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PsyCLown

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Posts posted by PsyCLown

  1. Why not consider the Luxpower SNA6000? I feel support is better with the Luxpower inverters and the features it offers is great. Value for money it is hard to beat!

     

    Growatt has put me off with them changing revisions on their inverters without documenting it properly. I have never considered SRNE as a premium brand but rather one of the cheaper brands, however I could be wrong here. I know someone who has a 24v SRNE inverter & battery AIO type of setup and he is not impressed with the performance (I think battery life, although chances are he just did not spec enough capacity as its a large property).

  2. @Boela as mentioned above, paralleling different chemistries is not advised.

    I believe the Pylontech batteries are NMC and the Shoto batteries LFP and I believe their voltage range is different so you may experience issues with charging some of the batteries to 100% and may be limited by the low voltage cut off as I believe this differs between the battery chemistry.

     

    You'd also need to look at giving the BMS comms a skip and use voltage settings and manually adjust the charge voltage and discharge voltage cut off limit.

    Pylontech are not great when it comes to warranties and mixing batteries I am certain will void your Pylontech warranty.

     

     

    6x 50Ah batteries = 300Ah (Pylontech)

    3x 100Ah batteries = 300Ah (Shoto)

     

    So yes, the capacity is more or less the same.

    However the nominal voltage does differ with the Pylontech being 48v and Shoto being 51.2v

     

    300Ah x 48v = 14.4kWh (Pylontech)

    300Ah x 51.2v = 15.36kWh (Shoto)

     

    I'd suggest going with a single chemistry for your battery bank - whether you want to simply add an additional 2x US2000 or sell all the Pylontech batteries and go for 3x Shoto is up to you.

     

    I know Shoto has had some issues in the past and I recall reading that their cells are not of the highest quality. The Shoto batteries would not be my first choice.

  3. 22 hours ago, aju said:

    Hi,
    Thanks for the information. I also have two of the 51.2 V LiFePO4 batteries. Lets call it Battery ONE and Battery TWO. Its a 48V system, I have connected this in parallel and is working fine.
    I have a question. 

    How to connect the network cable to the BMS panel of the inverter. Also there are RS485A, CAN, RS232, RS458B ports for SVOLT battery.

    1) Where does the inverter to the Battery ONE connect to for Inverter to Battery communication?
     
    2) Where does the  Battery ONE connect to Battery TWO for Battery to Battery communication?
     
    May you please assist....🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

     

    image.png

    @aju Which inverter are you connecting the Svolt batteries to?

     

    For #2, it does show this info in the manual which comes with the batteries.

    Otherwise I can take some photos tonight showing you with my batteries how to connect the batteries in parallel for BMS comms.

  4. On 2024/03/12 at 8:03 AM, JohnCT said:

    Hi PsyClown (and anyone else with fuses blowing). Have you maybe tested your audio system anywhere else; eg at a friend/neighbour who might have a different brand of inverter? I've not done this yet, but it would help to narrow down to what the culprit is - Luxpower/Amp or sound system/power voltage from Eskom? I'm annoyed with Lux, but possibly the top brands such as sunsynk also do this?

    I have not, however if there is no changeover from grid to inverter then my subwoofer works without issues - my Harmon Kardon amp does not seem to be affected, only my big subwoofer.

     

    On 2024/03/12 at 10:23 AM, eugenedp said:

    My Luxpower has the same problem for sure. I have not blown any fuses yet, but yesterday my aircon was running and it had an epileptic fit when the power went out. It sounded like it wanted to climb out of the plastic housing. I am pretty sure that my HiFi would have blown its fuses as well if it was on.

    So apparently updating the firmware does not make a difference. Has anyone found any solution to the problem? I must say, I am not impressed, at all. 

    I experienced something similar with my LG smart inverter microwave before, it just did not sound good but came right after a few seconds and had noticed the same with an inline extraction fan in my garage - never any issues with my inverter type midwall aircons though.

