Muchachos

Existing attributes if the website makes the information available 

15 cells connected in series, probably 3.7V each. 

Yes I am.

Hi Guys 
Seeing as AI systems are all the rage right now and going mainstream and becoming easier to setup, I have been thinking about going down the machine learning rabbit hole with my inverter 😉  and seeing if I can use one for the control of my inverter battery settings so as to optimise the usage of my batteries and minimise my use of grid power and negate me having to be changing my settings all the time!
Using Load Shedding schedules, forecast solar radiation & historical time of day power usage, my thinking is that it should be able to reasonably accurately forecast the amount of battery power that the inverter needs to keep in reserve for the forecast conditions and adjust the System Mode settings to best optimise the setting for minimum grid power usage. 
I have also been thinking of using a system for the management of large loads on the inverter based on load shedding status & forecasts, time of day forecasted solar radiation, current solar production, battery soc. 
Anyone have any experience with Machine Learning platforms? I was thinking of trying out the Google Cloud platform, primarily because it is free to try out so will only cost me some time to see if I can figure out how it works. 
https://cloud.google.com/automl 
Is there anyone else working/thinking about a system like this? 

Managed to get my inverter software upgrade to 6.0.2.2 this morning. The inverter seems to have gone past the 9000W production but today is cloudy so will wait for clear skies to confirm.


 

 

Managed to get my inverter software upgrade to 6.0.2.2 this morning. The inverter seems to have gone past the 9000W production but today is cloudy so will wait for clear skies to confirm.


 

 

You either do this electronically through automation which could smart-determine the SOC levels,or manually(mechanically) through something like a Magnetic Contactor without the "smarts"

Massive difference! Again assuming that the 0.95c/kWh increases at 10% per year as the electricity cost goes up, I work it out as 17.79% over 10 years and 22.65% over 15 years. Then it really does become a no-brainer.
Of course in my situation I wouldnt get to run my pool heat pump, but for those able to sell back it makes a lot of sense.

No, a small change in frequency wouldn't make the dimmers switch on or off. It may cause the brightness to change briefly though.
When the grid fails, it takes time for the inverter to realize that the grid is gone and time for it's contactor / relay etc. to open and disconnect it from the grid.
In that time. the grid voltage has dropped to 0 very quickly, this is the first transient. Then the inverter needs to take over, ramping up it's voltage very quickly which would be the 2nd transient. Note that this is different from just turning off the circuit breaker supplying the inverter because during an actual power failure (i.e. Load shedding etc.) the supply to your entire neighborhood has been disconnected, so your inverter which is connected to the grid is essentially trying to supply the whole neighborhood for a few mS. So this appears as a short circuit very briefly until the contactor or relay can open to disconnect it from the grid. During that time the load will see the voltage drop to 0 and then climb very quickly again. This dip is usually about 20mS, but may be a bit more or less depending on the inverter and how it detects a grid loss and also what it uses as it's disconnecting device.
For off-grid inverters where the inverter isn't actually inverting while the grid is present you will see something similar, but this will happen even if you just turn off the breaker supplying the inverter and not only during a real power outage. This is because the inverter also needs to detect the grid loss then disconnect from the grid and then start inverting. (A true hybrid inverter is always inverting even while the grid is present, so the problem is only that the grid becomes a short circuit when the power fails)

Dimmers can be affected in a couple of ways. Most dimmers look for the zero-crossings of the AC signal and use that for their timing. Then depending on if they are leading edge or trailing edge dimmers, they either wait some time after the zero-crossing before turning on or they turn on at the zero-crossing and then wait some time before turning off. Either way, distortion of the AC waveform can cause the zero-crossing detection to trigger a little earlier or later on different cycles, making the brightness fluctuate. So if the brightness was constantly changing then it is most likely caused by some distortion when the hair dryer was on.
Another possibility with bell-press dimmers (the ones that you turn on and off by pressing the same button that you hold to change the brightness) is that they have a small capacitor between live and the button input and high frequency noise can go through that capacitor making the dimmer think that the button has been pressed briefly. This will cause the dimmer to turn on and off. So if it was turning on and off then it is most likely caused by high frequency noise.
Hair dryers are particularly nasty if you use them on their half power or half speed setting, because most hair dryers use a diode rectifier for the half speed or half power setting, which means they only draw current for one half of the AC wave. This causes transformers to saturate and then the waveform can get quite badly distorted.

