Paul Greeff

I've received a response from Pikaled, their price is ex VAT. Still a decent price at about R1550 per panel.

I've sent them a message to confirm. However, I am still hesitant, as I can't confirm anywhere they're legit.

I don't know. That number was there when my system went live, so I don't think so. Regardless, I would like to be able to reset that value without deleting the plant as I don't want to lose any historic data.

I would like to add another 8 panels to my installation. So far the two best prices I've come across are the following: 1. SolarAdvice, https://solaradvice.co.za/product/canadian-solar-305w-poly-kupower-half-cell/ for R1,689.99 incl. 2. Pikaled, https://www.pikaled.co.za/product/canadian-solar-305w-poly-kupower-half-cell-2/ for R1,346.25 (I'm assuming including VAT as they don't state otherwise anywhere) I'm lead to believe SolarAdvice is a legitimate source. Has anyone had any dealings with Pikaled? Any other sources you can recommend?

I'm still hoping someone knows where to reset this value. It is negatively impacting my OCD.

I run a 40 year old dishwasher, a tumble drier and a few other appliances during the peak of the day and often peak at between 7 and 8 kW on my Sunsynk. I know it is safe to do this on a sunny day because the batteries are rated to deliver 7 kW from my bank so they can handle the load when a cloud passes overhead. I do this during load shedding as well. However, before upgrading the battery bank I was limited to 3.5 kW, so my loads were adjusted to only peak at 3.5 kW or slightly over as the panels can handle the rest even when overcast. The batteries are a crucial component in running such big loads even on clear days as all it takes to overcurrent your battery is one tiny cloud. In my case, if I only had one battery I would have been limited to 1.75 kW or just a bit over so I would have had to limit my loads to max 2.5 kW.

Agreed, the electric kettle is so much quicker. We have the kettle on gas as backup, however, using the kettle on gas has a noticeable impact on gas consumption, yet the kettle has neglegeable impact on the batteries.

I've only dealt with the two companies below: 1. Invest solar - prices were reasonable. My electrician picked up supplies from them, so no delivery. Products were all as specified. 2. Aspergo, https://aspergo.co.za/. Their Dyness batteries are extremely well priced and Jason is very knowledgeabl. I'll definitely will do business with them again.

There's the rub, the Sunsynk does not switch to mains, and then switch to batteries / solar. It seemlessly blends to lot. The downside is when the grid goes down, it needs to open the relay that connects the UPS to the grid. In that moment it seems to dip for a short while. The dip is visible on my lights that run on the UPS output but we're fortunate that none of our appliances seem to care. My thinking is that the grid goes down and pulls the AC voltage down throughput the entire inverter until it detects and opens the AC relay that goes to grid. Looking at this block diagram I don't see how it can open fast enough to not have a short dip on all outputs. Notice there is no changover relay. Perhaps the grid voltage low (brownout voltage) can be set more aggressively so it cuts out sooner. Mine is set to 185V from the factory. Worth a try perhaps.

No, good coffee is always served fresh, or not at all, in my house anyway.

I suspect the dip is as the grid disappears the voltage dips until the relay opens. There will probably always be a very short dip. It will be interesting to note if others have been able to elimiate or reduce this dip. I notice it on the LED lights every time load shedding kicks in.

I know, my coffee machine uses 1.8 kW. But I will buy more batteries at great expense if need be to keep that machine going...

If your inverter can handle the load, and the batteries can source the current then it doesn't matter. 20s at 3 kWh is less than 20 Wh.

I'm not familiar with that model WRND, however, I have the WRND DC to DC battery charger with MPPT. It's been running for years and works extremely well. MPPT takes any panel within its voltage range and the battery input detects the alternator is charging the main battery and automatically starts to charge the second battery. Super simple to install and very reliable. And it is very compact, so it shares the same space as the battery in the battery box. I have not noticed any heat issues. It is quite possible whatever issues there were with the WRNDs in the past were rectified in the last five years.

I doubt the Android update would remove it. Perhaps they disabled it in the app for some reason. I also notice it is no longer available on the web site for me. Perhaps they accidentally released it to everyone and wanted to keep it for the paid for portal.

Builders Centurion also had a few Astutes left. The website lies and says there is no stock, but when I bought there were 7 in the cabinet. At the CBI webinar yesterday they indicated the CBI plug should be here in May if I recall correctly.

Do you ship SAPO? I haven't received a single international package the last few years, and banggood and Aliexpress, when they offer courier services, have been prohibitively expensive. But I haven't tried the last two years, so it will be interesting to note you are getting international parcels via our post office.

