Gandalf

The easiest way to test if you can cope without Eksdom is to turn off the main feed to your house, either at the kiosk outside or on your main DB. If you don’t have to turn it on again for a year, you know you are fine.

You could be onto something here. I did see that setting, but left it on the factory default assuming it would be fine. I will try change the setting to see if there is a difference. I agree that 50% output seems a rather odd clipping, as if a setting is wrong.

Correct, 4S1P to MPPT 1. I haven't been able to get back to site to do these tests, but here is a screenshot from a few days ago with a 3.38Kw load and the panels giving "full' power at around midday. It was a sunny day. I will return as soon as possible to test each panel.

I was on site this Saturday and did a test. It was around 13:30 and the battery was at 81% SOC. I turned on a few items getting the load up to 5.1Kw. The solar maxed out at 1.3Kw (325W from each 615W panel). I checked the crimping of the MC4's and also checked if the DC breaker connections were tight. I tried different battery settings and user settings, but the solar production stayed the same. Looking at your previous post stating the NOCT output of this panel, factoring in the temperature of the panels at midday as well as losses over 30M of 6mm PV cable, maybe this is correct...

This has been my thinking for a few days now. Maybe the battery is telling the inverter via CAN-BUS to not charge any higher. I will be visiting the site tomorrow and plan to unplug the communication cable and set the battery to lead-acid to see what happens.

These NOCT specs of 463W along with temp losses are more consistent with what I am seeing. I think these panels are sub-par. I am not really worried about it because I didn't supply them. I was just curious as to why these fancy new panels produce the same power as my 6 year old 330W panels.

I totally agree with you and this is what I was expecting to see, but in this setup they peak at 300w per panel. I thin it might be something in the settings of the inverter. Sadly the settings are rather basic compared to the usual Sunsunk or Deye inverters I am used to.

Panels are on rails attached to roof hooks, roughly 65mm off the tile. I don't think there is any light falling on the rear of the panels. I have no idea about the bi-facial factor of the panel, I just fitted what the customer bought. I will find out more...

You make a good point about adding a heavy load to see how much power is drawn, I will try that this weekend. As for the panels themselves, the sticker says 615W and it is a big heavy panel, but the figures printed on the sticker could be an exaggeration. The funny thing is the IMP on the sticker is 13.46A, but I have never seen more than 7.08A being drawn. Once again this could be because of small loads not pulling enough juice from the panels. I will do some more tests and report back...

Sofar HYD 6K-EP inverter with CAN communication established. I suspect there may be clipping. Perhaps I should try remove communication and program the charge settings manually.

VOC was around 196V when I tested. A bit low for my liking, but this is what the customer supplied. I doubt it is a bad crimp on the MC4 because both sites are the same in terms of production, roughly 300W per panel.

Hi Guys I did two installations for a client over the December holidays, one for him and one for his mother. Both systems are using the same components: Sofar 6kw inverter, Amass 5Kwh battery and 4 x Jinko 615W bi-facial panels. Cust supplied all components, I just did the labour. While these panels don't face true north, they are probably only a few degrees off of true north and the roof pitch is around 28 to 32 degrees. On both of these systems the most those panels ever output is 1200w, nowhere near the 2460W they are rated for. I am well aware of losses in cable, heat of the panels etc, but these panels seem to only operate at around 50% of their rated power. Of all the many systems I have installed over the last 9 years, I've never seen any panel perform so badly. Has anyone else ever experienced this kind of under-performance with a bi-facial Jinko panel?

Just a suggestion,... why not add this battery to your existing house bank? Sadly with the price of new batteries right now you will not even get half of that R32K back.

Just for reference my 100a Microcare MPPT’s hover at around 70 degrees at midday. When I contacted Microcare in P.E. Their sales manger said to not worry about the heat, they are designed to run at those temperatures . Being the overly cautious, I added an external fan to try try cool things down. They have been running non-stop for the past 5 years.

Looking forward to see your findings. I have contemplated a similar solution, but never got around to try it. Subscribed!

Having 30 panels is a great idea, over paneling is something we all do. What I found works well is having majority of the panels facing north, but also some panels facing east and some panels facing west. This maximizes the solar production throughout the day. While you don’t have very high solar peaks, you do end up having more solar production because you start charging earlier in the day and end later in the day. In my own system I have 5Kwp facing north, 2Kwp facing east and 2Kwp facing west. Geyser timer comes on at 10am and goes off at 2pm, although it is usually hot by 12pm. Cooking or baking is done in the afternoon and no heavy loads after 4pm.

Hi @NJH Did you ever get this issue sorted out? I have a new customer with two SNA 5000's in parallel, the installer pulled a Houdini. When grid is present, they share load equally. As soon as the grid goes, the master provides around 75% of the load and the slave contributes the other 25%. No matter what I change in settings, they will not share load equally until the grid returns. I checked the communication cables between inverters. I checked the lengths of the cable from inverter to DB. I checked the cable lengths between inverter and battery. Everything was done correctly. I even did a software update without any improvement.

Hi All I have to install panels on a tiled roof, but unlike the regular Double Roman tile, this tile has a very high curve on top and I don't think the regular hook will fit. Can anyone offer insight please?

Hi @RichardWALK What is the starting price for one of these miners?

If you want to get rid of them, I will gladly take them. I am looking for a new project to tinker with.

I am a big believer in adding more solar panels to my existing system rather than dedicating panels only to a geyser. My reasoning is that the extra power generated when added to my existing system, can be used for anything I need. If you use panels purely for heating water, there may be many hours every day when those panels sit idle. My advice is to get a cheap charge controller and use those extra panels to charge your batteries. Then have the two geysers running on timers so that one comes on between 9 and 11, the other one between 12 and 3 (or whatever times suit you best). The extra power generated when the geysers are off can be used to keep the batteries topped up.

Does anyone have a spare 16S JBD BMS like this? I can get a new JK for R1.5K, but I don’t want to spend that much.

Hi Guys A friend of mine asked me to take a look at his Luxpower SNA5000 WPV. He sent it in for repairs where they replaced the main board and control card. I have been testing it for a few weeks now powering a 2Kw geyser. It runs fine for about an hour and then I hear a relay click and it cuts power to the load. It displays fault 18 (internal communication fault 3). After maybe 15 seconds it powers up again and resumes powering the geyser until it is hot enough to switch off Any ideas as to what the problem could be?

Hi Guys Is anyone selling a used BMV712 or Smartshunt? It must have Bluetooth. My budget is R900 Please DM me.

Is this BMV coming with Bluetooth?