Hi All.
I have had similar bad service from them. luckily i never bought anything from them. just a look at there google review's says it all. My experience i can say you get what you pay for from China, and in stead of purchasing direct from there, it is better to work with a local distributor, that actually picks up the phone when you call. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
I have installed a couple of turbines to date. From what i can say is this:
Wind is a great energy source if you have enough of it. the turbine needs to be set as high up as possible and a good controller makes the worlds of difference.  a Turbine will cost you 4 or 5 times as much per kwh compared to PV. But if you live in a place where you don't see the sun for 15 days, it might be an option. Turbine towers need to be strong, you can diy, but over engineer the hell out of it. there seems to be no clear info on lighting protection, so my course of action is as follows: at the base of the tower i install a combiner box with normal AC 3P lighting protection. and a couple of good earthing rods. breaking of turbine in high winds. this can be done by shorting the 3 phases out, but man don't do it while it is running away... i have seen some controllers that applies the break over an increasing resistance, and then making the short. the alternative is to go old school and buy a turbine with a manual cranking break on it like the old mills on the farms. Local dealers that know there stuff: i have found 2 that i can recommend. Jason from Pegasus (a true gentleman) and Mark from Wind and Solar.   
Good luck, hope you get your turbine up and running.

I thought about it at some stage, but seeing how well they hide the relevant documentation I came to the conclusion that they do not want anybody doing this 😋

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

hmm.. I have 16x405W panels all north facing and the idea of E/W facing panels is growing on me. I do not want to spend more that R30k.
 

Looking at the above graph, I am thinking of moving 4 of the current N facing panels to be E facing . The getting an additional 4 panels to be east facing. without getting a new charge controller.
@phil.g00 and @Solaris could this configuration result me getting close to the 5500W rate peak of the controller? 
Would my peak move from 10 - 14 at 5100 to maybe 9-16 at 5300?
If this can work I can get away with adding more panels and an extra battery for R30K instead of a Wind Generator.
 
Do you have a graph that shows this? Pictures are much more easy for me. 

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. 

Although I'm using Pylontech personally, there were two major objections that I had:
Thin cables was the first. My second objection was 15S arrangement of the cells. Speaking of amps, it's not just about cables. There are two internal passthroughs in each Pylon brick and SurLok 5.7mm version also has it's limitation (120 Amps). Manufacturer clearly state, that if you want to pull more than 120A from your bank, then you should either split it into more smaller piles or connect it using 4 cables instead of 2. Personally, I don't like the 4 cables option, as it might create a slight imbalance when charging/discharging. So in my case I split the pile into the two smaller ones, 5+4 bricks.
In theory, Pylontech could use SurLok 10.3mm version on the product, which is rated up to 350A and ready to be crimped on a 95mm2 cable. But I perfectly uderstand why they went with the cheaper version:
Choice of 25mm2 cables generates nice savings on the lugs and on the copper. With the 8 bricks combined in a single pile, there's around 32 individual connections and the transitional resistance starts to build-up. Therefore, it does not make a sense to pull the theoretical maximum of 592A (8xUS3000) thru all these "resistors". No matter how thick is the cable, every unnecessary flexible connection is a bad thing. Given that the majority of residential installations are having just around 4 bricks, 120A should be okay for most of the customers. Like I said, I still think that Pylontech should use the bigger lugs and thicker cables, but I understand why they decided to go the cheaper way.

Just look at the price of the 5.5kW Kwikot pump. It's more than the price of one battery. 😀
Can I connect a pump to the my Kwikot Indirect solar geyser which I got before installing the solar system?