Paul Greeff

If you're mainly after Internet, consider buying a dual deep cycle UPS trolley, such as the Ellies and Mecer trolleys you can find at most major retailers for about R10k. I used one for load shedding so my wife and I can power out two laptops with extra monitors, all the lights in the house and the home cinema. We could power this for up to five hour stretches without any issues. Thats the longest we tested and the UPS claimed it was around 50%. I have no idea how accurate it is. It was simple and cheap and any electrician can wire up a couple of red UPS plugs at key points and move the lights to the UPS. It served us very well until we upgraded to a full solar solution.

On the Solarman portal I see a total called Total grid feed-in. I would love to have that kind of generating capacity but I most certainly did not feed 371.53 GWh into the grid in 13 days. (Doc Brown reference anyone?) Does anyone know where I can zero this value? It is mucking up my dashboard.

The only difference you will see on the output is that the 3 kVA systems can power fewer devices than the 5 kVA system. The wiring for the 24V system with the same storage capacity will be a lot thicker and cumbersome to work with. I'd go with the 48V system, especially when you're talking few kW and not just a few hundred watts.

Yes, I like that suggestion a lot. Very good idea, thanks. I probably wont need a lot of distance for this. I have quite a few serial cables lying around, this should be a quick fix.

Usually the isolator is located right above the stove, which is not acceptable for the gas COC so in almost all instances it will need to be removed, in my case in the main house (already done) and in the cottage out back (still to be done) once we get the new gas stove.

I don't know the Goodwe so I will not comment on it, however, the Sunsynk 8kW has been running for 13 days and I am over the moon. Visibility on Solarman is awesome and just seeing what we're up to has helped us to cut our electricity by about 10 units per day. It also handles the rated power well. Yesterday we hit 8 kW sustained for quite some time while my wife was using the electric oven and grill, while my folks were using their electric stove and the geyser was drawing its last bit of power before shutting down for the night. No problems. It seemlessly merged solar, battery and utility power to get power to the appliances. Remember if you spec the inverter too small, there is no easy upgrade path. I went with the biggest I could afford to cater for the two houses on the property and I am not disappointed in my decision. Consider peaks for yourself too. You do not want your hobby / power saving endeavours to put the rest of your household off renewable energy, so it is important that the required change in habits not intrude too much in your lives so it helps if the inverter can handle the peaks.

I can't speak to the power requirements of your gas stove, however, the one we're looking at for my folks also has an electric spark and oven light, and is powered by a normal three prong wall plug. I would assume yours is the same, and unless it has other special features such as convection fans etc, it is likely the oven light and spark will not even register on your inverter.

Just an update, the CBI has been working flawlessly. It is saving us a ton of power. We now use between 3.5 and 5 kWh on the Kwikot electric geyser where before it used to be more that 10 kWh for the day. More importantly, it stops the power drain on the batteries. The CBI measures the power consumed, and starts and stops the geyser and alerts on its activities if I want. I can definitely recommend the CBI Astute. I'll be getting another one for the pool pump so I can start it from my study on good solar days when I have power to waste.

I have 2x Dyness B3 3.6 kWh batteries. I'd like to double the capacity to 4x 3.6 kWh. https://solaradvice.co.za/product/dyness-7-2kwh-lithium-ion-battery-pack/ So far the best price I have come across is the one above. And it also has the lovely looking cabinet. Does anyone have any experience with the cabinet and Solaradvice? I would appreciate your opinion of Solar Advice. Its a lot of money to drop on an on line company so it would help to have some reassurances from people that have used them before. Also, if you have another supplier to recommend. Preferably a company that will courier the batteries to me as I don't have the time to collect unless they're close enough in Centurion. Regards Paul

The signal to noise ratio on my end was always perfect but I cannot see what the noise floor is for the logger. I suspect the PLC I have in the same room as the Sunsynk feeding Internet to the cottage is causing interference. When the PLC is not on the circuit, which passes right next to the wifi antenna on the logger, the logger works without incident and problems correlate remarkably well with the Netflix habits of my folks in the cottage when the PLC is supplying their Internet. I added the wifi router right under the logger and now the problem is solved. However, I will note here that the wifi router does not see an increased noise floor or note any link quality issues, so it might just be input of the logger thats wide open.