     

    I do feel the changeover time is a bit slow on the Luxpower and I believe when the inverters are in parallel it does affect the change over speed and this I think is the possible cause.

     

    I have yet to find a solution, so as mentioned above I simply turn my subwoofer off and if I miss it and the fuse blows I have simply been replacing the 5A fuse each time. I have gone through a pack of 5 already...

  5. If Deye / Sunsynk is out of your budget then chances are the Solis S6 is out of your budget too?

    https://www.snaga.co.za/product/solis-s6-pro-5kw-advanced-hybrid-inverter/

     

    Otherwise Luxpower is tried and tested and they work fairly well. For the price of the Luxpower, you're unlikely to get something with better value for money.

    I'd go for the Luxpower over an Axpert / Axpert clone. If you really want to look at going for a cheaper inverter, then the Conderenergy are good from what I have heard but compared to the Luxpower you will loose some features and perhaps gain in some other areas though:

    https://www.snaga.co.za/product/conderenergy-6-2kw-48v-pure-sine-wave-solar-inverter-s-2455/

     

     

    Regarding the panels, well, this also depends on which inverter you get. The Luxpower has a low current limit per MPPT (13A), so you need to pick panels according to the limit. You'd need to run the panels in series as parallel would increase the current too much for the Luxpower.

    The Solis (and Deye / Sunsynk) have a higher current limit which provides more options.

  6. 16 minutes ago, sunset1 said:

    Thank you. I see they have a sale right now around 17k for the 16 cell. 

    Bit of an ignorant question but why is the 16cell better than the 15? Would the higher voltage still. Work on a 48v inverter? 

    Yes, majority of 48v inverters will work fine with the 51.2v batteries.

     

    Reason I would recommend the 16 cell batteries is because they are more common so finding another battery with 16 cells later on is more likely.

    You can also add another 16 cell LiFePO4 battery in parallel if need be (maybe not with comms though).

     

    There is also the slight increase in capacity, although this does not make much of a difference I feel but it does add up - especially with multiple batteries.

    For example with my 3 batteries that is an additional 0.34kWh per battery and a total of 1.02kWh so it can help provide a little more usable capacity.

  7. So according to the spec and considering you have 3 batteries.

     

    Max discharge rate would be 450A and max charge rate would be 240A - both very high figures and chances are your inverter is not even capable of reaching the 435A discharge limit (435A x 51.2v = 22.2kW).

     

    With that being said, it may not be a bad idea to adjust the discharge rate (not the same as the limit) to a lower rate to help prolong the life of the batteries. The higher the charge & discharge current, the more strain it puts on the cells and in turn reduces their lifespan. With 3 batteries and a single inverter you have the benefit of the load being split between the batteries.

  8. My first thoughts was also a thermal paste of sorts, although that does not make sense.

    Perhaps it is more of a fire retardant paste?

     

    With regards to the temps, well, not too much one can do about that here in South Africa. Unfortunately it gets hot here in summer and a lot of people (myself included) have their equipment installed in their garages and my garage gets really hot - I even installed an extraction fan to help remove hot air from the garage and draw in some cooler air and allow for some air movement within the garage and this does help a little but temps still get uncomfortable at times.

     

    My view is that you can only do what is reasonably practicable, installing an aircon in the garage just to keep the inverter and batteries cool does not make sense as the electricity cost will be far greater than a replacement battery would be over a few years. Not to mention the initial aircon purchase & installation cost.

    Fans only do so much, bringing the temperature below ambient temperature is unlikely.

     

    Therefore, it is just what it is and having multiple batteries and/or reducing the loads and strain on the batteries will help keep them cool and help extend their lifespan.

     

    With all of this being said, the lifespan of you Akkutech battery does not seem right, way too short of a lifespan. Also is the area you keep your batteries in reaching 45C? That is really hot! I can believe the cells could reach 45C for a bit while under a heavy load for a bit of time but that is unlikely to be for extended periods of time.

