Muchachos

Ok. The power is still on and the meter is allowing the Victron to feed-in to the grid.

What is the behaviour of the meter if it is in tamper mode?

Hmm. The bill currently has three items that I am not sure what they are for, namely Network Surcharge kWh, Service Charge and Network charge. There cost for these are R78,R147 and R596 respectively. Is the network charge the TOU?

Nice system.

What rate does CoJ offer for grid feed-in?

Does the Hexing HXE310-P meter allow reversing the meter if the Inverter is set into Grid Feed-In?

It would be nice to the Tax Credit for residential installations.

Same here. How long have you had your system. I thought it was because mine is only two months old. 🤣

So true..

Is your system still running without tripping? I just got my 1st bill from CoT after two month of installing my system and the actual reading on the bill is 200kWh more than the actual meter reading. I suspect CoT will be changing my meter soon.

Thanks Calvin, What optimizer do you recommend and do you know who has the best price in the market? So in order to get the best production of the current North facing installation with optimizers. I need to split the installation into two MPPTs at least, with each two parallels per MPPT? My roof currently only has space for an additional 4 north facing panels, 6 east facing and 6 west facing. This is the reasoning for considering east and west facing panels. The ideal scenario would be a configuration that does not loose more than 5% of the current north facing peak whilst getting more morning and afternoon production. My current total kWh production is kWh is between 34 and 40. The hope is that with the east and west total production should provide an additional 12kWh to get to a system total of around 50kWh on average. Which would produce about 30kWh on cloudy days and between 10 and 15kWh when it is raining. What would be the most cost effective configuration for this?

Thanks Kelvin, this opens a new point of view from a thinking perspective. I am considering adding 4 more panels to the systems and changing my configuration to 4 E, 12 N and 4 West. This because adding more Noth panels means I need to buy and MPPT and I am not ready for that investments since I would prefer to add another 250/100 for future expansion. What do the number looks like for my considered system?

I only have space for 6 panels facing east and 6 facing west. Maybe I should consider an optimizer on these panels?

This is what mucurrent yield graph looks like.

Sorry I didn’t mention this. I am in Pretoria.

Hi Calvin, Can I ask that you do the calc for my installation. I have 16x405W CS panel north facing, all connected to a victron charge controller 250/100 and my roof angle is 26 degrees.

Great, This does help. I will update my model for the expected East West arrays that I am planning. The East modelling seem to be going well. The current assumptions are 20,40,50,60,80,80,70,60 at 6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13 respectively. I just need to do the same for the West. Expecting it to carry the peak production till 15h00 and then drop.

Thanks for the data @Solaris, I am in the planning phase for this. I do think it’s the best way to have a longer flat peak and get more productivity from the charge controller.

Thanks for the pictures. What does it look like now? For both east and west?

Thank I do feel welcome. This community is alive. To my new changes. My current panels are 4 series and 4 parallel. I will move one parallel series from the north to the east. Is adding the west 4 in series as simple as adding a fuse for them on the DB and I am ready to go. One thing important to mention, my cable to the batteries was over heating after a few days of the installation. The charge controller has an error #26 charge terminal overheat. The guy that installed the system then double up on the charge cables. Is this something I need to be worries about with these changes?

Aha.. Thank you this is very enlightening.

The batteries are now a want instead of a need. Sounds like having 6 instead of 3 is the best for my 10kVa inverter and my desire to not give any money to CoT.

Got a plumber to come check the geyser out. It turns out it is leaking glycol and the whole geyser needs to be replaced. The good news is the insurance to replace the geyser as the panels are still working. I will let the oven run on the batteries and see if it trigger the batter protect on the current 3 batteries, If it does I will run the oven from the grid until I get the additional batteries. @plonksterI currently enable a Schedule Charge when the oven is switched on and then disable when the oven is off. Is there a different way of doing this on the inverter as my oven is currently connected as non-critical.

Thanks this would be cool to see. Is there a chance that I might get to the voltage limit when it gets cold? I am getting excited about this configuration change. Seems like I am going to be a solar addict quicker than I expected.

How does coldness affect voltage of a system?