I second the CBI Astute. My solar system is only 11 days old. We've also been manually switching the geyser on and off. This weekend I installed the CBI Astute and it works really well. I did not have a power meter on they geyser to see exactly what its reduction was but I am certain at the very least I halved the geyser power consumption so far, but from the overall power consumption graph I could see it draining batteries and eating solar constantly. Todays power draw as shown on the app ended at 5.12 kWh and I can see the geyser had already started cycling so it was at temperature by the time the timer switched it off. That's a decent saving. I also dropped the temperature to 60C to limit losses and added a thermal blanket to help with the losses. I'm told the water is still plenty warm in the morning.

On the Sunsynk there is an option that specifies zero export power. What this option actually does is set a specific amount of power it must always pull from the utility in order to prevent accidental feeding back into the utility as this will trip some prepaid meters. And for other it might just mean you get billed for the bit of power you feed back accidentally. So if I set this value to say 100W and I have a 1000W load, I might see just over 900W from the solar and 100W from Eskom to cover the load. Perhaps this is what you're experiencing?

In your price range the pure sine wave inverters may not be an option. Before I had solar installed I wired a R10k Ellies UPS trolly into my DB the two deep cycle model. I added a few red UPS plugs at critical locations for the Internet, my study and my wifes study. Our cinema was also powered by the red plugs to protect the projector. And lastly all the lights were also powered by the UPS. On the last day of the solar install while the last bits were being wired in we were without power for 5 hours. Both my wife and I worked the whole time on the UPS. In the past it got us through load shedding many times, often without us even noticing the power is off, except if someone tried to power a kettle. This setup, with the wiring of the UPS plugs and DB board should end up costing less than R15k, including UPS, wiring and the electricians cost. If you want anything more than this you might want to consider uadding a zero to your budget and adding backup power for the whole house (excepting of course the geyser and any electric stoves and ovens you might have.

Spot on. I am curious as to why it would be an issue, but not a trainsmash, they have a nice guide on their web site explaining how to resolve this, so all good.

I found this guide this morning. It ties in with what you're saying Tuniva. https://www.cbi-lowvoltage.co.za/faq-category/astute-smart-controller-asc Bit of a fail on their part. It will not pair if you set the Mikrotik as your DNS server. For some reason it needs Google DNS set in the DHCP server config, not my router. First time I've seen this requirement. However, once I set 8.8.8.8 in the DHCP config it paired immediately and I can now do what I want with the DNS, it still works so all good. The app is simple and works well, I look forward to using this on the geyser.

Apologies, images have been fixed. I did not connect to the CBI (later tested, it listens on port 6668 and I can connect to it but of course I don't speak its language), just monitored what it was trying to connect to and tested if they're accessible. None of the four (three or four, not sure anymore) IPs respond on the TCP port the CBI was trying to connect to.

