Hagu13

Thanks everyone Starting to look like a DC pulse maybe. Common to both threads is Luxpower and an AV amp fuse going at switchover from grid to battery. Other user seems to have an existing ampo and a new Luxpower, mine is existing Luxpower and a new amp and sub. I'm not seeing feedback of a resolution on the other one. I'll drop him a message and also see if Luxpower are helpful

I have a Luxpower SNA 5000 on my house, with 7.4kw of Lithium batteries and 3.6kW of solar. Professionally installed over a year ago with COC. House is about 40 years old and electrics are ok but not updated. Still old school samite breakers etc. Had an issue about 6 months ago with earth leakage tripping when grid comes back. To clarify we were powered from battery throughout load shedding but then went dark when it came back. I replaced the EL with a new DIN one and it never recurred. A few weeks ago I bought a new home theatre system. Not a Game special but the stuff you get from specialised shops. Within a day the amp went into protection mode and I had to return it to the manufacturer. They found the fuse blown and said it was likely a power surge. As I'm on an inverter, I thought this was unlikely, but when I reinstalled it and started to play it I found that the subwoofer (Also new but different brand) had also blown its fuse. I replaced it and decided to put them on a surge protection multi plug. A week later and they have both popped their fuses again. Around the time of the failure the inverter switched from grid to battery supply. I could understand a possible out of sync situation at the end of load shedding but not when the grid drops as everything should be synced at that point. Also, how is this happening behind surge protection? I'm at a bit of a loss where to start. Inverter? House wiring?

Great news. Looks like the Axperts have moved on nicely. My want for more panels is based on a probable need for them based on the move from a house with full sun on the roof from sunrise to sunset, to a house with tall trees to east west and north. They will be much less effective there. But with 8kW of capacity I'll be good no matter how it pans out. Similarly 2 batteries serve us well until the women act up, or we get a bad day of sun. But mostly it's just bragging rights I'm losing. The extra R16k battery would have saved me about R0.80 on Eskom spend in the last 3 weeks. So payback would be a few centuries.

It's more like when the oven is fired up at 6pm after the panels have been idling for 6 hours: "I've been working all day, and I don't want to stand in front of the stove. So do you want supper or not?" And I have 2 adult women here who gang up on me.

OK after reading Sarel's thread and the other comments I think I should have given more info Although the new system will be at a new house it's the same family so a lot will be the same. We're light on juice. We consume about 300kWh per month total. More in summer as we pump water for irrigation and sometimes use AC. But there's always excess generation for this. Water heating is solar supplemented by gas, cooking is gas, space heating with wood. New appliances selected for energy efficiency, LED lighting, etc. We don't select essential or non essential loads. The jacuzzi is on a changeover switch so we have the ability to run it direct from grid when we want to run the 4kW element. The daily filter cycle is run on the solar though. The whole house is on the 5kVa Axpert. We typically don't have throughput issues and we're used to shifting loads around, but more size here would mean less management of the females in the house which can be akin to herding cats at times We have a grid connection, don't want to backfeed, just want reliable electricity and low bills. We get the battery full around lunch time for 8 months of the year so beyond the point of diminishing ROI with more panels. But I'm not dead against more and would like the capacity for it in case I get bored or have money burning a hole in my pocket. We run on batteries at night and usually make it, except in winter when we're not getting them to 100% before sunset, or when the girls insist on doing an oven cooked supper after the sun has gone. 50% more battery would resolve those issues. So I really have enough but more would make things go a little smoother and require less tweaking and management. From that perspective as well I have one of those dinosaur Axperts and needed to buy a RPi and ICC to make it less dumb and more Pylontech compatible. Where are we on the newer inverters in this regard? Do I still need the same add on or can the inverters talk to apps and IOT devices directly?

THanks all Plenty to research now but please keep the suggestions rolling in as 87 Dream put it, I don't want to make a less than optimal decision out of ignorance. I could slap in a new Axpert which has bigger MPPT than my existing one and some extra panels and 3 Pylons this time and I'll be ok. But there's scope to do better things and functionality I haven't even considered, so this is all great at targeting my reading from here.

