I have 12 x JA 72 cell 545 watt mono panels how should I string them onto my Growatt SPF 5000 ES inverter?  I currently have 6 facing east and 6 facing west on an east west facing home.. in 2 strings of 6 parralel connection...how would you do it differently? 

 

My max draw at the moment on my Growatt SPF 5000 Es inverter has been 2900Watts.and only for a few minutes most of the time my average draw is 560watts.

Do you think i could add my geyser Circuit - a 150L Kwikott Dual 600 with a 1.5kw Geyserwise Stainless PTC element onto my daytime solar circuit, maybe with a timer so there is no draw at night time?( understanding that there will be no hot water late at night) but i can always override the timer so it uses utility power(Eskom) if need be?

Would appreciate opinions....

 

Edited August 8, 20224 yr by RayJ
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Do I understand you correctly? You have strung all 12 panels in one series string? Those panels are near 50volt VOC. That would be a theoretical 600V DC. Your inverter max is 450V on the MPPT.
Your Inverter unfortunately has only a single MPPT. So the best you can do is string the 6 E in series and string 6 W in series, then you parallel the two strings.
I think there are two sets of input MC-4 connectors that are paralleled already on the inverter, so you connect each series string of 6 to one of the MC-4 input connectors.
 

Please take note of the reply from @zsde

You can be lucky the MPPT is still working after exceeding your 450V maximum..

Sorry I made an error it's 2 sets of 6 panels on each string....so I did do it correctly they combine with 2 y connectors then come into the inverter as as one

19 hours ago, zsde said:

Do I understand you correctly? You have strung all 12 panels in one series string? Those panels are near 50volt VOC. That would be a theoretical 600V DC. Your inverter max is 450V on the MPPT.
Your Inverter unfortunately has only a single MPPT. So the best you can do is string the 6 E in series and string 6 W in series, then you parallel the two strings.
I think there are two sets of input MC-4 connectors that are paralleled already on the inverter, so you connect each series string of 6 to one of the MC-4 input connectors.
 

That's what I've done ..many thanks 🙏

5 hours ago, Scorp007 said:

Please take note of the reply from @zsde

You can be lucky the MPPT is still working after exceeding your 450V maximum..

Sorry..I made an error it is 2 strings of 6...on each side they combine with y connectors before going into the inverter with a single cable

Edited July 30, 20224 yr by RayJ

8 minutes ago, RayJ said:

Sorry..I made an error it is 2 strings of 6...on each side they combine with y connectors before going into the inverter with a single cable

Then you are safe. That's pretty much the best you can do with the single MPPT. I have a similar setup but my panels all face the same direction. I wish I had opted for a dual MPPT setup or a second Inverter as the Amps are clipped at 22 with the latest Firmware. So there are around 4Amps wasted. At 250V that would be around 1kW, i.e. on a good sunny day 6 kWh lost yield. But overall, I am happy with the setup.

Same here me too fairly happy with setup 

I do find I have to shut off power from utility to get full yield on my solar. There is no partial charging of the solar by utility when it is switched off ... But as below it does sometimes draw from utility uneccesarily when it is linked to utility ...why? This was at 5pm winter as sun was going down ...common for the Growatt firmware to do so I believe?

Edited August 2, 20224 yr by RayJ

I can only comment from an off-grid perspective. No grid connection on my solar system. 
It's been a partly cloudy day with early morning low clouds. 
This was today's yield so far, well, that is to say the sun is gone now.

Maybe you can state what your back to utility and back to battery settings are. Are you operating SUB or SBU in setting 01
And I see you are located pretty close to where I am

Edited August 2, 20224 yr by zsde

On 2022/08/02 at 5:53 PM, zsde said:

I can only comment from an off-grid perspective. No grid connection on my solar system. 
It's been a partly cloudy day with early morning low clouds. 
This was today's yield so far, well, that is to say the sun is gone now.

Maybe you can state what your back to utility and back to battery settings are. Are you operating SUB or SBU in setting 01
And I see you are located pretty close to where I am

I'm operating SUB but I manually shut of utility feed via a breaker  when going to bed and turn it on again if needed the next day (clouds rain) etc. so run on battery in the nite so I'm cycling them .I run gel 4 x 200ah so only run them down to 50 percent capacity ...I see you hardly use any power in the night I'm running 4 lights ..and 4 big fridges /freezers and my 2 x amazon echos and 5G router and Huwawei routers etc. All night..and all day on my system.

