John

Superdiy are you installing professionally, if so where are you located?

Are those the Zenner? Diodes to keep the battery's equalised?

@jdp if you bought trojan flooded 6v batteries I suggest reading the charging specs and set them on the axpert as the preset values will cause over gassing and damage (float too high) . You can set it to the solar first setting where you will use solar during the day and grid at night (if the panels provide enough power) . Or you can set it to SBG where you use solar then battery and finally grid, this would seem to be the best setting, but the axpert is particularly bad at determining soc. This could result in over discharging and damage to your bank. The axpert uses voltage to estimate soc and this varies with load. As Chris suggested using a battery meter to accurately determine soc is a must. So using the battery meter you can set the inverter to grid first and use the battery meter to activate a contactor (via its included relay) at a predetermined soc I. E. 25 to 50%(chris's excellent suggestion). Not using the batteries is an option but flooded batteries experience better battery life and performance when used in a cyclic fashion(without over discharging them) . I chose flooded batteries as they are more forgiving to mistakes (albeit a pain to maintain) and will hopefully survive any overcharging some of the Australians have described (although a hardware update was mentioned on one of the forms that may correct this) . I will either use chris's suggestion or connect a small microcontroller to the victron battery meter and use it to swith between grid and solar. It can also notify me of over voltages and may even be able to provide temperature compensated charging based on battery temp. I will then use the battery meter relay in the same way as Chris, as an emergency over discharge cutoff.

That Mr Hobson on is an excellent idea! Can you set the alarm state I. E. I'm on load shedding and have gone to 40% soc it beeps to tell me to power down to save the batteries; and the relay separately I. E. I'm at 70% soc connect grid? If that is the case you could use that with a relay and switch the element on at float voltage or 100% soc. I prefer arduino, far more tutorials on the Web!

Hi, I am also looking to install the axpert 5k inverter. I was wondering if anybody has experienced the same problems as the Australians with the pip 4840? Chris I have seen you are also on the Australian form, I am looking to make a similar set up to yours but I am planning to attach the bvm 700 to a raspberry pi to allow me to switch between grid and solar at 70% soc using this setup that you may find interesting www.deszynski.com

Hi Viceroy, I have the same inverter as you and I am planning to install pv panels. I was wondering what settings you used to keep the batteries only as a back up? I. E. Only use solar during the day an switch to grid at night. I would also like to know if you kept your battery cut off at 49v? Thanks John.