Koerant

I have two 5kWh Volta batteries installed for little over 2 months now. Other than some config and setup issues on my inverter, the batteries seem to be performing well so far. But this is feedback I give as a simple end user. If there is anything specific you would like to know, let me know.

I made some changes to the setup. First off, I found a nice little PDF that describes the different setups for the VOLTA battery and different inverters. In there they describe how everything should be connected with diagrams as well as specific config that needs to be in place. For the physical connection related stuff I went and set the address of the slave back to 1 (Don't think that would have made a difference. As far as I can tell the only important thing is that you need to have different slave addresses if you have many batteries.) I also connected the CAN from the inverter to the master battery. The document also states that the battery protocol should be set to pylon. I then went to the battery manual and there it also states that the protocol should be pylon. I went ahead and changed this as well. Here is an image of the current battery wiring (after I made my changes): The cables in the trunking is connected to the inverter. Things are already looking up. Something that I never picked up on was that the battery information was never recorded correctly on the app. When opening the app, I could now see that the parallel connection shows as 2 and the battery capacity is showing 203 Ah. I had to go to previous screenshots I sent my mates to confirm this. It used to show the parallel connections as 1 and the capacity as 20048 Ah. I have a good feeling about the changes and I will keep monitoring the setup. PS, if anyone is looking for the PDF I mentioned: https://www.solar-europe.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Volta-Battery-Communication-Manual.pdf

Hello everyone, I am looking for some help. I had a solar system installed about 2 months ago and it has been great to "beat" loadshedding, but I have found a few cases where the things do not work as expected. The problem is that one battery dies quicker than the other (much quicker). It happened this morning, we had load shedding from 4am to 8am. Battery was sitting at 50% at around 6am according to the app. Suddenly the whole house is without power. When inspecting the batteries, I can see the one sitting at 2/4 lights (50%) and the other sitting at 0/4 lights. This caused the inverter to stop supplying power to the house. I am no expert, but I would assume the batteries should be dropping evenly. This is also not the first time this has happened. I contacted the installer when it happened the first time. They came out to inspect and just changed the dip switch (I am not sure this did anything as that only defines the address of the slave battery). It was working fine for a bit but now it has happened again. Before I contact the installer again, I was hoping to get some advice here. While I had no power this morning, I decided to do some research. I looked at the installation and there are two odd things I found. The slave battery address is set to 3 [0010] The CAN cable connected to the inverter is connected to the slave battery and not the master. This I find very odd. Should this not be connected to the master? I do not see any other physical issues. My first instinct would be to connect the CAN cable to the master battery and fix the address on the slave to be [1000]. I am really hoping this is just an installation/configuration issue and not an issue with the batteries. Can anyone here confirm my thoughts?

Excellent, thank you for the advice.

I recently bought a Mecer 3kVA trolley with two 100AH AGM batteries. The trolley arrived with a note that had the following to say about how to maximise the battery lifetime: 1. Please leave your inverter kit plugged in and turned on. It will keep your batteries at constant full charge - this is the best state to keep them in. 2. If there is no load shedding, after a few weeks, the acid will start to sulphate on the top of the battery, so please do the following: Once every 1-2 months, please unplug the inverter from the wall and let it run until the inverter starts beeping, then immediately plug it back in. This will circulate the acid and will tremendously increase the cycle life of your batteries. I have never heard the inverter make any beeping sounds when using it for a long time. I normally run a 400-500W load on the inverter for about 2.5hrs (when load shedding hits). If my calculations are correct that should take the battery capacity down to about 50%. I do not want to discharge more than that. Is this good advice? At what level will this inverter start to beep? Won't it do more harm to discharge it so far?