reapster

Hi all
Here is the update on how to make your own inductor to filter out the noise coming from the inverter.
First off, you will need a core to wind your wire around. A toroidal core will be the easiest to work with and will also radiate the least amount of EMI. The bigger the core, generally speaking, the better as you will be able to get more windings on it with a thicker wire. Here is the biggest one I could find with a good permeability:
https://www.mantech.co.za/ProductInfo.aspx?Item=82M1485
 
The enamel wire diameter will determine the amount of amps it will be able to handle. I would recommend using 1-1.6mm diameter wire. You can find a good variety from Communica.
https://www.communica.co.za/products/eccw-1-25
Just note that thicker wires will be more difficult to work with, but will obviously be able to handle more current. Here is a website to give you an idea of the current carrying capability of different wire thicknesses:
https://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm
 
How many turns do you need? Well you would want to wind the inductor to get you an inductance of at least 1mH, but more than 5mH would probably be overkill. You can calculate the exact number of windings you'll need with a nifty program called Coil64:
https://coil32.net/download-coil64-for-windows.html
For the above-mentioned core and wire, you will need about 50turns to get 1mH and 75turns for 2mH. (The inductance goes up with the square of the number of windings and the resistance of the wire goes up linearly with number of windings).
 
As mentioned before, you would place this filter "In-Line" by breaking either live or neutral and join the break through the inductor. 
Also, be sure to use a surge protector on the load side of the filter as inductors might cause voltage spikes when the current draw through it changes.
 
I still need to test my toroidal filter to see how many amps it can handle, but for now I can definitely say that it works in filtering out the noise to a level that is completely inaudible. The previous filter I made with the E-core handles 8 amps without getting too hot. I would guess that the smaller toroidal core will do about 3 amps, as I had to use a thinner 1.25mm wire instead of the 2mm wire.
Hope it helps!
 

Ah, fair enough, the Tuya or CBI apps kinda suck with the breakdown of usage over time, agreed. I got them since they work with Home Assistant, which does do a nice graph.
I also have used a Nanoview in the past which I think can do 16 CTs, but that was also feeding into Grafana for graphing which needed some modifications.
 
Good luck!

If anyone wants the below, free to anyone willing to collect (Southern Suburbs, CPT)

I have 2 setups with a Pi monitoring the batteries via the RS232 port (I just use a MAX2232 module to do the TTL<->RS232 level conversion, but the USB<->RS232 devices work great too), using https://github.com/Tertiush/bmspace. Works great, and goes into home assistant.
I've also gotten PBMSTools to work remotely with ser2net to read out the logs which was helpful. They're standard PACE BMS's though, so anything that talks to Hubble/Revov/SVolt (and many, many others) etc will work.

some "gotchas" for balancing these:
The SVolts PACE BMS is set to start balancing at 3.5v/cell, 20mv difference (so anything less and it wont kick in).
They will keep balancing once OVP is hit at least, so that helps a bit. 
If at any point it sees a discharge, balancing stops immediately - so, if you have a bulk and float, and the current drops and it drops to float, balancing stops. I usually set float and balance the same when trying to get these (PACE BMS based batteries) balanced.
SVolt recently changed their recommended voltages to the below:
 

