March 17, 20179 yr Some settings perhaps need more clarification as they are dependent on whether one uses ICC and a BMV700/BMV702 to control the Axpert. If that is the case, setting 2 is set by ICC to switch between solar and grid. Setting 12 (back to grid) I have set at 44V and setting 13 (back to solar/batteries) at 48V. These settings are on advice from JDP during the days of AICC and was to prevent the Axpert and now of course the ICC program competing to control the inverter. Please correct me if I am wrong. However for clarity's sake perhaps it should be pointed out that there is a difference depending on whether ICC or the Axpert itself does the controlling. Of course it is every user's choice but ICC-Pi works very well for me and it is great to be able to see what is going on with the system and control it from my office Windows desktop, Android tablet or Android mobile from anywhere in the world. Other control programs probably offer similar features but I have no knowledge of them so cannot express an opinion.
March 17, 20179 yr thank you don and chris for your advice, indeed battery specs are important! what i have are 4 x Sonic – SS Series – 250Ah 12v – Gel Batteries, image included. they weigh in at 70kg a piece... in the meantime i have switched setting 2 to 30a but if you guys think it has to go lower, so be it!
March 17, 20179 yr 24 minutes ago, gabriel said: thank you don and chris for your advice, indeed battery specs are important! what i have are 4 x Sonic – SS Series – 250Ah 12v – Gel Batteries, image included. they weigh in at 70kg a piece... in the meantime i have switched setting 2 to 30a but if you guys think it has to go lower, so be it! Hi Gabriel Here is the Sonic SS datasheet Sonic SS.pdf. I am happy with charging at 30A. Gel and AGM batteries can handle higher charge rates than traditional lead acid batteries. Their specs at 25oC is 56.4 V for bulk and 54V for float so no changes needed there. So you can leave Programs 5, 26 and 27 as is. Your batteries are good quality, meeting or exceeding Trojans' specs and on the site I look at, even competing on price. You have opted not to charge your batteries from Eskom but in winter you may be forced to. One then just changes Program 16 to SNU.
March 17, 20179 yr 5 minutes ago, Chris Hobson said: Your batteries are good quality, meeting or exceeding Trojans' specs and on the site I look at, even competing on price. I think @SilverNodashi said they are good as long as you watch the temperatures, ie keep them in a cool place. Do I remember this correctly?
March 17, 20179 yr 21 minutes ago, plonkster said: I think @SilverNodashi said they are good as long as you watch the temperatures, ie keep them in a cool place. Do I remember this correctly? JIp I remember Silver saying something like that (I can't remember which brand was the offending battery). Nothing in the specs (but I would not expect it to). Practical experience always trumps paperwork.
March 17, 20179 yr Hi ebrsa, I know these settings can be confusing at times. I will try and explain them the way I see them: 6 hours ago, ebrsa said: If that is the case, setting 2 is set by ICC to switch between solar and grid. Setting 2 is the maximum charge current (solar and utility). I think you were referring to setting 1. If you set it to Utl, it will stay on Utility forever. The inverter cannot switch between Uti, SOL or SbU by itself. I don't think the intention was ever to setup the inverter to do the controlling without intervention. You cannot set it up, get in your car and go on holiday for a month and think the inverter will change from grid to solar and back on a daily basis doing the controlling. If there are power outages or load shedding, that it can do. Once you add solar panels and prioritise where to charge from, it gets complicated. Most of the Inverter settings in my view should rather be seen as "Fail Safe" limit settings to either prevent damage to the Inverter or to the Batteries. They are not really control settings. Only once an unwanted event occurs and any "Fail Safe" settings has been breached, will the inverter take action, i.e. go back to grid, shut down, or whatever. Or should the laptop, Tablet, Pi, or any device you have ICC running on doing the monitoring and controlling stop working for any reason, that is when the inverter settings come into play. With these settings, you ensure it never becomes a runaway train and runs itself to destruction. ICC has 2 control mechanisms to change from grid to solar or vice versa. - SOC Control: This is actually the only parameter ICC controls with some intelligence behind it. - Time Control: Switches at a set time, irrespective of any other setting. If you have a sudden unexpected high load during the day and the inverter decides to go back to grid, that is what is supposed to happen. I don't see that as interfering with the control. 6 hours ago, ebrsa said: Setting 12 (back to grid) I have set at 44V and setting 13 (back to solar/batteries) at 48V. These settings are on advice from JDP during the days of AICC and was to prevent the Axpert and now of course the ICC program competing to control the inverter. Setting 12 at 44V is way to low for me. I am not prepared to take my batteries below 12V, so 48V is the minimum for me. My current setting is at 49V. If the batteries reach that voltage, they must be pretty flat and need a descent charge before going back to batteries, therefore my setting 13, back to solar is 54V. If all else fails, shut down the system at 47V, setting 29. That is just my view.
