edmundp

Hi All,
 
I would like to formally announce the launch of the SolarMon software.
 
The software changed in accordance with user requests the past few months - a personal thank you to one and all that contributed and tested.
 
The software has the following features:
 
Serial Connection to single Inverter USB Connection to single Inverter Data recorded every 5 seconds Supports both the Victron BMV-700 and BMW-702 Battery Monitors Resizes the app automatically for screen sizes 1024x600 and up Dynamic Graphing & History Graphing Data Export In-app data viewing Switch to Grid or Solar based on Battery Capacity and/or; Switch to Grid or Solar based on 7 day Time Schedule Daily Production & Usage Data Automatic uploads to PVOutput.org with extended values such as Battery State of Charge, MidPoint Percentage, etc. Custom Image display to personalize the application All of the above is included in one standard version Demo version available with very limited features to try out. The software requires the .Net Framework 4.5.2 and MS SQL Express to run.
 
Please visit our webpage at www.solarmonitor.co.za for more information or contact us on [email protected].
 
We will be running a launch special of R 500.00 for local forum members as well for SolarMon!
 
We take user feedback very seriously.
 
Please see our dedicated SolarMon Thread in the Commercial section.
 
Kind Regards,
 
Ed

Hey all,
Just to clarify - I recently discovered that the Victron kit SCC's actually automatically scales up beyond just max charging amps all on their own accord (i.e. nothing connected) if the demand exists. So it is not limited to max charging amps as such and no fancy bells and whistles required (although freagin magic to have...)

Hey all,
Just to clarify - I recently discovered that the Victron kit SCC's actually automatically scales up beyond just max charging amps all on their own accord (i.e. nothing connected) if the demand exists. So it is not limited to max charging amps as such and no fancy bells and whistles required (although freagin magic to have...)

Maybe something to also consider in the calculations for Lead Acid vs LiFePo4 is charge efficiency.
Here is the conundrum - if you are able to feed back to grid you can basically pass everything you have back to the grid, i.e. 100% of solar production less internal conversion losses.
Now say you would like to limit the amount you feedback for whatever reason, i.e. you have a surplus you can throw at charging batteries and thus use the batteries at night.
With Lead Acid - the approximate charge efficiency is about 80-85% at best. With LiFePo4 it is around 95% from what I have read, plus it charges faster.
I.e. - with Lead Acid it makes more "sense" to rather push everything you have at the grid than to loose in charge inefficiencies, but it also does not really make sense for that investment to stand around and gather dust.
Thus: You have less energy losses with LiFePo4 in charging than with Lead Acid. And to me 10% is nothing to frown at.

Maybe something to also consider in the calculations for Lead Acid vs LiFePo4 is charge efficiency.
Here is the conundrum - if you are able to feed back to grid you can basically pass everything you have back to the grid, i.e. 100% of solar production less internal conversion losses.
Now say you would like to limit the amount you feedback for whatever reason, i.e. you have a surplus you can throw at charging batteries and thus use the batteries at night.
With Lead Acid - the approximate charge efficiency is about 80-85% at best. With LiFePo4 it is around 95% from what I have read, plus it charges faster.
I.e. - with Lead Acid it makes more "sense" to rather push everything you have at the grid than to loose in charge inefficiencies, but it also does not really make sense for that investment to stand around and gather dust.
Thus: You have less energy losses with LiFePo4 in charging than with Lead Acid. And to me 10% is nothing to frown at.

Hi @PaulF007
Victron actually have a very nice video tutorial on how to setup the BMV and how to achieve the best sync settings released recently.
Just check the website blog.

Oh for sure you are correct 28k return on a R 160k investment is 17.5% return on investment. My bad sorry ..... ... ... 
Also correct if you invest R 2333 for 20 years @ 5% you will have R 959 079 
 
Thank for the offer but I do understand the system as I myself is quite interested in Grid tie only thing is i don't have Eskom - Grrr
Cool if I remember he is in Gauteng but , stand to be corrected. I wasnt aware that you could feed back into the grid but this is a REAL game changer and will retract all statements if he gets paid for the power that he produces in fact I would love to see how that is working. Just a word of Caution if the system is not designed for something like that and city power shuts down for maintenance and you feed back from the wrong side and some one does gets electrocuted you will most likely look at a manslaughter charge , use it dont use it I dont care.
I am in agreement else this Forum would not exist.
 
