Scubadude

You sure you did not limit production by consumption / charging rate during the period in question? Current is flat but voltage and subsequenlty power still varies, so many it is just the MPPT doing it's job?

Your prepaid is still on, so it is not going through a circuit breaker ... Same may apply to other loads. Switch off the main switch and check again if your fridge, stove, microwave is working. If you have fewer than 10 thumbs take off the DB board cover and post a picture. Something worries me - you dropped all the breakers but the house is still consuming power. I would check with the COC electrician if that is correct (read safe, legal). My breakers are after the switchover panel and inverter, so when I drop a breaker all energy to that circuit is solated and I can work on it without being electrocuted. This is not the case in your installation.

Just noticed something else ... my house has a "heart beat" through the night as fridges switch on an off ... yours is completely flat. I suspect one or more of your kitchen circuits are before the inverter, before the CT coil even.

Some grid usage is normal even for a perfectly set up system. 100 units in 30 days is virtually nothing and I wouldnt loose sleep over it. Couple if things to check: - CT coil correctly installed before any loads - All loads on inveter OR inverter set so export to load only - Zero export trickle set to a nominal value (20W) to prevent being charged for power fed into the grid - i suspect yours is set a little higher - Peak demand that exceeds inverter capacity What is a little strange is the gap between production and consumption on your chart ..

A quick update three weeks after going live properly ... despite the very wet and overcast conditions my solar fraction is above 80% on most days, and as high as 98% on a couple of days that we weren't home (only housesitter at home). Unfortunately two very low production (and high consumption) days dropped the overall solar fraction to 79%, so I am meeting my goal of 75% off-grid at this stage. Average savings R 55 per day and counting ... happy I am! Quick question ... comparing Production + Purchased to Consumed shows 16kWh "went missing" during this period. That is about 3.8% of production. Does that mean my overall efficiency is 96.3%?

I have the same batteries as you and is interested in this as well. Could an off-the-shelf cable like this work? https://www.geewiz.co.za/converters-and-splitters/107148-microworld-usb-to-rs485-converter.html On another thread I've been referred to BatteryView software ... not sure if if will work on Shoto though.

The batteries are rated 110Ah each, so you have to change battery capacity to 220Ah. Max. Continuous Charging and Discharging Current is 100A, but as you have two in parallel maximum is 200A. In the interest of battery life it may be wise to restrict your maximum charge and discharge rate to 0.5C (0.5x110Ax2 = 110A).

I kept on pushing my installer and electrician on the whole earth bond relay thing (with photos and regulations) and they kept saying it is not necessary.

Same here ... I made a device data dump on Wednesday - 72 columns including BMS temperature and Battery temperature, but not inverter temperature. Did the same just now and there is no temperature data. Wonder if Solarman is being dumbed down to create a perceived value gap with Sunsunk?

How do you do that? Connect through RS232, then what? How do you extract useful information from it? All batteries different or is there a common standard? Apologies for the many questions ...

I would be interested to join. How do you interface your data?

This something I've been wondering about as well. Or if the inverter and batteries are talking to each other. What got me thinking was the claimed "Charging Curve: 3 Stages/Equalization" specifcation of the Deye invereter, but what I see in practise is straightline charging with a hard stop at 100%. The integration between Shoto and Deye / Sunsynk seems to be rather generic at best. Back to the original question, the manual seems to have the appropriate answer:

This graphic suggests RS485A <-> RS485A. Not quite sure what the original source is, but it seems to be legit. Curious why one battery is earthed and the other one not.

Nice installation! Good yield for the dismal December weather we had.

Ditto for Solarman Smart and and Solarman Business.

I have the same inverter but with 2x5.1kWh batteries and I use the same battery settings. To me the batteries are required for loadshedding / power failures at awkward times but now that I have them I sweat them to maximise the economic benefit of the system. I've actually considered dropping to 10% every night, but feel safer to stay clear of the stated specs. Speaking of which, I still don't get how manufacturers claim 80, 90 and even 100% DOD with the same battery chemistry

Ah! Point taken. If the objective is simply to take the edge of Eskom bills, on-grid is a very cost effective approach, and the one we took at work - blow moulding company that runs 24/7 with a fairly constant power draw. Covering the entire roof gave us just over 500kWp of installed power. Great financial credentials and reasonably good payback. But it doesn't solve our loadshedding problem so we are looking at a generator and / or containerised batteries next year. For a domestic scenario where usage is more lumpy and less predictable, on-grid may be less effective. And it certainly doesn't address loadshedding or other supply disruptions. Having said that it may be interesting to set battery charge to 100% for a couple of days to mimic on-grid production.

I'm starting to see some perverted logic but surely the 25:1 ratio remains ... 1 unit of self consumption is the same benefit as 25 exported units. Call me slow but I still dont get it ... the R 25k system I presume is a 3.6kW Solis (R6k used?) with the rest going to 330W panels at R1500 a pop. Call it 13 x 330W = 4.29kWp. So let's say this is installed as a pure selling power plant, using a daily yield of 6 (unlikely given current weather patterns) that would yield 4.29 x 6 x 365 x 0.114 = R 1071 per year! I could get the same saving by walking through the house twice a night flicking switches.

I use the green "Credit Status" LED on my prepaid meter for this purpose. It is wired to the back of the stove (non essential), so when there is no light there is no municipal feed.

Solarman is fine for what you want to do. Assuming you're on Solarman Smart, use the web interface (https://home.solarmanpv.com/login) on Edge, Opera or any other broser than Chrome and login with the same credentials you use on the app. Navigate to Export: Then Plant Data > Daily Statistics > Date Selection > Export Now Open the Excel file and change values to numbers if required. Add a Solar Fraction column to see whatr percentage of your consumption came from the panels. Then pat yourself on the back for averaging over 90% since the inveter was replaced.