March 17, 20179 yr 1 hour ago, Chris Hobson said: I am happy with charging at 30A. Gel and AGM batteries can handle higher charge rates than traditional lead acid batteries. Their specs at 25oC is 56.4 V for bulk and 54V for float so no changes needed there. So you can leave Programs 5, 26 and 27 as is. I agree with Chris.
March 17, 20179 yr 13 hours ago, Chris Hobson said: Send me your e-mail address in a personal message and I will send you a copy of Don's Axpert guide Too late Chris, I already sent him a link earlier today where he could download a copy of Your Axpert Guide V1.1 from my DropBox.
March 18, 20179 yr Hi @Don , Perhaps I did not explain myself clearly. If you are using ICC-Pi with a BMV700 or 702 connected to the Pi and using SOC to control switching between grid and solar, ICC apparently uses setting 1 to switch the Axpert by changing this setting between Uti and SBU. Sorry I did make a mistake by referring to setting 2 instead of setting 1. I asked this question from JDP and he confirmed that is how AICC and I would assume ICC controls the Axpert to switch the input source. It could be easily tested by manually checking setting 1 on the Axpert, then using ICC to switch to the alternative source manually and checking setting 1 again. In the same scenario, JDP advised that settings 12 and 13 should be set at a low voltage to prevent the firmware interfering with the ICC program. At present my ICC-Pi is set to a time schedule switching but if I leave home for an extended time I will simply switch to SOC control with a minimum setting of 80%. Alternatively I could set up the Axpert to control itself and switch off the Pi. Since I can access ICC and MQTT over the internet remotely, I will more likely continue to let ICC do the control. My main point was really that one should distinguish between how the Axpert firmware settings are set depending on whether you use ICC with a BMV or not. Perhaps we should ask @Manie 's advice for clarity on the matter since he knows the inner workings of the ICC Pi and Windows programs.
March 18, 20179 yr 29 minutes ago, ebrsa said: ICC apparently uses setting 1 to switch the Axpert by changing this setting between Uti and SBU. Yes, that is correct. Instead of gong to the inverter and manually changing setting 1, you can change the setting from anywhere using ICC on any pc or mobile device. 31 minutes ago, ebrsa said: In the same scenario, JDP advised that settings 12 and 13 should be set at a low voltage to prevent the firmware interfering with the ICC program. That might be true if you do not have a BMV702, because the inverter SOC is inaccurate to start off with. If you then set the DC disconnect voltage (Setting 29) anything higher than the lowest setting which is 42 volts, it becomes highly inaccurate. Even so, I personally think that JDP gave you the wrong advice. If you have a BMV702 and ICC running and controlling on SOC, it will control very accurately. If you set your SOC at say 70 or 80%, once it reaches that level, it will change to grid or vice versa, depending on your settings. If you set your inverter Setting 12 (back to grid) at 48Volts = 50% SOC. It will never interfere with the ICC SOC control. Just keep in mind that your current Setting 12 = 44V. That is less than 10% SOC. You basically run your batteries into the ground. Should you not be home and your Pi freezes up for some reason or gets taken out by a power surge, the only control left will be the inverter control. Once it reaches your setting of 44V and switches back to grid, you probably would have done some permanent damage to your batteries.
March 18, 20179 yr Hi @Don, I take your point of not wanting to damage your batteries and neither do I. What complicates the issue is that my T105 data sheet gives voltages for various % SOC as open circuit voltages which differs quite a bit from voltages under load. What I was also trying to highlight is that if someone does NOT use a BMV to determine SOC for purposes of switching the input source, such settings surely must be different than if your use for example a BMV and ICC. So there are really two scenarios for Axpert settings, one when using a BMV with ICC and another when the Axpert firmware, such as it is, does the switching . Also when running ICC on SOC or time based switching, ICC changes setting 2 in order to switch between grid and solar/battery, so in my experience ICC will change setting 1 between SBU and Utl by itself. One option might be that I run my batteries down to 50% by checking SG and then measure the voltage under base load and set setting 12 accordingly. Normally I don't run the batteries down below 75% SOC. After several tests I run on grid from 16:30 until 1:00 when ICC switches over to batteries. This will change as winter arrives but I check in the mornings and if necessary, manually switch to grid until solar produces enough for base load. I guess it will take time to identify the ideal features and for @Manie to incorporate them into ICC Ver 2 should he be so inclined. As soon as one tries to formulate the ideal setup, things gets very complicated very quickly so at the moment I just plod along with ICC doing most of the decision making and me interfering manually on rare occasions. Even when away from home I can do this by connection daily via my VPN to my network. However clearly a fail safe set of settings has to be found to handle events should I not be able to connect to the LAN.
