I am in a mess at the moment. I have 4 solar pannels, three of them are "JA solar 400W" and the last one is "Set solar 370w". I spoke to an installer and he said all the pannels need to be identical. Is that true ? 

11 minutes ago, joker08 said:

I am in a mess at the moment. I have 4 solar pannels, three of them are "JA solar 400W" and the last one is "Set solar 370w". I spoke to an installer and he said all the pannels need to be identical. Is that true ? 

Ideally yes, otherwise the performance of the higher spec panels will be dragged down. But it might not be the end of the world if the difference in spec is low.

11 hours ago, joker08 said:

I am in a mess at the moment. I have 4 solar pannels, three of them are "JA solar 400W" and the last one is "Set solar 370w". I spoke to an installer and he said all the pannels need to be identical. Is that true ? 

Will it work? Yes

Will it be optimal, no, you won't get the full power output of the higher wattage panels

32 minutes ago, madness_za said:

Will it be optimal, no, you won't get the full power output of the higher wattage panels

If the difference is mainly in Vmp, then it may make very little difference.

If the difference is mainly in Imp, then you'll likely lose the difference in panel current ratings. For example, if one panel has an Imp of 9.3 A, but the other three have an Imp of 10 A, then you'll lose about 0.7/10 = 7% of the power for the three higher-power panels. Essentially, it will be like having four 370 W panels, even if most of them are 400 W panels.

Probably, there will be a little of both, so you'll get something between no difference and 7.5% difference.

On 2023/01/13 at 12:18 PM, Coulomb said:

 

If the difference is mainly in Imp, then you'll likely lose the difference in panel current ratings. For example, if one panel has an Imp of 9.3 A, but the other three have an Imp of 10 A, then you'll lose about 0.7/10 = 7% of the power for the three higher-power panels. Essentially, it will be like having four 370 W panels, even if most of them are 400 W panels.

Probably, there will be a little of both, so you'll get something between no difference and 7.5% difference.

That would be at peak time only ,but not at all the day , in other words when panels are at maximum power only . Isn't it??

16 hours ago, Riyad179 said:

That would be at peak time only ,but not at all the day , in other words when panels are at maximum power only . Isn't it??

It will be all the time as the current of all panels will always be dragged down to whatever the lowest panel can produce if they are in series.

15 hours ago, jumper said:

It will be all the time as the current of all panels will always be dragged down to whatever the lowest panel can produce if they are in series.

I got you , yes you are right . !!

Thankyou .

Hi,

 

Just as a side note, I have diffirent size panels connecting to one inverter so I can give you an idea of what my generation is. 

Setup:

1x Kodak OG 5.48 inverter

3x 370w strings of 2 panels in each string

1x 450w string of 2 panels each

On avergate I generate around 15Kwh per day depending on my load with peak generation averaging around 2.9KW and peaking over 3KW quite often on good days.

I can share more stats if interested?

Not sure if this corrolates with the calculations done above, just thought it might help. 

 

1 hour ago, WernerM said:

Hi,

 

Just as a side note, I have diffirent size panels connecting to one inverter so I can give you an idea of what my generation is. 

Setup:

1x Kodak OG 5.48 inverter

3x 370w strings of 2 panels in each string

1x 450w string of 2 panels each

On avergate I generate around 15Kwh per day depending on my load with peak generation averaging around 2.9KW and peaking over 3KW quite often on good days.

I can share more stats if interested?

Not sure if this corrolates with the calculations done above, just thought it might help. 

what monitoring tool are u using  ? 

On 2022/05/31 at 10:55 PM, joker08 said:

so I have set the "back to grid" voltage to 50(this was 49 before) and back to discharge voltage is 51 so I have kind of achieved what I wanted ... 90% of battery incase there is load shedding and then 10% of buffer for the inverter to work in battery mode. 
What I am not able to do is get the power directly from the pannels without battery in between, its always either Line mode or battery mode. 

 

 

Hi, do you mind breaking this down for me please? Still trying to understand what the back to grid and back to discharge means?

