jykenmynie

You can always see how far you can get using the manual: https://es.goodwe.com/Public/Uploads/sersups/ES USER MANUAL.pdf I think Goodwe's stuff is reasonably well documented.

Does the fan also spin, even if you take all the load off the inverter? I.e. bypass it completely?

Just be careful for the naming convention of "hybrid" as it seems to have gotten quite distorted. If you want a good idea of the capabilities of a true "hybrid" inverter, check out the youtube Webinar by Victron on their ESS system. About 40 minutes long, but I think the first 15 or so summarise the functionality. Obviously, such a system is more flexible than a cheaper solution like a Goodwe inverter, but you'll the "hybrid" terminology can be applied to Goodwe as well.

A hybrid inverter doesn't need to feed back into the grid. You can set it to only push back into the non-backed-up circuits over your house, but not back into the municipal supply. With a hybrid inverter (probably also some non-hybrid ones, but those can't also supplement demand from the rest of your house), you can also use the grid only for any excess power you need. For example, if your PV is generating 1000W but your house requires 1500W at that moment, you would only use 500W from the grid. This helps to optimise your PV usage as you can imagine.

Oh wow! And accident can happen so easily. I became super paranoid about my electricity after joining this forum and trying to learn a bit about it myself...

What you happen if he has for example, like I had, some garden lights with a damaged wire? This kept on tripping my EL until I just disconnected those lights completely. Tested with a megger and the cables are stuffed. Can't fix the wires at the moment as these aren't in conduits and are inside a wall... all these interesting things you only realise after the first winter of purchasing a new house...

What is the load on your inverter and what brand and model is your inverter?

I'm going to take a guess here and say that if you got shocked, the earth leakage won't have tripped and you would likely wouldn't have been able to make this post...

That is why, for a layperson like myself, getting an inverter/control device that communicates with the BMS is so important. I'm sure those more knowledgeable can sort out issues with this manually, over time, I don't have time for that.

If this will help you to give me Pylontech's voltages etc. over the CAN bus, I think you need to buy it ASAP. 😀

Sounds like a number of though choices! If a logic analyser is that thing that just plots the high and low signals, you can probably build one for much cheaper if you are willing to do some coding: I.e. with an Arduino board - As long as you have enough digital input pins. While I know nothing on the subject, I follow a youtuber who builds computers from first principles, and in his later videos he wanted to explain how a certain processor chip works, so he showed how to analyse the logic with an Arduino board.

I'll let you know how I feel about my Victron setup in about 4-5 months' time then. 😀 The biggest dilemma I face when purchasing generally expensive things: You've got a base price, the price below which you cannot find anything that serves the purpose you need it to. That could already be a large amount of money. Then you need to decide how much you are willing to spend extra, since you are already spending what you consider to be a large amount of money, to get a better quality product, or features that you think you might need. Sometimes it is difficult to draw that line, because it becomes quite subjective and quality is only guaranteed for a number of years.

This is what they call survivor bias. Another funny story (I found this link by virtue of Google, but I remember it from elsewhere: https://clearthinking.co/survivorship-bias/) Basically the first thing I think about when I read about these extremely wealthy entrepreneurs. Yeah sure, you made it, but how many others set out to do the same and failed.

Are you sure that your inverter is actually inverting 1.5x its rated capacity for 3-4 minutes? There have been people on the forum struggling just to get their inverters to do that for more than a few seconds. Couldn't it maybe be that your grid was on and it was just busy transferring for that time?

In that case, definitely put in the 16mm. You’ve got nothing to lose and you have a hybrid inverter, so rather be safe than sorry.

I was advised that drawing 10mm (if you have 63amp breakers) for the backbone in your house is better. If at some point you want to upgrade the inverter to something that can transfer more than 40A (the limit on 6mm), then you are stuck. It isn’t much more expensive, so just draw 10mm from the get go, then you don’t place a bottle neck into your infrastructure.

So this to me is the big issue if you want to utilise your PV effectively. You will really struggle to utilise all your PV if you can only use it on your backup circuit or to charge batteries (for the backup circuit). You'd likely find that once the batteries are full and the (most probably low load) of your backup circuit is met, your nice big PV array will just sit there, idling. A true hybrid inverter that can feed in excess PV to help meet demand on non-essential circuits (not feed-in to the grid, don't think that is allowed) are just so much more efficient in the long term. You'd be able to run anything that creates a demand off the PV during the day. I know Goodwe and Victron to perform like this, but read from other members that Sunsynk and Luxpower also have this ability. If you have a Multiplus II 5kVA, you'd even be able to wire your entire house through it. You'd wire non-essentials to AC OUT 2 and essentials to AC OUT 1.

I think the inverter is about R27k and then a Venus GX maybe R4.5k. Then an MPPT will set you back whatever you need it to set you back, but you'd probably be fine with a 150/70 for R9.5k? So call it R42k. That is some 20% shy of R50k!

I always find it funny how people are scared of Victrons’ options. Victron systems are the most plug and play thing you can get. No worries about what any of the settings need to be, because documentation are insanely good and the product work as the documentation would suggest. You also get almost immediate support with no guessing involved if you have any issue. Just get a reputable installer. You want the correct cables to be drawn and right size breakers from the start.

Why get the Color GX? The Venus GX or Cerbo GX is cheaper and better. I've got the Venus GX and one of those Carlo Gavazzi energy meters. I think you need to run the GX on DC, so mine is plugged into my Multiplus II, but maybe you can get an external DC PSU?

Will the fridge’s radiator/condensor be against to the battery and inverter? Just be careful of choking the ventilation to the parts as well as adding more heat to them from the fridge. Yeah, those Growatts are quite loud. I had one for a short while. The fan quite happily turns away even if the inverter is just busy transferring AC. New DB looks neat (aesthetically - I’m a layman when it comes to the actual wiring)!

This made me look at the incoming volts on my history after loadshedding. It came up to about 228V immediately, but then dropped to 208V and for about 15 minutes struggled to get back to 225V. Would it not maybe be preferable to set the inverter to only transfer back to the grid after something like 15 minutes of the grid being available or does it really not make a difference?

I guess the normal mechanism to do something like this would be to contact the bank and ask if you can re-mortgage. If your house is worth more than the current outstanding bond (you’ve already paid off some) then you could technically access additional funds that way. Obviously then you need to make sure that you can afford to repay the new installments. I’m not a financial advisor, but I’ll second what @GreenFields said. It is safest to make sure you can pay off the bond for the parts over its useable lifetime, and not over the term of the house. For example, you don’t want to finance a car over 20 years if it will break after 15 and then you need to keep on paying the scrapped car off for 5 more years while you need to purchase another car on a new bond.

A relatively cheap (and plug and play) solution could be to have timers on the geyser. Unless you are in a very specific circumstance, it should be perfectly fine to heat up the geyser for two hours, say from 18:00 to 20:00 (starting say 30min before people start showering) and then just remember not to have the underfloor heating on during the geyser’s slots. The geyser could then again turn on say 06:00 to 08:00. If the geyser is well insulated, you should have plenty warm water until at least 12:00. If you then also use warm water in the kitchen, you might put a third time on for it to heat up again.

I can't really help you with the technical questions on Axpert, but I am sure Coloumb will come across this topic soon. With regards to only using the solar panels to charge the batteries when the grid is down, I'm not sure this will stop the solar panels from degrading. They will probably degrade pretty much the same by just lying there in the sun?