To conclude the Issue was NEVER if you can get ROI on solar , we all know it does. The concern is/was that the figures from which the base of argument was used does not seem to add up so to speak. Hence why the initial question was and still is how was the savings value determined.
Thats me on the subject.

Aaah ok, I thought it was the 150W ones. I have 6 of those, if I could get two more it would bring me up to 1.2kwp.
Some good news from the last week however: The blue CAN-bus controllers can now be controlled by the CCGX. In the past you needed that expensive cable to do it. Earlier this year they added functionality so you could control the cheaper ve-direct controllers using the CCGX. Now, finally, it doesn't matter anymore if I mix and match and put some panels on the can-controller and others on a cheaper ve-direct controller... it all comes together.
It's so hard to explain how cool it is on planet blue where Christmas comes along every few weeks... then again, I suppose I did prepay for all the gifts :-)

Now that I think about it... a French inverter cheapened by the Chinese... man that is the stuff of nightmares. I'm surprised it is as good as it appears to be!
Then again, the Hager breakers I like so much are French too. Maybe I shouldn't judge their stuff based on their cars... Ugh, horendous stuff, some of it.

Hi!
This is my first post here!
I have made a module for the Victron Color Control (CCGX) that reads data from the Tristar MPPT 60 charge controller. I case anyone is interested the source code is on GitHub:
https://github.com/osaether/dbus-tsmppt
Regards,
Ole

But that happens anyway, it's just the means that differ. An AC-driven LED simply has a different kind of SMPS in the back, but it does the same thing: Change it back into DC to drive the LEDS. It just does it as significantly better power factor (about 0.7 by my tests, which isn't brilliant, but a great deal better).
The background to the story is that the house already had the MR16s when we bought it. The simplest solution at the time was a straight swap to LED, which worked perfectly. Even if some power is lost in the old iron transformers (about 1 watt, believe it or not), it still does significantly better than the halogens that were in there before, and when driving them from Eskom power (where you pay for real power and not apparent power) the power factor really doesn't matter. It would not have been worth the extra investment in changing all the fittings, even if I had known about the problem back when I started :-)
Of course I had known about the problem for about a year, ever since I bought an old oscilloscope from gumtree. This is just the first time I looked at the totals per circuit.
I now want to improve the power factor. If it was a simple problem of a trailing current waveform (ie inductive load) you could throw capacitors at it, but the problem is more complex than that. I'll throw in my stock picture below. I think that loading the transformers down more will help, I'm just concerned about what happens if for whatever reason you want to go back to a halogen lamp. Don't want to burn anything. I can fix it easily by fusing the DC side. Just wanted to know what you guys think.
Here is an article about why the power factor is so poor at low load. Basically you have too much magnetic flux in a too large iron core that you're dragging around instead of pumping it out on the secondary side.
Okay, so us solar people know that P = IV, power is volts times amps. Now this is true for DC, but with AC it might not be. The first thing you have to understand about AC is that the voltage we normally use in everyday speech is the RMS voltage. It's an average, so to speak. If you think about the sinus waveform with the hills and valleys, and you take the top 30% of the peaks and dump it into the valleys, you'll get a flat line at 230V. The peak is actually at 325V.
Further, we know from Ohms law that I = V/R. Where R is constant, this means that your current waveform looks exactly the same as the voltage waveform. The most current is drawn when the waveform is at the top (325V), and when the voltage is at zero the current is also at zero. This is what we call a purely resistive load. The VA is exactly equal to the Watts, and the power factor is said to be unity or one.
Whenever you introduce magnetics, inductive stuff, this breaks down. Now, when the voltage is at zero the current isn't (because the magnetic flux in the device is still trying to hold the current up going the other way), and then halfway into the next cycle it has finally finished fighting the magnetic flux of the previous cycle and the current drops to zero and changes direction, but this happens long after the voltage has done so. So your current and voltage waveforms no longer line up, peak current is no longer drawn at voltage peak, and neither is zero current drawn at zero voltage.
With the LEDs the problem is actually a little worse. The current waveform IS in phase with the voltage, but it does almost all the work by the time the voltage waveform hits 40 volts, and then tapers off, so you have more of a saw-tooth waveform for the current rather than a nice smooth sine wave. You have a 5W lamp driven at 40V for all practical purposes, which means it will draw 120mA at the peak of the current waveform.
We then calculate the VA as the peak current times the RMS voltage: 0.12 * 230 = 27VA.
The real problem: The inverter cares about the peak current. It will still only take 5W out of the battery, but the power electronics are limited by their current capabilities. If you have a 100VA inverter (for arguments sake) you can literally only run three 5W lamps from it with such a poor power factor.
Below is my own measurement of one of these lamps, and this measurement was done on the DC side and doesn't even include the poor power factor of the wire-wound transformer. Notice how the lamp does all of its work using only half the voltage cycle (the saw-tooth waveform is the current waveform).