March 19, 20179 yr Hi @ebrsa, 16 hours ago, ebrsa said: What I was also trying to highlight is that if someone does NOT use a BMV to determine SOC for purposes of switching the input source, such settings surely must be different than if your use for example a BMV and ICC. Yes, they are way different. I am not sure how a person can even think of doing SOC controlling without a BMV. It must be a nightmare. The inverter calculates the "Battery Capacity" using the "Battery Voltage" and the "Cutoff voltage". Only a Chinaman could think there is a correlation between these values. But they never tell you not to touch the Cutoff Voltage, as that has a huge impact on the calculation. If they wanted to make it more or less accurate, they should have used a value of 42 on a 48V system and not linked it to the cutoff voltage. Have a look at my graph below with a cutoff value set at 48V. When I switched over to Solar/Batteries at 24h00 last night, the Battery Capacity immediately dropped to 30%. I forgot to switch off the heat pump on one of the geysers, that is the up and down movement you see on the graph. Every time the compressor kicked in, the battery voltage would drop slightly, but look at the impact on the Battery Capacity. When the sun came up, the actual BMV-702 SOC was sitting at 88%, but the inverters indicated a Battery Capacity of 31%. Huge difference. To protect my batteries, I have set the following values on my inverter: Setting 12: 49V Setting 13: 54V Setting 29: 48V Those settings I do not touch. I have a 500 Ah battery bank which can handle switching on a 18 000 BTU air conditioner until the solar panels catch up and take over the load. What makes it even worse is guys that have small battery banks. If they try and do it, the battery voltage would take a nose dive and before the solar panels can take over the load, it would switch to grid. So to compensate and make sure the inverter does not go back to grid, they set Back to Grid Voltage right down. That might be fine as it is only for a very short period of time. But as explained in my previous post, what happens when you are not there and something goes wrong? The inverters will keep running till it reaches that low down value before switching back to grid, after bending a few plates inside the batteries. 17 hours ago, ebrsa said: As soon as one tries to formulate the ideal setup, things gets very complicated very quickly You are right, as soon as you try and make the system intelligent and run like a PLC, taking everything into consideration, is not going to be easy.
March 19, 20179 yr Hi @Don, Thanks a great deal for your detailed explanation of your system. I have a 450AH battery bank but panels of 2310W. This works fine for my relatively low base load of around 700W during daytime and slightly less at night. I will try your 12,13 and 29 settings and see how it works. What I am trying to avoid is the Axpert settings competing with ICC in switching the input source, but then the proof of the pudding is in the eating and if the settings do not give you problems in this respect, they should work for me too. Maybe if we all put our heads together to try and define features to make ICC even better and proposals in how to achieve it, without causing a train smash in programming, we would have something worthwhile to propose to @Manie.
March 19, 20179 yr 22 minutes ago, ebrsa said: I will try your 12,13 and 29 settings and see how it works. What I am trying to avoid is the Axpert settings competing with ICC in switching the input source @ebrsa, looking at your battery Ah capacity, load and Solar Panel array size, those settings will never interfere with the ICC control. Those settings are there purely to protect your batteries. 22 minutes ago, ebrsa said: Maybe if we all put our heads together to try and define features to make ICC even better and proposals in how to achieve it, without causing a train smash in programming, we would have something worthwhile to propose to @Manie. I agree, we can all contribute and propose additional settings to make ICC more intelligent and @Manie can have a look which are feasible and which are not.
March 21, 20179 yr Hi @Don, I set 12,13 and 29 to your settings yesterday. ICC is set to switch to grid at 16:45 and to battery/solar at 1:00. This morning at 7:00 my batteries were at 91.4% SOC and 51.7V and the inverters were switched to grid. Manual switching just would not change the state to batteries/solar, even after rebooting the Pi twice. So it appears that the Axpert settings, or at least setting 13, did interfere with ICC. Why it switched to grid at about 4:00 is unclear. Below is the battery state graph from MQTT. Bear in mind that I only charge from grid at 2A in an effort to optimise on solar which works well. So I changed setting 12 to 47V, 13 to 48V and 29 to 46.5 as a test and ICC switched to solar/batteries flawlessly. I suppose the reason why your settings work for you is because you also charge from grid, judging from past posts. I will obviously have to fine-tune these settings to prevent ruining my batteries. I am trying to get the batteries to be at their lowest SOC when the panels generate enough to charge them in the morning. So for me, with a low base load of about 500W at night and at this point in the seasons, the present time settings works well. Usually at about 15:30 my batteries are at 100% SOC.