a Short Guide to Bring Up a 5kW Axpert Main Board in the Softest Possible Manner : Chapter 1 
The reasonable amount of success I enjoyed repairing the MAX range of inverter is because of using a methodology to power the system supplies of the board , and debug the critical sections like mosfet and igbt drivers , without powering the actual power chain . This means zero voltage on the battery bus , zero voltage on the high voltage DC bus , no grid , no pv. The max has actually an external system supply connector which makes this feasible. The 5kW boards does not have this option , but we have devised a non-intrusive way of  injecting raw dc for the system supply SMPS.
The reason why this bare minimum soft method of powering the system is important , is it allows you to debug all the Mosfet and IGBT drivers  without the risk of blowing those very  expensive Mosfets and IGBTs . You can now test the circuit in a very controlled and safe environment.
So the idea is that you remove the main board and remove ALL external interfaces . That includes the DSP controller board, the MPPT board , the fans , the comm modules . In the end you are left with just the bare main board.
Prerequisite 
The only initial condition required , is that the battery bus , the high voltage dc bus and the ac output bus have no short circuits . These conditions you can verify by checking with multimeter. if there are shorts you need to check the mosfets and igbts for failures by isolating them. You dont have to substitute them yet with new transistor , but you need to remove faulty ones. Refer to Voltronics service manual which will guide you thru resistive tests in order to verify the typical resistances required.  We are currently only interested that the gate to source are not shorted , because that will prevent us to test the gate driver signals later on the exercise. In the case of IGBTS this is gate to emitter.  
Also read the resistance of 12V,-12V and 5V rails to GND. with the 12v and 5v the capicitors will see to it that the resistance gradually increase . The 5V will easily reach >10k , the 12V >50k  , but the -12V will be reasonable steady at at about 450 ohms.
Once your board has no bus related short circuits , we are good to go in order to bring up  the main supply.
 
Powering the up the Main SMPS
So we going to inject external controlled power to the input of the SMPS . You will need a current limited 30V dc power supply , but you will need a minimum of 30V. The voltage may be as high as 55VDC , but we will stay with 30V for safety reasons. Limit the maximum current of the power supply to 200mA .  We going to draw about 100mA if the board powers up 'nicely'.
The SMPS is normally supplied by the battery input  . However we don't want to apply power to the battery terminals, so we inject our 30V supply as follows. Notice below that there is a 2-pin SCC connector . Next to it is a 2-pin AC-START connector . You must connect your 30V positive terminal on pin 2 of SCC connector. Doing so allow us to inject voltage on the SMPS input feed , but D53 will block the voltage reaching the battery positive , or CH+ as depicted in the schematic.

 
Now we are left with connecting the negative of our 30V supply to the negative CH- rail. Note that you cannot connect it onto the battery negative terminal , because  some boards have reverse polarity mosfets that will not be biased , so we need to connect to the CH- rail . A convenient way of doing so is to locate to upright metal spacers , which is labelled CHG+ and CHG- (or CH+/CH- as per schematic) . I have tied my power supply negative conveniently  to this metal spacer.
Once you have connected and powered on your power supply , you will notice that no current is drawn. That is because you must start the SMPS manually. This is what the AC-START 2-pn connector is there for. You can either connect the inverter on-off switch here , or you can merely temporarily short out the 2 terminal for 2 seconds or so. If all goes well you will notice the power supply is delivering about 100mA of current to the SMPS .
We can now check the 5V , 12V and -12V rail voltages . The 5V should be very close to 5.0V , 100mV either way is ok. 12V should be from 11.85V upwards but not exceeding 12.4V .  Same for -12V (-11.8 to -12.4)
I will post again as chapter 2 of this post .
.... to be continued ....
 
 
 

If anyone wants the below, free to anyone willing to collect (Southern Suburbs, CPT)

From SVolt tech support:

Awesome meeting you today
Looking forward to start my new side project using that battery box. Perfect for what I have in mind.

If anyone wants the below, free to anyone willing to collect (Southern Suburbs, CPT)

As far as I know Synerjis are and remain clones (stolen design and firmware, with minor changes here and there). But the later models might be genuine rebrands.
This board basically houses some SCRs which  implement the UPS AC input range setting. It allows the inverter to switch to or from battery mode in roughly 10 ms, as opposed to about 20 ms without it. That's not something you'd typically notice unless you have sensitive equipment and/or are looking / listening for it.

Seems like such a thing called a rotary phase converter exists, which seems pretty interesting, and, possible to DIY (its pretty much 3-phase motor with some capacitors and drop-out relay) it seems.