I am keeping the cruiser for weekends. Lucky for me its a 100 Series 4.2TDi, not a barbie Prado 4.0V6
I cover 2-3000Km's per month. Cruiser sits on 11l/100km, not terrible, still R4000 per month. 
I think the electric car adoption requires a total mind shift. You go from driving a car with gears and vibrations and noise ( even the best mercs have a litttle bit of it) to absolute silent, smooth drive, with instant power. Driving has become relaxing, and at the same time I am consuming 100% renewable energy. It's a good feeling. I encourage you all to take one for a drive.
Comparing this to a VW UP is wrong, Interior quality is on par with a 5 series, the interior passenger space is better than a big SUV, Can comfortable seat 4 fully grown men. It is quicker off the line that a GTI+ it drives itself in traffic!
 
Fully charges in 3.5 Hours. 78km per hour charge rate on the wall charger. Or DC quick charge to 80% is 20min
Bonus that it is free to charge at BMW garages.
 
No fuel requirement means to affected by petrol attendant strikes, Carbon fibre/lightweight construction means no possibility of hail damage. No Oil means no oil changes+Filters+Air filters+++. You change the brake fluid+cabin filter every 3 years. Regen brakes means no brake pad wear or disk replacement in the life of the car+your wheels don't get covered in brake dust. Electric AC means the cabin is always the right temp where most cars AC gets slightly warm in traffic.
 
This is the future. I can only imagine the Tesla Model 3 is going to be even better

That i my issue as well. Looking for something in 500w domestic class but AGAIN I am stuck with a 48v bank... deja vue anyone?
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I have been thinking (probably a bad sign) that the caps on an Axpert does not leave much headroom and the failures  seen maybe attributable to this. TTT is going to do flick-flacks.  I have AGM batteries and the bulk charging voltage is 56.4 volts and it drops down to 54.4V for float. The Axpert's inability to maintain voltage under circumstances like a fluctuating heavy load (ironing) or when the sun comes out behind a cloud has been discussed before and Dockarl's experience in Aus springs to mind. It is normally about 2-3 seconds but it does go over your bulk voltage. My BMV has a log of over voltages  and the highest experienced is 58.6V a whole 2.2V higher than the setting for bulk. Now if bulk is set to 59.2V  for a battery like the Trojan then 2.2V on top of that then I think we are entering TTT white smoke territory. 
So my recommendation is that if you have an Axpert use batteries that do not have a high bulk voltage requirement.
  I can see TTT firing up the Bellvile XR6 to come and donder the Engelsman.
 

'Cause you are half blind now after staring into the sun.  

The annular path was over Madagascar, Reunion and Tanzania and then over to Central Africa.
Over South Africa the effect was greater in the Transvaal. 

Hi all,
It's with some trepidation and lots of excitement that I'm releasing -- with the blessings of big blue -- the first version of Venus for the Raspberry Pi.
What this means is that you can now run the same software that runs on the Victron CCGX on a raspberry pi. You need at least a Raspberry Pi 2, though it should also work on the Pi 3.
The instructions for making this work is available here.
And no, I will not port this to windows.

Look what the postman delivered...