March 21, 20179 yr 1 hour ago, ebrsa said: Why it switched to grid at about 4:00 is unclear. Hi ebrsa, I am not sure either. It might have been the back to grid voltage setting of 49V, I am not sure. The inverter does not work on decimals, I think your voltage might have gone just below 50V to 49.8 or 49.9V and the inverter read it as 49V, which was the back to grid voltage. 1 hour ago, ebrsa said: I will obviously have to fine-tune these settings to prevent ruining my batteries. Setting 12 at 47V is fine. Once the voltage goes below 48V, it should then go to grid. Setting 13 is too low. As soon as it goes to grid the voltage would very quickly reach 48V, if not immediately without any load and would then immediately go back to batteries again. Rather set it at anything between 50-54V to give the batteries some time to charge before going back to batteries. Setting 29 is fine. Yes, what works for me might not work for you. I run from batteries from 24h00 with a base load of 500 Watt. I have a heat pump heating a geyser from 4h30 - 5h00 for my daughter. I end up with a SOC of around 86 - 90% when the sun starts charging my batteries. I have relative new batteries and the voltage might be higher than your batteries. But in a years time I might also be forced to set down the settings as they get older. 1 hour ago, ebrsa said: I suppose the reason why your settings work for you is because you also charge from grid, judging from past posts. I actually do very little charging from grid. I would cut back on my load in the late afternoon and push everything into the batteries. I might end up at 98 - 99% SOC, when going to grid and they might charge for 30 minutes at a very low rate and go to 100%.
March 27, 20179 yr Hi @Don, I have had some interesting experiences during the past few days. The Axperts' setting 12 is set to 46V (the default) and 13 to 48V. This has resulted in a pseudo automatic system in conjunction with ICC-Pi. My ICC is set to switch to solar/batteries at 1:00 and to grid at 16:30. This morning at about 6:30 the batteries were at 82.4% SOC and 50.6V. I monitored ICC on my mobile phone when I switched the kettle of 2Kw on for morning tea. The lotal load was about 2.8Kw and the Axperts promptly switched to grid. A few minutes after the kettle switched off, the Axperts switched back to solar/batteries. Later during the morning my wife turned on the kettle while the dishwasher and washing machine were on and the same took place. It would seem that with the appropriate settings of the Axperts' parameters 12 and 13, one could have a kind of automatic switching to grid when heavy battery loads occur. Of course it is going to take some experimentation and may not work for everyone. AH of the battery bank is probably also a factor but mine is 450AH so one would not expect very large voltage dips. However I guess it must be a voltage dip of short duration that dropped below setting 12 of 46V and switched the Axperts to grid and then after a delay of a few minutes, the solar/battery voltage being higher than setting 13 of 48V, switched them back to solar/battery. So maybe ICC and the Axpert settings can co-operate to achieve the desired result after all. The graph above is the grid trend from MQTT as you have probably recognised. I will see how it works out over time.
March 27, 20179 yr Hi @ebrsa, I had the same experience today. I did some welding and grinding today. At some point at around 11h48 my load went to a peak of 9 371 watts. Murphy's Law, same time clouds moved in and my solar output was at a low of about 900 watts. I exceeded the 8 000 watts inverter capacity by far, but they kept going. Then at 12h05, for some reason my inverters decided to go to grid. After I finished I came inside the house to take a break and I heard the inverters switching. I went to my PC to have a look. I then realised I actually heard them switch back to solar. I never even realised they switched to grid. From the graphs I cannot really see why they switched, I will have a look later. I would have expected them to switch at the earlier point where I exceeded the load by some margin. For some reason they switched to grid when load seemed to be a lot less. I think they just had enough of the high loads and wanted to take a break, haha. In any case, it is nice to know that the switching to grid function and back again is working for me too.
March 27, 20179 yr Hi @Don, Perhaps if you have a look at the MQTT Grid Trends you may spot it. That is where I found mine. At least it is good to know your Axperts worked similarly to mine. Thanks a lot for the reply.
June 3, 20197 yr Hi All Looking for a bit of advice on the system I have had installed. Am looking to save the most money on my utility bill but still preserve the batteries lives for as many years as possible. My average daily power usage is 18-20 kw/h so nothing too intense. The system I have had installed is: 1 × Axpert 5kva Inverter 4 × NXT 200a/h deep cycle batteries wired to 48v configuration 8 × 350w multicrystalline panels the settings are currently: 1 - Sol 2 - 60A 3 - apl 4 - sds 5 - agn 9 - 50hz 11 - 30a 12 - 46v 13 - 54v 16 - cso Any advise on the optimal settings would be great
October 1, 20205 yr Very useful input guys, thanks! I am also trying to get my Axpert settings dialled in and this is educating me bit by bit, esp on the max charging current.
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