To all the Astute owners, can you confirm the process for pairing was as stated in the guide. The steps for both the automatic and manual pairing fails. (please excuse the copy paste below) 1. I can confirm, the network is 2.4 GHz, 2. and I can see the CBI ASC is connected on my WiFi network. See the screenshot below. 3. The blue light has stopped flashing and shows solid blue. 4. However, the app never gets past the pairing process and fails with both the automatic and manual pairing. 5. Every method of pairing shows the CBI connecting to the network and I can ping the CBI. There is no firewall between the CBI and my phone, and nothing blocking connections to the Internet on my side. 6. During the scan process the blue light stops flashing after about 7 to 10 seconds of scanning. Blue light then stays solid, but pairing on phone fails (I noticed later it gives up and disconnects from the router). 7. WiFi signal for both the Huawei phone and CBI are good. They're in the same room as the router. Signal strength as reported by my router for the CBI is great. See the image below. 8. All firewall and content filter rules on my firewall were disabled as a precaution to debug this problem The key thing I notice is that the pairing process seems to start, and the CBI picks up the wifi and connects. Additional information. I can see traffic to and from the CBI ASC and I can see some of the CBI related IP addresses in these transactions however, these servers appear to be down, i.e., the ports are not open. Port scan shows no open ports for the IPs we see the CBI attempting to connect to and as shown above, ICMP does not come back. It almost seems as if their AWS servers are not responding. Can anyone else share their experience with the pairing process? Regards Paul

The cottage has a 2 kW element, so I will definitely try to go smaller if possible. The peaks in the morning are killer. We have been experimenting and manually switching off and powering up the geyser an hour before showering, it seems to work well. The geyser was powered on at 08h00 by which time we're usually producing close to 2 kW. And the batteries have gained a little bit of charge to help as well. Tomorrow we'll try to start it a bit later. We didn't want to push our luck too much. So for the first time ever, we've only consumed 1.3 kWh from the utility, so far. The battery ran out at 04h00. Tonight I will have to close the tap a little to cater for the electric stove but once that has been replaced we might actually be able to get through the night, or at least till midnight with our nightly power usage. What about heat pumps? A friend of mine with solar loves the heat pumps. With the two on his property he manages to keep consumption to around 4 - 5 kWh per day. And the 1 kW consumption is also very solar friendly.

I'll see about sourcing a smaller element. Does it make such a big difference? Perhaps to squash the peaks a bit? The timer is definitely in the works, but ideally I would like to rid us of anything with large current draws outside of daylight hours. Would you mind sharing your schedule for the CBI on the geyser, and well as when you typically use the hot water? But for now, timer, blanket and heating element for the geyser should help. They're all quick wins, but ultimately this problem is not solved properly yet.

I would have loved to do it that way, but unfortunately the cottage is not connected to the main house. However, we are considering a timer for now, I just need to figure out if the timing works. Unfortunately the one likes to take a bath in the evenings after sunset, and the other prefers early mornings before there is any irradiation worth talking about. Not an ideal combination.

Thanks Meerkat. I'll investigate all options. As long as my folks still get to enjoy the comfort of hot water in winter. If it means paying for a bit of juice from Eskom, then so be it.

I set up a wifi router right next to the dongle. I have a suspicion it is interference of sorts. So far the connection is a lot more stable, but of course it could just be enjoying a good run.

Perfect, thanks boet. Your test is most telling, I will take it up with the installer and see what we can do about it. Oh, and attached you can see one of the messages on Solarman. Frequently it reads "Devices Partially Offline" and "Offline."

Thank you Kalahari Meerkat Regardless of how I talk to it, this intermittend connectivity occurs. I've done a reset on the unit, and it seems this happens whether it is connected to my wifi after it has been configured, and also during configuration when connected to my phone or laptop. For example, I had a continuous ping and sent 173696 packets, of which 50648 came back. Have you tried a longer period? I've had times where pings go on for minutes and then times where it is on and off frequently.

I have the 8 kW Sunsynk with the wifi data logger. It works very well, and the visibility is amazing. We've already managed to reduce or shift our consumption and we've only been on solar for 5 days now. However, I am concerned about the intermittend connectivity of the module. In the attached image you will notice it responds to ICMP and then disappears. This cycle happens over and over. The time on and off appears to be random. It seems to do this regardless of whether it is connected to my laptop, my phone (whether I'm in the same room or not) and even when I put a wifi router two meters from the data logger, it seems to do the same. My question is whether this is normal for the module, i.e., does it perhaps drop the wifi, focus on collecting the data and then only activates wifi when it has something to send to the portal, or is this a problem? Regards Paul