19 minutes ago, TheFran42 said:

Hi, do you mind breaking this down for me please? Still trying to understand what the back to grid and back to discharge means?

this is applicable only when u have all three sources of power available, battery, eskom power is on and solar pannels are generating electricity. 
Since this is a voltronic inverter, we have to work with voltages. If the battery is at 51 Volts, it will cut off eskom power and use battery to power the house, there is full sun so the battery will charge and discharge at the same time(this is how I understand it). 

Now say there is suddenly cloud cover, the pannels cannot keep up, the inverter uses the battery to power the house, battery volatage drops, when It drops below 49(back to grid voltage) it will stop using the power from battery and use eskom power. 

Now the cloud cover is gone, sun is shining, inverter will charge the battery, when it reaches 51V (Back to discharge) it will stop using eskom and use batteries and solar to power the house. 

13 hours ago, joker08 said:

what monitoring tool are u using  ? 

multisibcontrol.net

 

9 hours ago, TheFran42 said:

Still trying to understand what the back to grid and back to discharge means?

Back to grid is the lowest you want the battery to go before it will attempt to use the grid to recharge it. If there is load shedding it won't be able to so you need to leave some juice in the battery for that case. If there is no grid when this value is reached then it will keep going until it reaches the cutoff voltage setting.

Back to discharge is the lowest voltage at which you want to allow it switch back to using the battery once it has been charging. If you have no panels then this should be set to full (or your bulk charge value) so the battery charges fully every chance it gets when there is grid available.

13 hours ago, joker08 said:

 

what monitoring tool are u using  ? 

I found this tool on the powerforum and its a life saver for the older inverters that dont yet monitor the actual battery SOC.

 

http://www.multisibcontrol.net/Default.aspx

 

Let me know if you need any help with the config should you want to start using the app.

1 hour ago, WernerM said:

I found this tool on the powerforum and its a life saver for the older inverters that dont yet monitor the actual battery SOC.

 

http://www.multisibcontrol.net/Default.aspx

 

Let me know if you need any help with the config should you want to start using the app.

I want to use it but the challenge is that the inverter is the garage(Front of the house) and my office is in the back of the house. 
How do u manage the physical connections ? 

3 hours ago, joker08 said:

I want to use it but the challenge is that the inverter is the garage(Front of the house) and my office is in the back of the house. 
How do u manage the physical connections ? 

I have a PC that is always on at home and I use this to manage all my solar monitoring, downloads and media server.

I had to move this PC to the garage in order to get it directly connected to the inverter and batteries. had it running on wifi for a few months just for remote access but this did not work for the media streaming so I pulled through a LAN cable a few weeks ago.

1 hour ago, WernerM said:

I have a PC that is always on at home and I use this to manage all my solar monitoring, downloads and media server.

I had to move this PC to the garage in order to get it directly connected to the inverter and batteries. had it running on wifi for a few months just for remote access but this did not work for the media streaming so I pulled through a LAN cable a few weeks ago.

Thats what i dont want to do. I am already worried about the battery sitting in the garage and people eyeing it when I open the garage, a PC might attract even more attention. 
Wish there was a way to connect the inverter with a long cable or some other way. I think Solar assist should be useful in my use case

16 hours ago, joker08 said:

this is applicable only when u have all three sources of power available, battery, eskom power is on and solar pannels are generating electricity. 
Since this is a voltronic inverter, we have to work with voltages. If the battery is at 51 Volts, it will cut off eskom power and use battery to power the house, there is full sun so the battery will charge and discharge at the same time(this is how I understand it). 

Now say there is suddenly cloud cover, the pannels cannot keep up, the inverter uses the battery to power the house, battery volatage drops, when It drops below 49(back to grid voltage) it will stop using the power from battery and use eskom power. 

Now the cloud cover is gone, sun is shining, inverter will charge the battery, when it reaches 51V (Back to discharge) it will stop using eskom and use batteries and solar to power the house. 

Thanks Bro!! Really helped!

24 minutes ago, joker08 said:

Thats what i dont want to do. I am already worried about the battery sitting in the garage and people eyeing it when I open the garage, a PC might attract even more attention. 
Wish there was a way to connect the inverter with a long cable or some other way. I think Solar assist should be useful in my use case

You can get a raspberry pi and load the allpication on that, its small and you can hide it quite esily.