Artificial intelligence ... just rehashing what I learnt here and elsewhere from the real experts

Hey M0skva! Like a morgue in these quarters recently ... Maybe most members exchanged Gauteng's solar deprivation for coastal solar deprivation. I'm no expert, and my response is based on a month of reading, tinkering, trial and error, but here goes. This will have zero impact but if you only have one inverter let it be the master This really is a personal choice, but I've set up a more aggresive battery profile. If loadshedding is announced you can bump up the lower values, but with this setup you should get at least 80% x 7kWh = 5.6kWh use from your batteries every day. I leave mine low in the morning and prioritise load over battery (to follow), then ramp up during the day, leaving some headroom to use a fully charged battery to augment solar production if needed. If there is time to recharge, then great, if not nothing lost. The stepped reduction during the night is to allow manual intervention to save battery power for a sudden announcement of early morning loadshedding if required. Absolutely prioritise load over battery under normal working conditions to maximise the economic benefit of your installation. This you can set back to "Batt First" during loadshedding if you wish, but your 7kWh of storage should do fine during loadshedding even from a very low charge like 20%. Dont know these error codes but this is what the manual says: And this from a SunSynk blog post: F56 DC busbar voltage is too low Generally cause with the battery problem possibly a damaged BMS. If you experience in M56 fault then you need to focus on the battery, the battery cables, the battery connections, battery discharging parameters and the the general condition of the battery. 1. Check or battery cables are nice and tight good connections 2.If using parallel checked all battery cables are the same length as the batteries are low voltage compare to the mains but very high current than the cable that is very important we should all be the same length 3. Check the C rating of the battery 4. Check the invert at maximum discharge setting 5. Checked inverter maximum power setting ( Max sell Power ) Your batteries are 3500Wh at 48V each. That is 3500Wh/48V = 74Ah each. The bank of two is therefore best seen as a one 148Ah battery. So adjust the capacity to 148Ah. I use 0.5C charge and discharge rates, which is the same as that recommended for your battery, so 74A each (good for about 3.55kW of charge and discharge - your limiting factor during loadshedding will be your batteries not your 8kW inverter). Your Pylons are rated 95% DOD, so shutdown at 5% (for this to happen you would need very long and severe loadshedding with dismal weather). Set low battery warning lower than normal min% to avoid nuisance alarms, and restart the battery earlier - maybe even 20%. In effect it wont deliver any power unless the minimums in the work mode table are reached. OK, but remember to tick here when you want to charge up from the grid during loadshedding.

Hi all, I listed some of the steps to get remote control working on Solarman Smart and Solarman Business in my installation thread, but seeing South African installers are generally unable or unwilling to assist it is probably worth highlighting it here under a separate heading. This is the process and works as of December 2021 - Solarman seems to have little regard for change control so it may not work next year, next week, or later today. Its been quite an ordeal, but I got it working in the end. As I remember the steps are: Forget about Google Playstore - the versions on there are outdated and do not support remote control (or maybe my users had not been authorised at the time) so better to get the latest versions from the Solarman website. Download the correct version of Solarman Smart from the Solarman website by scanning the QR code (currently V1.5.17) Enable unknown sources on phone (I used "My Files") Sideload apk file If you want to use Solarman Business (worth it for much better Web interface and more intuitive remote control function alone) you need to do the same with this app (Latest version 1.6.14). Contact Deye support [email protected]. This is where I got the email from Jessica asking if we could do Whatsapp or Wechat instead (QR codes below). When sending instant messages be considerate about China being 6 hours ahead of us - better done in the morning SA Time. She has to authorise your Solarman Smart user to be able to make changes. It may be easier to test this on the web app than on the phone. Note: for some reason the web interfaces work on Edge but not on Chrome. When done you will see a "Remote Control" button on the Device tab in the app, or and away you go. The Work Mode settings we are after is under System Work Mode-3(Selling Mode Time), System Work Mode-6(Selling Mode Time %) and System Work Mode-2(Selling Mode Time charge) On the web interface, go to Device > Operation > More > Remote Control for the same. Then Deye support (Jessica) must also authorise your Solarman Business account so it is visible from the Smart app. To link the Buisness account, there is no need to create a plant an link the logger (it wont work in any case, as it already belangs to your Smart user). You have to link it from the Solarman Smart app. Go to Plant, click on 3 dots, Authorisations, then search for Buisness account and add it. If the Business account does not show up, go back to Step 11 above. In Business app, your user must then be authorised as Super Admin for the Smart account. If this all sounds a bit confusing, it is! Good luck!

Thanks hoohloc ... been reading up on DC/AC ratios, inverter clipping, etc. The decision to oversize or not would be so much easier if we had reasonable and fair feed-in tarrifs ... 11.4c/kWh simply isnt. Back to my Solarman ramblings, with the help of Deye/Solarman support I got my Solarman Business account authorised and to make system changes on the web interface (Edge only ... for some reason Chrome wont show https://pro.solarmanpv.com/login). But still I could not get the app to do the same. It turns out version 1.5.6 on Google Playstore is over a year old. To get it working properly you have to download the latest apk (version 1.6.14) from https://www.solarman.cn/enterrace_3.html by scanning the QR code from your phone, then enable installation of unkown apps, and then install. EDIT: Doing the same for the Solarman Smart App enables the "Remote Control" button on the Device tab. So the lesson is to always download the latest apk from Solarman, not from Google Playstore ... If I knew this before it would save me endless trouble. EDIT 2: Now that my user has been enable to make system changes, I can also control the inverter remote on the Solarman Smart web interface. So if this is the only requirement there is no need to bother with Solarman Business at all ....

By far the most accurate weather app I've used.