Do you think I should set it on SBU rather?

Edited August 3, 20224 yr by RayJ

7 hours ago, RayJ said:

Do you think I should set it on SBU rather?

No harm in trying just to compare if the spurious Utility usage continues or not.
 

7 hours ago, RayJ said:

I see you hardly use any power in the night

After bedtime there is only one LED, Routers, Fridge Freezer and 12V chargers for gate motor, alarm, electric fence. My battery drain is around 200W/h averaged until I get up.
All my outside lights are now self contained solar lights with their own batteries.

On 2022/08/02 at 5:53 PM, zsde said:

I can only comment from an off-grid perspective. No grid connection on my solar system. 
It's been a partly cloudy day with early morning low clouds. 
This was today's yield so far, well, that is to say the sun is gone now.

Maybe you can state what your back to utility and back to battery settings are. Are you operating SUB or SBU in setting 01
And I see you are located pretty close to where I am

I'm operating SUB but I manually shut of utility feed via a breaker  when going to bed and turn it on if needed the next day (clouds rain) etc. so run on battery in the nite so cycling .I run gel 4 x 200ah so only run them down to 50 percent capacity ...I see you hardly use any power in the night I'm running a few lights  and 4 fridges freezes and my amazon echos and 5G routers etc.

I forgot my gate motor is also on my inverter circuit I had to heavily charge because if clouds yester but here is my today's oatter til 9.49 pm

Hi @RayJ

So, just to confirm and so as to be 100% clear,

You have 12 panels in total, 6 in series facing East and 6 in series facing West, they then join together with a Y connector into one MPPT on the inverter? 

My understanding has always been that you will be get the lowest panels production when panels are wired in series i.e. 6 panels, 5 producing 10A, 1 producing 2A due to shade on it, you get 2A from that string.  I am totally not sure what the results are of having them wired facing different directions like that but I would like to take a guess 🙂 

My hypothesis/guess is that you will only get power to the inverter from whichever half of your East/West string is producing more power at that point in time.  i.e. In the morning you get the power generated by the East facing panels and in the afternoon power will be generated by the West facing panels. The panels have diodes to stop power being flowed through them the wrong way so I don't think it should cause any damage but I don't think it would be combing the amperage from both strings. I could obviously be totally wrong 🙂 

Easy way to check would be to hook a DC Clamp meter over the cable coming from one of the strings before the Y connector and see what it says. Am fascinated to know what the actual result is.

If you are loosing power, I would investigate either splitting the strings and getting an extra MPPT controller to charge your batteries, or perhaps getting another Growatt inverter and running them in parallel if possible with one string attached to each inverter

36 minutes ago, Sc00bs said:

y hypothesis/guess is that you will only get power to the inverter from whichever half of your East/West string is producing more power at that point in time.  i.e. In the morning you get the power generated by the East facing panels and in the afternoon power will be generated by the West facing panels. The panels have diodes to stop power being flowed through them the wrong way so I don't think it should cause any damage but I don't think it would be combing the amperage from both strings. I could obviously be totally wrong

The losses when having two parallel strings with differing yields are not as profound as having one series string where one or more panels are affected by shading. My two parallel strings face the same direction and have identical pitch. The one string is affected by chimney shading. One panel in the morning till about 10 and the other panel from about 15:30. I can see the difference during and after shading but which percentage of it is due to the shading and which due to solar energy changes increasing or decreasing simultaneously with the time the shading takes place is hard to determine. Today as an example I was getting over 4kW by 10:00 already and that was with the shading of the one panel. So my gut feel is that the loss effect in a parallel is a lot less than in one partially shaded series string.
 

 

36 minutes ago, Sc00bs said:

or perhaps getting another Growatt inverter and running them in parallel if possible with one string attached to each inverter

That is my ultimate goal. However Growatt in their wisdom decided to change the technical specs of these inverters and getting another Inverter means that the old inverter has to get new comms boards or the new inverter has to get the older comms boards which they don't use anymore. And even then, whether the latest Inverter with the new Firmware range of 60s will even work with the older Inverters with Firmware range 40s is doubtful. No clarity on this and I have not seen anyone confirming that they have done it or even tried it.