Hi, my first post, but has been browsing the forum for a while.

I'm starting to renovate my house, and was looking getting solar. Intention is to mount the Inverter (probably Sunsynk 8kw) and (1 x Hubble 5.5kw) on a wall in my kitchen high up near the ceiling, above the current DB board.

The wiring from the panels will come down from the roof. 

What size should the conduit be for all the cabling of the solar panels? 

I dont have an answer to your question, but a word of warning that the fans on the 8kw sunsynk are quite noisy and are on and off all day. I would suggest not putting it in the kitchen if at all possible.

20 minutes ago, piranha786 said:

....kitchen high up near the ceiling, above the current DB board.

You really want the Display and menu buttons at eye-level. Getting on a ladder or steps to check or change things will soon get tiresome.

For the trunking, you want the DC and AC separate, or at least have trunking with a divider. Depending on your planned future requirements, like more batteries, etc, the size of trunking will vary anywhere  from 50mm, 80mm, 100mm.

The Sunsynk 8.8K is a large 650x420x240 mm beast which weighs a lot, and has no mounting frame like the Sunsynk 5.5K, but is bolted directly to the wall with 4x rawl bolts. So mounting high up requires strong hands. The Hubble AM-2 battery is also heavy at +40 KG, and requires 4x rawl bolts too.

The 3x fans on the Sunsynk 8.8K do play beautiful melodies throughout the day, and sound fascinating with different RPM's and timings. It really is something special to hear.😆

2 hours ago, piranha786 said:

above the current DB board.

If you install it above the DB board, there is a risk of drilling into live cables trying to install the inverter as you normally have many conduit pipes with live wires running from the DB board into the roof area.

Have the 5kw sunsynk and it can get super load especially when the Aux is used as output it gets an extra coil wine sound. When hot, the internal fans get quite load and like mentioned above the rpms adjust so it will probably drive you quite mad. 

If you have no other place than the house itself (garage, outside toilet building etc) , the least used room would probably be your best bet or you might even consider installing inverter outside with a canopy kinda thing to protect it from rain etc. Then add battery inside on other side of wall. Not 100% sure if the 8.8kw is also IP65 rated as the 5kw?

Depending how many strings you use of the units 4 available, you could use either trunking or conduit. Trunking is definitely neater though. You will see most installs have trunking beneath the inverter where you can use sprag 20mm to run your cables neatly to inverter. 

On the AC cables, don't skimp. Get the correct 16mm2 cable or at least the 10mm2. 

All the best on the journey. It's well worth it. 

17 hours ago, Robbo said:

I dont have an answer to your question, but a word of warning that the fans on the 8kw sunsynk are quite noisy and are on and off all day. I would suggest not putting it in the kitchen if at all possible.

That was one of the indirect questions, so your answer is helpful. - I have small mecer inverter and already get annoyed for the noise it makes. 

 

16 hours ago, TimCam said:

You really want the Display and menu buttons at eye-level. Getting on a ladder or steps to check or change things will soon get tiresome.

For the trunking, you want the DC and AC separate, or at least have trunking with a divider. Depending on your planned future requirements, like more batteries, etc, the size of trunking will vary anywhere  from 50mm, 80mm, 100mm.

The Sunsynk 8.8K is a large 650x420x240 mm beast which weighs a lot, and has no mounting frame like the Sunsynk 5.5K, but is bolted directly to the wall with 4x rawl bolts. So mounting high up requires strong hands. The Hubble AM-2 battery is also heavy at +40 KG, and requires 4x rawl bolts too.

The 3x fans on the Sunsynk 8.8K do play beautiful melodies throughout the day, and sound fascinating with different RPM's and timings. It really is something special to hear.😆

Very good points, and information around size and weight. Thank you. Seems that I should rather move the inverter + Batteries to a different room.

 

15 hours ago, Don said:

If you install it above the DB board, there is a risk of drilling into live cables trying to install the inverter as you normally have many conduit pipes with live wires running from the DB board into the roof area.

You right, I was thinking of mounting it above, but not directly above the DB Board, but then I wouldn't be able to access the screen or buttons.

 

10 hours ago, JoeSlow said:

Have the 5kw sunsynk and it can get super load especially when the Aux is used as output it gets an extra coil wine sound. When hot, the internal fans get quite load and like mentioned above the rpms adjust so it will probably drive you quite mad. 

If you have no other place than the house itself (garage, outside toilet building etc) , the least used room would probably be your best bet or you might even consider installing inverter outside with a canopy kinda thing to protect it from rain etc. Then add battery inside on other side of wall. Not 100% sure if the 8.8kw is also IP65 rated as the 5kw?

Depending how many strings you use of the units 4 available, you could use either trunking or conduit. Trunking is definitely neater though. You will see most installs have trunking beneath the inverter where you can use sprag 20mm to run your cables neatly to inverter. 

On the AC cables, don't skimp. Get the correct 16mm2 cable or at least the 10mm2. 

All the best on the journey. It's well worth it. 

How difficult is it to configure the Inverter? I can get my electrician to wire it up to the DB, but I doubt he have experience with solar installations.

If I look at buying the equipment, and do a DIY installation, it seems that I would "save" around R20k.

 

 

 

 

I also initially wanted to mount it inside because my garage is not connected to my house, eventually decided to lift the paving and I am glad I did.