    Similar concept to taking your car to redline every now and then vs driving it while its bouncing off the rev limiter constantly. It is not continuous heat or strain on the battery.

     

    My batteries do have some vents in the enclosure to help allow for hot air to escape, how much of a difference it makes I am not sure. It does not bother me all that much as there is little I can do about it high temps are not constant.

  9. I can recommend the Svolt batteries, I have 3 of them and they have been working well so far.

    They also make use of the Pace BMS like the Freedom Won eTower, although Svolt make use of cells which they manufacture themselves - not sure which cells Freedom Won use in their eTowers. Freedom Won do seem to be of good quality but are not the cheapest, I recall the eTowers being their cheapest battery though.

    I purchased my Svolt batteries from Snaga and would recommend the 51.2v (16 cell / 5.43kWh) batteries over the 48v (15 cell / 5.09kWh) batteries: https://www.snaga.co.za/product/svolt-51-2v-106ah-5-43kwh-lifepo4-battery-wall-mounted/

     

    Another battery worth considering I feel is the BSL Batt, I saw a special on their pricing recently but I have yet to find a quality battery cheaper than Svolt.

     

    I personally would not purchase a CFE, Nenergy, Hubble, Shoto, Pylontech or FiveStar battery. I have heard, but cannot confirm, that the Volta batteries still experience issues with charging after a couple of months even after the new firmware update - lots of people with Volta batteries so I guess we will hear in a few months time if the charging issue is still a real problem or not.

  10. I would not recommend waiting for the Sodium-ion batteries, go with LiFePO4 for now as 3 to 5 years is still quite a long wait and new products are often priced at a premium price.

    You can look at replacing your Lithium batteries with Sodium batteries in around 10 years time when you are due for new batteries. By then we'll have a better idea in terms of performance and pricing as well.

     

    I feel you'll have wasted a lot of money in the next 3 to 5 years if you buy lead acid batteries. Lithium batteries are not badly priced at the moment. 24v 106ah lithium batteries for around R10k is pretty good I feel and keep in mind you'll be able to get more discharge out of a Lithium battery compared to lead acid (80% DoD vs 50% DoD), you could even push the lithium battery a bit further and it will handle higher current better and obviously take significantly more cycles. (6000 cycles vs around 150 to 250 cycles for lead acid).

  11. So I do have take load together enabled (PV & AC).

     

    Yes, I cannot tell the direction of the flow - so cannot confirm whether it is feeding back or not, however the issue is with some meters if you feed back you get charged as if it were usage. If this were the case I expect to be able to see a difference when I adjusted the CT offset - as mentioned it was on 20W by default. I changed it to 199W and then to -199W (basically the 2 extreme ends) and did not notice much difference in the reading so I set it back to 20W as per the default.

     

    Yes, power factor needs to be considered but there should not be any load. Getting a reading of over 3A seems quite high and unlikely?

     

    I could try again this coming weekend and reduce my loads, these are my normal loads and they are generally high - my geyser was on which added to the load and brought me over the PV limit. I could check again with the geyser off and can turn off some devices to bring the load down.

     

    I am on postpaid with a smart meter but never received my CUI, I must still go to Eskom to get it - although not sure how much info is visible from the CUI.

  12. Hey all!

     

    So something has been bugging me about these Luxpower inverters for a while now, today I finally decided to investigate a bit further and this seems to have confirmed my suspicions and its quite frustrating...

     

    I have a voltage protection device connected before my inverter circuit breakers (where Eskom gives power to the inverters). The voltage protection device allows me to see the voltage & current in realtime. I noticed a couple months ago that even when the load for the house is being carried by PV or if I am running on PV & Batteries, there is always current draw being displayed on the voltage protection and this current draw figure varies from time to time and is anywhere from 2.8A to 3.8A when there should be no draw from Eskom.