Just sold my house and the buyer has made a side offer on my solar equipment. So I need to do this again, and want to try to make more educated decisions. Current setup is whole house on a 5kVa Axpert with the jacuzzi on a changeover switch so it can be on grid if needed. This inverter size is adequate for us but I'd look at 6 or even 8kVa 3.6kW of solar in East/West configuration. It's enough for 8 months of the year but I definitely want more next time. The current inverter is already over panelled. New house has a lot of trees so looking at quite a short solar day 2 times 3.5kWH Pylontech (US3000B) I like them, but I want about 1/3 more capacity next time. So maybe 3, or a 9.6 or similar from another manufacturer. I'm using ICC on a Pi to control it. I see newer inverters seem to talk to apps directly but I don't know if there's enough functionality? Would like it to talk to my smart switches to do switching on SOC, etc. What would you guys recommend next time around? I pretty much only know the stuff I have

I have a flat roof that's completely unshaded and would be amenable to a pivoting assembly but no idea how to do it. How is yours managed and powered? I thought of stringing old and new together but my search has led me to 2 options. I can get a 305w panel that matches voltage and probably amperage of my 5y old 315s, but is physically smaller. Or a 340w panel that is physically the same size and matches the voltage. My feeling is to string them separately to avoid derating the new panels to the old ones rating.

Lithium batteries don't mind cycling so you should allow this to extract the maximum savings. Any time your battery is full is wasted sun on your panels. Suggest you figure out your night time load profile- this is quite easy if you have monitoring software, otherwise just time it. If your battery takes say 4 hours to drop from 100% to 20% after dark on a typical night, then you can set it to go to grid at 60% SOC if you are expecting 2 hours of load shedding, and 20% if you're not expecting it. Then it will drop from 60 to 20 during load shedding. I have the whole house on my system. 5 people, 5 TV's, 2 fridges, tons of smart devices. But all our lighting is LED which uses next to nothing. We pull about 250W (including the 50W or so the inverter uses) overnight (the outside lighting is on 24/7) and my battery bank drops about 10% per hour. We're on battery till at least 4am every night and through the night sometimes. I have fewer panels than you so don't get to 100% SOC always. If load shedding is expected between 4am and 8am I change the changeover to 40% SOC to save the last usable 20% for that. I'm not familiar with your inverter so can't comment on what you're seeing

No you don't want utility charging at all. Charge from solar only. You will generate the maximum possible until you reach 100% SOC, then load follow. Then stay on the battery at night and only go to grid at a low SOC- low enough to extract maximum benefit from the batteries, high enough to deal with possible load shedding in the early hours. Then in the morning you've got lots of headroom in the battery to generate maximum again. Watch out for being under batteried. Your inverter can draw more than the recommended battery load which could shorten its life. I have 2 x 3.5kwh on a 5kva and it gets me through the night if I get it to 100% SOC before sunset, and I don't exceed max amps

I currently have all 6 facing north but I've looked into east west arrays and I like the idea. Very likely I'll be pointing the existing panels east and the new ones west, and I'll be very slightly over the 3kw rating, perhaps not in that layout

Time for some more panels. I've got 6x315w Setsolar panels (72 cell) on my 5kVa Axpert. 3 strings of 2 for a voltage of around 60v which the Axpert manual says is optimal for my MPPT. About 5 years old. It was enough when I was on gel batteries to go off grid in sunlight hours but now I'm on Pylontechs and I've got unused battery capacity that could get me through the night if I had the generation to fill them. I can't get the same panels again and pretty much can't get 315w anything any more. So it going to be a mismatched system and I'm going to lose some potential output. It is what it is. So my question is really what should I get, and where? Northern suburbs/West coast preferred but not essential

They're about 4 years old. No idea of current rating but they seem fairly capable still.

I've recently replaced my 12v 200AH gel batteries with pylontechs One was bad but the other 3 are still serviceable. I gave one to a family member to run a TV in loadshedding but still have 2 good ones that I'm loathe to just hand in for their scrap value. I don't have any use for them that I can think of. Any suggestions?

Thanks Phil. I usually don't reach 100% in the day but can easily handle all the loads even in poor weather. When it's sunny we do extra loads in the washer and pump water to keep the panels running at max to get the maximum "free" energy, or cook with the oven rather than gas. The batteries run the house to 5am in a best case scenario but more usually around 3am. I never charge from the grid. In Cape Town we do 2.5 hours of load shedding so a cutoff of around 40% would work for me at those times and only for load shedding in the early hours. This never happens due to grid overload but can happen if they are resting the gas turbines or refilling the top dams at the pumped storage.