Andy Y

Hi Racer. I have just moved to the Midlands (from Knysna, WP). For the past 7 years, I had a Victron multiplus with 8x 6V Trojan batteries and 2.4 KW solar panels which worked adequately. However, the lead acid batteries (flooded type) were a bit of a pain and it always irritated me that I had to limit the discharge to 60% SOC to protect the battery life which effectively meant paying a premium for a kWh capability that wasn't accessible. Also the configuration of the Victron via a laptop was the only way to program it to switch off the charger (to ensure Solar-first priority) which was a problematic comms challenge - you had to turns things on and off in exactly the right order. So, with the opportunity associated with my move to the Midlands, I have decided to upgrade to two Lithium (PylonTech 2000) batteries. I chose to pair these with a 3kW Growatt inverter and have installed this as a UPS configuration for starters. I will add PV panels when I have bought a house. The BMS comms setup wasn't well described in the inverter instruction manual but I eventually figured it out (contact me on adbyates(at)gmail.com if you decide to go the pylon + GroWatt route for some tips on how to get the system up and running). So far, it seems to be a much more tidy setup with the MPPT integrated into the inverter and the integrated BMS system managing all the charging issues. I am reasonably confident that I will expire before the hardware does.