    So I decided to stop being lazy and investigate further. I removed the cover of my DB board and used my clamp meter to assist me. Now I do not expect either the voltage protection device or my clamp meter to be 100% accurate but I do expect them to give me a fairly accurate reading. I understand the clamp meter is probably less accurate in this instance.

     

    So before I started this test, I ensured that my inverter settings were as such to force the inverter to use PV & Battery only, no grid usage as per the below screenshot.

    LuxpowerUsage.thumb.PNG.134d361ea8ae622f1083b3a52d6e5b37.PNG

     

     

     

    So below you can see a comparison of the clamp meter & voltage protection device both detecting current.

    One reads 3,9A and the other 4,5A - this confirms to me that there is definitely current flowing

    20240303_111735.thumb.jpg.e4047f3cd65c30397b55f1f647ac7808.jpg

     

     

    So I gave the Luxpower inverters the benefit of the doubt, maybe the voltage protection device is somehow consuming the power... although it seems a bit odd, lets try confirm this. So I turned off the breakers giving Eskom power to both my inverters and suddenly there was no usage displayed on both the voltage protection device & my clamp meter as can be seen below.

    20240303_111759.thumb.jpg.fa7173c5054086044915b6fd8b8fead7.jpg

     

     

     

    Now this does concern me and puzzles me a bit, I can understand that the Luxpower does not have an external CT coil and you have the CT coil offset to assist with calibrating it. By default mine was on 20W, I adjusted this (after I turned on the breakers, so my inverter had grid) to 199W and then to -199W and I did not see much (if any) difference to the readings on the voltage protection device or the clamp meter.

     

    If we call it an average of 3,2A, since this is basically 24/7 that usage adds up quickly.

    3,2A x 230v = 736W

    736W x 24 hours = 17,66kWh per day

    17,66kWh x 30 days = 529,8kWh in a 30 day month... Its a significant amount.

     

    To be fair, this would not all be offset by solar anyways, there might only be around 7 hours in a day where this usage is offset by solar.

    3,2A x 230v = 736W

    736W x 17 hours = 12,51kWh per day

    12,51kWh x 30 days = 375,3kWh in a 30 day month... A potential loss of 154,5kWh per month because of this.

    At around R4 per kWh on the higher tier, this works out to around R618 per month.

     

     

    So now, does anyone know why the Luxpower does this? Why does it draw soo much from the grid when the loads should be covered by PV or PV & Battery and it should not be drawing from the grid?

    Also does anyone know whether the same is applicable to the Sunsynk/Deye inverters & Solis inverters?

  13. 4 hours ago, Tag11 said:

    Svolt might be cheaper, but I gotta say, this Volta looks pretty good, and performance so far has met expectations.

    Awesome! Please let us know in say 6 months time whether you have experienced any issues or not, the common issue being the SoC not going to 100% or the inverter not being able to / wanting to charge to 100%.

     

    Seems to be BMS related this issue, apparently fixed with a firmware upgrade but people say its still a problem over time even after the firmware upgrade.

  14. On 2024/02/24 at 8:50 AM, Oros said:

    My biggest question is the info the sellers supply regarding what tipe of cells (prismatic,blade) is used and what bms they use. For example if you look at say Gobel batteries, if you go to their website you get any and all info you would want to know. What tipe cells, brand of cells, how it's wired(16s1P), but the local brands does only give basic info. Even when I mailed one supplier, they send me the exactly same basic info that is advertised. That is why I'm scared to buy these brands. Unfortuanetly, like the Gobel GP-SR1-P200 280ah battry cost R40 000, but to import it cost R60 000.

    Gobel power make "DIY" type of batteries and options can vary - they can use different brands of cells and different cell capacity too if I am not mistaken.

     

    Companies like Hubble, Freedom Won, Fivestar, BSL, Svolt etc. are more on the already built side of things, the cells are generally not changed out to different brands of capacities.

    Some of the manufacturers will share what cells they use, I think Hubble shared this info a while back and Svolt use their own Svolt cells.

