your system in SBU mode, and trust the inverters to automatically switch between battery and line mode. This is a nuisance when the sun is down, because the system will continually charge the battery, then drain it, then charge it, then drain it, ad infinitum.
    My solution to this problem is to run software that I built myself, via a Raspberry Pi (https://github.com/bmharper/homepower). There is possibly other software out there too, which does the same thing. I've never had two inverters in parallel, so I don't know how the control logic works in that scenario.
    In the absence of a timer based SUB/SBU switch mechanism, the only thing that I can think of is for you to try to reduce your power usage at night time.. to avoid that pointless charge/drain cycle.
    Hope that helps a bit.
  8. Like
    Ben Harper got a reaction from Coulomb in How does an MKS 4 mix PV, grid, and battery power?   
    Thanks for all the info guys.. super useful as always.
    One interesting thing I've observed today, is that my "zero PV after 100% SOC" period lasted only 10 minutes, and then never showed it's head again for the rest of the day. I was a bad scientist as usual, and changed two variables at once: Lowered max utility charging to 2A, and switched on a couple more PCs.. to make sure my baseline load was at least 600W (compared to 300W the previous day, when PV generation just switched off and mostly stayed off). My suspicion is that the higher base load is the relevant factor.
    Anyway.. I'll post here again if I discover something interesting.
    Thanks for all the help.
  9. Thanks
    The comms cable supplied with the Kodak inverter for Pylontech batteries is marked Pylontech at the one end. If you plug that end into the Kodak, you get error 61. I did it. I then swapped it around and plugged the marked end into Pylontech. And the system works 100%

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