Goodness me, no. I saw the devastating effects on day one. The sun had barely started to set when the electric geyser and stove combined forces and put me and my batteries in their place. The geyser got the CBI Astute wifi timer, and the electric stove is now gathering dust under a carport while my folks cook in luxury on a fancy gas stove. I consider the timer on the geyser as one of the cheapest wins resulting in massive savings we have made in this solar journey. Solar vs Heat Pump vs Other ??? I incorrectly interpreted this as the alternative to powering the electric geyser from solar power, so solar water heater, the evacuated tube kind was what I thought, my bad. I'm also interested in this. I have requested an API key from Solarman but I haven't gotten around to see what their API will offer. I am hoping for the SOC. This and time of day should be sufficient to make a decision on when to power the geyser.

Solarman Smart Try the link above.

I'm still busy with my off grid solution, and it seems like it will be a long journey. 1. Regarding your weird power consumption, I am struggling with my consumption values as well. According to the Tshwane meter, we have used 390 units this month which seems excessive considering most of the day we get free power from the sun. Tshwane says 390 units (a massive improvement over 1200 units every month), and my Sunsynk says 260 kWh. Do I believe Tshwane, the Sunsynk or take the middle road? Good luck, I am still hunting. 2. We have an electric geyser in the Cottage. It also used a ton of power and killed SOC before the last of the daylight was even gone. I put it on a CBI Astute on the recommendation of a number of threads here, and now the daily usage is only during the day, and the current usage averages 4 kWh per day. It is on in the morning for an hour from 08h30 (just enough time for the SOC to absorb a little bit of the load with the solar) and again a bit later in the afternoon. It powers down from 16h00. In winter I might make this a little bit earlier. 3. In my very limited experience, I think solar geyser is a bad idea. If your solar panels don't produce enough electricity your solar geyser likely wont either. So if I want to go solar geyser, the solar will come from the electric solar panels. However, considering the savings with the normal electric geyser I would like to add a heat pump. That should drop the consumption by a factor 3 - 4. I'll be watching this thread for some more ideas too.

Thank you Tariq, this is a very handy feature. The play store has the old version. I downloaded and Installed the version from Solarman, https://www.solarman.cn/enterrace_2.html. With this one I have remote control from my phone.

Thats very cool. What version of the app are you using? Perhaps Achmat and I are still on older versions.

I just discovered this myself on the web site. I can't find the remote control on the Solarman App. Very cool to be able to adjust settings from the web site.

In order to generate 20 kWh per day I have 4.5 kW of panels on the roof. It can do more, but I don't have anywhere to send the power after 12h00 in the day. The cost of the panels work out to be around R26k, which is just under R1300 per kWh. Thats not so bad for power in the day. It is cheap enough to add as many panels as I need to power all our appliances during the day. My Dyness battery bank is worth R36k for the usable capacity of 5.8 kWh, lets say 6 kWh for convenience. This works out to R6k per kWh or roughly 4.5 times the cost per kWh for solar in the day (excluding the generation cost). Including the generation cost as well it works out to almost R14k per kWh at night. So this makes night time power more than 10 times as expensive as day time power. This is way more expensive than the gas that you will buy to power a stove and perhaps even a geyser. We have not considered the cost of replacing the batteries in 10 years in this calculation. So unless you have a ton of money to drop on batteries, forget about powering an electric stove and oven combination. It can be done, but it is expensive, unless of course you can convince your wife to cook only over lunch time on sunny days. We're in the process of replacing the electric stove in the cottage with a gas stove and oven combination. The electric geyser is on a timer and runs only during the day time hours. However, keep in mind, even with a geyserwise, if you have a cloudy or rainy day, you don't have a lot power, if any, to waste. Or put another way, if the sun is too weak to heat up the water on the solar heater, the sun is likely to weak to power the heater element, and you'll be showering in cold water. Although gas is expensive I believe it is still way cheaper than night time power from the batteries and I would heat with a gas heater , or better yet, a fireplace, and cooking would be done on only gas (with an electric hot plate as backup) and heating with a gas geyser. This is what I prefer and use in the main house, and I think this is a nice compromise. Perhaps the guys that have been on solar for a while will have a better perspective. To answer your question about the AC. My AC uses 950W when the compressor is running. This is not a problem for the solar during the day. Once again, as with the stove, running the AC at night is a very expensive prospect. I still want to experiment with cooling the room during the day with solar, and then keeping it cool at night running off batteries. It looks like the duty cycle is low enough once it has reached temperature that it might be viable to run it at night. However, I will need to double my capacity to cater for this as we don't make it through the night on batteries yet.

Not a long time at all, perhaps about 6 months an emergency interim solution to get us through the workday. Solar was installed two weeks ago.