OldNewby Posted March 9, 2015 Share Posted March 9, 2015 Good evening all, Please tell me... has anybody on this forum ever had anything to do with a company called Ixocel? Has anybody bought one of their. 12 volt dc solar powered systems? I have had one of their systems for almost 1 year now and am now starting to experience some challenging difficulties with components and appliances which form part of the system. The major challenge, however, is that l am unable to contact them at all so l am receiving absolutely no after sales service from them. I have tried to contact them on numerous occasions through several avenues now but receive no response to my requests for assistance. If there is anyone one who has one of these Ixocel (or as they also call themselves... Vusisiswe holdings ) systems and have some operating manuals or technical specifications of the individual components of the system l will be most appreciative if l was to be assusted with a copy of any information on the system that l could lay my hands on... For more information of what is included in the system please do not hesitate to ask it is quite extensive so will supply info on request... Thank you in advance david Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wetkit Posted March 10, 2015 Share Posted March 10, 2015 Welcome, and sorry to hear about your problems. Perhaps you can give us some more details regarding the system and the issues you having. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldNewby Posted March 11, 2015 Author Share Posted March 11, 2015 Hi, Thank you for your reply. The system is a totally12v dc system. When you purchase their system you get the following ... 2 solar panels ( do notknow the specifications) An Ixocel charge controller ( never received and operating manual or tech specs for it) 4 x 110ah sealed batterries installed in parallel All appliNces have been altered to operate on 12 v dc. No inverter. Appliances: Fridge freezer Flat screen tv Dstv decoder Dvd player Free standing fan 10 x led lights None of these appliances have the tech specs after their convertion to 12volt Hence my predicament... I have no useful information. The challenges l face is that with nothing else on the refrigerator freezer draws suffeciant power from the battery bank in about 4 hrs (at night) to cause the controller to switch the fridge off to avoid they batteries being drained below 12 volts. I hope this information is of all useful? Can one calculate the capacity of the solar panels? Can one calculate from the amps being drawn by the fridge how much more batterries will be required to carry the fridge draw off? Regard David The charge controller read out says the bulk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldNewby Posted March 12, 2015 Author Share Posted March 12, 2015 Hi,, At Midday the controller says there is 10 amps being coming into the controller. The controller has the ability to furnish : Bulk Voltage Float Voltage Amps in Amps drawn Volts in and out I can by switching the appliances on individually see their actual amps drawn but do not have any nominal values. thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meyerwh Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 Hi David, don't know the company either... I usually approximate the needed amps from the power usage specified by the appliance... e.g. if it is 300W at 220V (meaning then 1.4A) it would then be 25A at 12V to get to 300W. (I hope that is the right approach!?) Considering you want to drain your batteries only to 50% capacity, you have 220Ah available meaning a 300W appliance could run for 220/25 = 8.8h. If your charge controller could do 10A for 5h (very genereous), it means that you replenish only 50Ah in one day, so your set of batteries will never be fully loaded at a constant usage of 300W. If one sticks to loading the batteries with 50Ah per day, an appliance switched on 24/7 should not use more than 25W constantly. Your limiting factor for your setup is the amount of solar panels... Hope that makes sense. Wolfgang OldNewby 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldNewby Posted March 22, 2015 Author Share Posted March 22, 2015 Hi Wolfgang, Thank you for your most informative reply. That information is very useful. Im not even sure if the batteries which were supplied with the system are 110 amph batteries... because they do not have any labeling on them. The appliance markings still state the electrical data of when it was a 220 volt appliance. And l cant be sure what the nominal power usage is iether because there is no information on the makers plate either... is there any way that with use of a multimeter l can determine what size the solar panels are... if l disconnect the solar panel output cables and measure the voltage it reads between 35 and 38 volts... once it has been through the controller it gives bulk voltage of 14.4 v and float of 13.5v ... how does one determine the nominal amph capacity of the batteries? Is there a means of measuring it? From day one the 4 batteries could not keep the fridge on right through the night... so l installed 2 more 110 amph batteries... that helped a bit in that it allowed the fridge to stay on for a further 2 hours...how does one determine the state of health of the batteries. Thanks David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldNewby Posted May 15, 2015 Author Share Posted May 15, 2015 Hi All, i have recently determined that the charge controller supplied with the system i described above is a 30A provista ICS 3040 MPPT unit and also that the6 batteries i have connected in parralel are 105Ahr batterries... is anybody familiar with these controllers? i have noticed a few things that this instrument does and i wondered if there are any adjustments that can be made to make sure that the optimal charge from the pv panels is used to fully charge the 6 batteries. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldNewby Posted May 18, 2015 Author Share Posted May 18, 2015 Hi all, I still have the situation that the 6 x 105 Ahr batterries does not keep the fridge /freezer on through the night and it only draws a max of 4.5 amps with current ambient temperatures! Is my calculation correct that if the 6 batteries are fully charged that they should be able to keep the fridge running at 4.5A and nothing else drawing current, for 140 hrs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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