 

Solar assistant also needs a raspberry pi, big diffirence is that you need to pay an upfront cost for solar assistant.

Edited January 17, 20233 yr by WernerM

52 minutes ago, WernerM said:

You can get a raspberry pi and load the allpication on that, its small and you can hide it quite esily.

 

Solar assistant also needs a raspberry pi, big diffirence is that you need to pay an upfront cost for solar assistant.

yes I did think of that but the multisibcontrol website said "Requirements:- A computer that runs Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 (32/64), Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11" and raspberry Pi cannot load windows. Am i wrong ? 

16 hours ago, joker08 said:

yes I did think of that but the multisibcontrol website said "Requirements:- A computer that runs Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 (32/64), Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11" and raspberry Pi cannot load windows. Am i wrong ? 

Looks like it is possible to run Windows 10/11 on a Pi but its a painful excersie. 

I think you will be better off going with the Solar Assistant package. Its just a tough sell for me at almost 3k.

I am trying to add a new UP5000 battery to my existing system. Now I know u get interlink cables with a new battery to connect to an existing battery but i cant find out the length of the new battery. 
Issue is the new battery will be next to the existing battery and not one top of the other, so I am worried if the length of the cable will not be enough to parallel the batteries... same with the coms cable. 

If the length of the cable is not enough, how do I purchase new connectors and make a custom power cable and coms cable myself ? 

Hi guys, i wanted to know if it's possible to go completely offgrid even though grid is available? Basically i dont want to use any eskom power, but only solar and battery. I have a kodak ogs5.6 and a up5000 pylontech battery

On 2022/06/06 at 5:09 PM, Ben Harper said:

Hi @WernerM,

You should be able to find a manual for your inverter. You'll want to read through the various settings available to understand them. There isn't actually very much.

Basically, what you'll want to do is:

1. Set the "voltage point back to utility source when selecting “SBU”" - try 48V. Probably setting number 12.

2. Set the "voltage point back to battery mode when selecting “SBU”" - try 50V. Probably setting number 13.

3. Set the charger priority mode to "Solar First", aka CSO. Probably setting number 16.

4. Set the output source priority to SBU. Setting number 01.

You have a little bit of a problem here, because your inverters don't have the ability to switch between SBU and SUB on a timer. The newer ones have this timer mechanism, which allows you to switch to SUB when the sun goes down (eg 17:00), and then switch to SBU a little later (eg 20:00). Being on grid power at dusk ensures that you'll be able to "survive the night" on battery power, and by the time the sun rises the next morning, you want your battery to be at say 20% capacity remaining, and then charging and loads must be powered by the sun.

Your setup has a classic problem of being able to power 10kw of loads, but you don't have enough battery juice to power all that load between sunset and sunrise.. so your only hassle-free choice is to leave your system in SBU mode, and trust the inverters to automatically switch between battery and line mode. This is a nuisance when the sun is down, because the system will continually charge the battery, then drain it, then charge it, then drain it, ad infinitum.

My solution to this problem is to run software that I built myself, via a Raspberry Pi (https://github.com/bmharper/homepower). There is possibly other software out there too, which does the same thing. I've never had two inverters in parallel, so I don't know how the control logic works in that scenario.

In the absence of a timer based SUB/SBU switch mechanism, the only thing that I can think of is for you to try to reduce your power usage at night time.. to avoid that pointless charge/drain cycle.

Hope that helps a bit.

Hi@Ben Harper

Hope you can assist I am unable to change the voltage in 1 volt increments it change with 5v increments what could be reason?

Hi @Inverter , if you've got the BMS cable connected, then the battery thresholds you are seeing might be SOC and not voltage. If they go up to 100, then it's probably SOC. SOC is what you want anyway, since voltage is just a vague proxy for SOC.

Hi @Ben Harper I want to use SBU in program 1 and want to adjust 12 to 48v when the grid must take over.

In program 12 I want to change the voltage to 48V but increments on the inverter jump with 5V. What must I do to change it to have 1V increments please?