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Yup. Some points on that.
1. My system is paid off. Because the ROI wasn't measured in the electricity it made. It was in the hours NOT lost during load shedding.
2. It's funny how the wife got on board. Power fails at the office, she announces: I'm going home, I have power there! And away she goes.
3. Kids are scared of the dark. When your lights continue to work, it really helps them.
4. Summer heat. When you can run a fan in the kids' bedroom even when the power is down, it helps.
5. A stepping stone to bigger things. I'm a software developer, so way more of my passion for this lies with the control- and management aspect. I learned very quickly that people who sit on both these chairs are very rare. Now imagine what that is worth on a CV!
6. Now that I have a bunch of paid-for equipment, there is another investment rule that comes into play: You don't look at historical performance, only future potential (though one may of course be an indication of the other). For example, you bought a house and planned for it to pay its own bond in 5 years, but it took 10. You don't look towards the extra 5 years of lost money you had to sink when you decide whether to keep it or drop it. You look at the rental potential NOW. In the same way, the question for me is how much will it cost me now to reduce my consumption NOW. And the answer provided by a hub-4 setup combined with ignoring the historical performance (which is poor in terms of power made vs cost) says that potential is excellent.
The challenge for me, as a software/sort-of-embedded guy, is how do you get the interconnecting integration stuff to be cheaper. How do you replace the expensive CCGX with something simple that "just works" and doesn't cost more than the charge controller? With our power situation as it is, people are still willing to pay for a good UPS, so that in many cases you can ignore the ROI (in terms of generated power), and the energy saved becomes a useful extra feature (though the real product you sell is backup). I think there is a massive case to be made for this :-)

Yes but remember this all started on what would be the most economic way of going solar? Isn't that  that basis from which all decisions must be taken of? 
If your need is to save as much as possible and increase your disposable income so that , in your golden years , you would not need to look into someone's eyes for sustenance you will have to make lifestyle changes and that will include creating a "new hobby" for yourself and on that basis @The Terrible Triplett is spot on with his take on the batts. 
On the other hand , if you want to move on principle , the worst kind of decision (IMO) , to solar and you want a out of the box solution.. Then open the floodgates because you will need to throw money at this and that will include buying the meanest bank of batts.  
You can not compare the simple math of R,c against principle as principle does not have an intrinsic value. 
As per usual my 5c worth ...... 

That basically sums Solar power/design up between the last two posts. At the end of the day it is your cash that you are going to spend and if it goes wrong .. again your hard earned money that will be gone. .. 
Whether the rest has an opinion or not.

guy's just help the folk when people ask for help. someone will always offer free help

It's simpler than that really. They make it as small and as cheap as they can. Sometimes they overshoot. Then someone from Bean Counter central walks down into the basement and tells the engineers that they are getting too many warranty returns. The engineers then move the Cap one millimeter away. This process is then repeated until the Bean Counters are happy with the warranty return rate. The result is that you literally optimise cost vs life to the point where everything fails just outside of warranty.
:-)

@edmundp mentioned to me in a private conversation -- I hope he is okay with me sharing this bit -- how amazed he was at the speed at which the BlueSolar tracks. In turn, I was amazed that that is "fast", I thought all MPPTs are at least that fast. My MicroCare was at least that fast (visually). So to hear that the Voltronic MPPT is slow to back off (causing overvoltage on the DC bus) is somewhat of a surprise. You know, much as my Blue fanboydom wants to take over and celebrate... I'd think that should be easy to fix and would have been done a long time ago?

Also, rating caps just slightly above expected working voltage is done all over the place. In TTT's small Victron, I commented that I found it odd that the caps were only 16V. In the same way, I'm always amazed how car radio makers get away with 16V caps... cat batteries easily go that high on a cold morning, especially if the battery is a bit worse for wear. So a 63V cap on that bus -- though a little cheap-ass -- isn't too odd. Swinging the bats over 63V though... what the heck? :-)

If you liked that, you might also like some of Neil Kolhatkar's stuff. He's that weird kind of comedian who is byt the looks of it quite liberal, but boy can he poke fun at them! He also ventures into this equality/education/politics stuff. Eg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM-HJT8_esM
A bit more political in nature... but funny as hell.