tonio

Hi guys

I finished the solar park.
 

 





 

 

Seems like no one's interested to help.
 
In all cases, I resolved my issues.
 
Contacted support in China, they sent some steps which were already executed before and nothing helped.
For some reason I was unable to access 192.168.10.100 even after resetting the device (held the key for 6 seconds and got the 3 colors blinking) and accessing it through hotspot (steady blue light). Then I was able to add the device to my datalogger list but was unable to connect to server.growatt.com (showed as offline on the shinephone app).
 
What caught my attention at this point is that after resetting the datalogger, it's name was always being set to "Left Wifi" which is a name that I gave the first time I had installed it. This is weird because it shouldn't be that way as I had reset it to factory settings and the normal behavior was to see the device's name with it's serial number instead of "left wifi".
 
When accessing the device through hotspot in the ShinePhone app again, I noticed that there is a place to enter "advanced settings" just before setting my internet connection's wifi and password. The advanced settings require a password which I got to discover that it's "growatt+date" (date is: yearmonthday, i.e. growatt20220531). I did not change anything in the settings, I only saved and the datalogger was recognized like last time but this time it was able to connect to growatt's server.

@Cbf is your geyser installed before or after the CT coil 

Hi
The program was started after several attempts!  It can only be programmed from a laptop!
 
Greetings Antal

Not sure if any of you here have seen this program or not? 
https://www.suncalc.org/#/-29.8438,23.2046,3/2020.12.04/10:52/1/1
Its very very useful to see where the sun is on your property for a given day/month of the year. 
 

You should stay between about 20% and preferably a little below 100% SOC long term (charge to 100%, let the voltage and SOC slip back a bit in float mode to perhaps 51.8 V. OK to go under 20% very rarely, e.g. extended outage. But since you'll go to bypass mode at 20%, your present setup is probably OK. I'd probably set the values 5% higher, and back to battery at perhaps 35-40%.

This could be normal for the voltage to drop while under the load of a kettle and then when the kettle has boiled the voltage should bounce back to the 52V
You could do a load test on the batteries if you have a dc multimeter, It will be a good indication to measure the voltage across each battery when a load like a kettle is on, that should indicate what battery is the weakest or even pick up the faulty battery, normally one or two batteries will have a significant lower voltage in the bank of four, doing this test with batteries charged at 100% and do the test again with batteries at say 70%. that is how I picked up my faulty batteries. I then took them for a proper battery test and they just confirmed the same faulty batteries. Just my bit of experience.

Pylontech batteries can be expanded on at different times. Only requirement is that the new battery becomes the master. You can even do different sizes with the pylontech batteries with the bigger capacity as the master. 

This video talks about this.
 

There's some good info on Lithium battery degradation available at https://batterytestcentre.com.au.  Here's their Pylontech US2000 testing over the past 3 years:

It will be nice. 
Here are some other things we have to appreciate:
Even though on an affordability index which make solar out of reach for many, we in South Africa have very affordable solar prices. Compare the price to the US and we have 3 times lower prices. So even in the US, where they get a rebate, our prices is still lower. The rebate thing in US is also changing quickly and differ from state to state. It would have been nice if certain sustainability things where VAT exempted. (solar systems and components, greywater systems, rainharvest systems and components, etc) Other
I agree with that the licensing thing is BS. Electricity compliance should the only paperwork. The government can't claim the sun. Leave me alone 🙂 If it was the SABC, they would have force us to have a yearly license for consumption from the sun. (sun-tan-tax)   
But, I guess, all of the above is only possible in a well run government, which unfortunately is not the case in South Africa.

Take note: 
This is a East and West install. I have no north facing areas. I left space for two more panels on each array in case I want to take both strings from 7 each to 9 each (maybe 8, voltage??) Then I have another east roof that can maybe take another string later. My battery frame is just a quick 25mm square tube aluminum frame, put together in 60 min, with connect-it connectors.
I allowed for a second battery on top, and also a flat orientation against the wall.
I will in my own time make a nice cover (with enough ventilation) so that it looks more rounded. The photos in not "state agent" type photos. Just quick pics with phone while the guys are working, will post better pictures later. Its a Sunsynk 8.8, 14 x JA Solar 405, and a 6.4 battery

You can login to the other portals from here https://www.solarman.cn/english.html
 

The VM III can definitely run WITHOUT batteries, it is in the description and you can watch YouTube videos from Pakistan showing the inverter running without batteries 

Success !

The radio interference is gone. I improved the inductance and added some capacitors.
In order to run several turns trough the ferrite core I went to the motor and transformer winding shop to get some 6mm² winding wire. But they don’t have such. We finally agreed on 2mm² wire that I would use in 3 wire bundles. I bought 10m of it (R40). I also went to the electronic shop to buy 4 0.33µF 310V capacitors (R40).
I first thought to have one core for each polarity. But then I realized that the 30A PV current could saturate the core and reduce the inductance. So I decided to run both polarities trough the same core. The two magnetic fields would then cancel each other and prevent saturation. I managed to run each polarity 3 times trough the core. Since the core can be opened it is easy to wind each half separately. I separated the polarities with a piece of card board. One challenge was to strip the 12 wire ends of the tough isolation varnish. The outgoing bundles are hold together with shrinking tubes. I tightened the two half cores together with a strong cable tie to prevent a gap between the core halves. The finished winding is shown in picture below.

I had many thoughts how to connect capacitors to the 48V M6 terminals. I finally found the solution shown below. I soldered the capacitor leads to 6X22 washers with a 60W soldering iron. The washers are then installed under the M6 nuts of the terminals.

The final installation of inductance and capacitors is shown in picture below. The outgoing leads of the inductance are directly wired to the PV input terminals together with the leads of the capacitors. I had to solder little pieces of installation wire to the capacitors leads because the terminals would not clamp the tiny wire of the capacitors. The other ends are crimped to the earth wire.

Ordinary lead acid batteries don't like heavy discharges; 5 kW would be over 100 A, so over 5C for a 100 Ah battery. This will not be good for long life.
They would probably provide that power for a few minutes, at the expense of battery life, if the inverter allowed it to (e.g. if there was no AC-in). But likely the battery voltage would sag so much that the inverter-charger (especially without the KettleKomp™ feature of patched firmware) would immediately switch to grid.
200 Ah (of nominally 48 V) is the minimum recommended size for a 5 kVA (especially a 5 kW) inverter.

Have a look at this Three Phase to Single Phase technical publication by Carroll & Meynell Transformers Ltd

No, I'm just saying that IF the voltage drop is the problem, it must be quite a large drop. 50 A is certainly more than I'd consider pushing through 6 mm² cable.

Hi Beat these figures are not correct at all, please refer to the SANS regulation for  correct figures. 

Hello
today I started the PV modules, 8pcs, for test, there is little PV voltage, 258V, at a load of 2500w, Voc = 292V, I add 2 more PV  for testing,
I write the result.

Finally Got around to doing the full Power Monitor Dashboard last night
Day 1 - Testing accuracy etc