Hey Guys so its that time of the year again and we have a whole Host of Giveaways lined up some to watch out for would be the New Solis S6 6KW Advanced Hybrid (Beast) we are busy with a long term review in real world conditions with the Solis S6 the Unit we are giving away has already gone through a preliminary review but we may give more of this brand away in the future. 
Magneto has given us some wonderful product to review and give away MAGNETO Lithium-LiFePo4 Rack Mount 48V 5.1 KWh also note the great prices on those units  and a  Magneto Thermo Tank also promise of more nice items to give away in the future. 
Then we Have the Revo Inverter and battery Combo (not listed on our online store yet but soon) there will be some terms and conditions on this giveaway however an exciting product squarely aimed at Sunsynk and Deye.
We are also receiving a very nice Battery from Halo Energy to give away the 113AH HALO Eclipse WM-5 48V 1C however this will only be in about 5 Weeks time but still a very nice compact battery.  
Power2SA is giving us one of their VTC Vxl5100W 5.1kWh LifePo4 battery 51V/100Ah Rack Mount to review and test this is also a very nice rack mount battery with Bluetooth and WIFI features decent cycle count compatibility and scalability and we will give this away to a lucky forum member. 

I have three packs, two are charging and functioning and are balanced. I have one problem child and this weekend I charged and discharged many times using a battery capacity tester and a bench power supply, and monitoring what is going on with PBMSTools.
- There are 3 cells that are at a very high SOC, and 4 at a verly low SOC
- Typically the cells would reach OVP at 3.65V while the lower cluster are still at 3.37V.
- In all my efforts the weak passive balancer could improve the state of affairs for the low cells by 10 mV (from 3.36 to 3.37) at the time of OVP.
 
So I decided to do something about this. And that is to retrofit an active balancer to each of these packs. But first, I needed to open them to see if there is enough space.
So, for those who wonder what it looks like inside, I'll upload some picks

Just got 16 of these too! As mentioned previously, all pretty much perfectly balanced (within 1-2mv)
Just waiting on the clips + bus bars too now.

Eskom are welcome to incentivise the behaviour change, and I'll gladly take advantage of that (which is exactly time of use tariff as mentioned above, though I know zero about whether this is available to us lowly individuals).
Without that, I'll not be lifting a finger to help a failed SoE out of the goodness of my heart.

Eskom are welcome to incentivise the behaviour change, and I'll gladly take advantage of that (which is exactly time of use tariff as mentioned above, though I know zero about whether this is available to us lowly individuals).
Without that, I'll not be lifting a finger to help a failed SoE out of the goodness of my heart.

Eskom are welcome to incentivise the behaviour change, and I'll gladly take advantage of that (which is exactly time of use tariff as mentioned above, though I know zero about whether this is available to us lowly individuals).
Without that, I'll not be lifting a finger to help a failed SoE out of the goodness of my heart.

Eskom are welcome to incentivise the behaviour change, and I'll gladly take advantage of that (which is exactly time of use tariff as mentioned above, though I know zero about whether this is available to us lowly individuals).
Without that, I'll not be lifting a finger to help a failed SoE out of the goodness of my heart.

Awesome! Premium kit from one of the best Solar suppliers in SA
Can't complain about that

Thanks again. I managed to get it from Postnet today after work. It is working very well on my Hubble S-100's. 

Have a spare HA02 battery balancer that I no longer need, free to a good (or any) home.
Located in southern suburbs, CPT, if you want to collect, but can courier if need be.
 

I ordered R2k of parts (IGBTs, caps, power diodes) from DigiKey. Super quick courier, but got nailed for R628.80 customs/import duties. This was Sept, 2022.

Heya @BritishRacingGreenR628.80 was the total I had to pay, after paying for the DigiKey order, so no, not as far as I understand. There wasn't any tax/vat on the digikey invoice, so I guess the R628.80 essentially includes "VAT" in this case.

Have a spare HA02 battery balancer that I no longer need, free to a good (or any) home.
Located in southern suburbs, CPT, if you want to collect, but can courier if need be.