    Majority of batteries use the Pace BMS, this includes the Hubble & Svolt batteries.

     

    Some like to keep things more of a secret for whatever reason. Not knowing what is inside the battery isn't great but for the average consumer they do not care as long as it works.

  15. PWM or MPPT controllers would both work to use the solar panels to charge the batteries.

    I assume they are 12v batteries and run in parallel?

     

    https://www.victronenergy.com/solar-charge-controllers

    I think the smart solar controller would work well for you.

     

    EDIT: MPPT would be more efficient than a PWM charger although cost is a little higher.

    I'd spend the extra money and get one of the Victrons as it offers a decent amount of features.

  16. 1 hour ago, Scorp007 said:

    If you are interested I can supply the difference in yields up to 12h daily for you to see between summer and winter. Winter is a killer if you have no tilt. 

    Yes, please do!

    Will be nice to have that info available.

     

    If it really is that bad with little to no tilt, then I guess I will need to make a plan to tilt them and must double check how many panels I can fit on my roof.
    Perhaps look at 6 additional panels instead of 8.

  17. 3 hours ago, Piper said:

    Hi 

    Flat panels should give you some extra power during the day,mainly mid-day. Something to concider is that any moisture will just sit on the panels, most of my panels are mounted on a carport with about 5 deg slope and I always get a dust build up on the bottom edge of my panels wich needs to be washed of regularly.From my personel experience I would suggest to rather slope your pannels.

    I went as far as getting a few of these drainage clips to try and fix the problem. It works, but only so-so.

     

    Do you have some panels with a better tilt angle which can be used to compare against the relatively flat panels?

     

    Like, how much power is being lost due to the lack of tilt angle?

  18. Hey all!

     

    So just want to run this idea past you guys before I decide to take further steps.

    I am wanting to add some more panels to my setup, roof space is limited. I have a flat concrete roof, so current panels use A-frame mounts and are held down by concrete ballasts.

     

    Since it is a flat roof and panels are tilted, they cast a shadow which further reduces usable space, especially considering there is bunding around my roof - being a flat concrete roof.

    So I was thinking of trying to add an additional 8 panels to my roof and to help create space and reduce the risk of a string of panels casting a shadow on the panels behind them I was thinking of laying them rather flat, although still elevator off the roof - since I am based in Johannesburg the wind is not as hectic as it is in Cape Town but I do not want my panels to have a chance of flying off if there is a strong gust of wind.

     

    I was thinking of keeping it simple, purchase the concrete ballasts and use some drop in anchors and use that to secure the aluminium rail to the ballasts and use multiple ballasts per alu rail for weight and then lay that down on my roof and secure the panels to the rails as per usual. This would also lead to some cost savings as I would not require the A-frame brackets.

     

    I think this could work, just looking for some additional feedback - comments are welcome :) 

  19. 22 hours ago, jdido87 said:

    Thank you for all the comments guys. While I wait for the funds can I please get an indication of what I should be paying for a 5kw Deye, 5kw battery and 8 panels in Cae Town. I am seeing similar setups installed for around the R90k mark. Essentially want to know if I am being ripped off at R99k.

     

    https://www.facebook.com/share/ccubLAQckCRSXxqF/?mibextid=xfxF2i

    Inverter, battery & panels would come to around R52k to R60k depending on brands and each supplier would have slightly different mark up.

     

    There would then be costs for the labour, switch gear, cables, panel mounting equipment and sundry items and this would vary based on each install and situation.

    I'd reckon you're looking at a minimum of R20k upwards and R20k is definitely on the cheaper side. So R90k to R99k is not unreasonable but you may be able to get a contractor to do it for a little less. Whether its worth trying to find a contractor who offers better pricing is up to you, you definitely do not want them to cheap out on the switch gear or cables or avoid having certain protections in place such as AC & DC SPD's, E/N Bonding etc.

     

    The link is a good price, adding an additional 2 panels should not increase the price by an extra R15k+ though.

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