August 2, 20233 yr Author 1 hour ago, Carl Anthony said: 1. Is your CT connected though? It should show you the coil pic just after the pylon tower to indicate its connected...I have 1 x CT coil and it shows on both my Master and Slave inverter. I also see a momentary negative reading at times...my installer reckons its normal and its that split second where the inverter doesn't know what to do with the power. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was under the impression that since I have nothing on non-essential I shouldn't have the little house on that screen. I've now changed the setting to enable that (only Zero Export ticked on the System Mode screen) and the grid showed negative usage. A few seconds later I clicked why: the CT coil was pointing towards the grid instead of the inverter. A little screwdriver action and the CT coil was turned around and now it correctly reflects usage from the grid. Yes, I know I could have fixed it by swapping the wires inside the inverters too. It now shows small positive and negative values on both inverters in the 0.1 to 0.2A range. I'm also seeing similar small usage on the House icon which might just be to make all the figures add up and balance since there's nothing on the non-essential side apart from the 2 inverters. I'll monitor further tomorrow and play with the trickle charge value. Thanks again! I now realised that @WannabeSolarSparky hinted at that earlier today: 7 hours ago, WannabeSolarSparky said: The CT coils MUST/SHOULD be at your incoming live just after your municipal/eskom meter before anything else. This is usually at the entry point of your main db. Also on the images of the screen you post it is not showing your home grid at all?
August 2, 20233 yr Author 2 hours ago, Carl Anthony said: Yeah also only figured this out like a few weeks later...but then a couple of weeks later I took the plunge on Solar Assistant and have not once even checked the SS App since... Pity there's no try-before-you-buy option for Solar Assistant. I need to investigate Home Assistant and Node Red and decide which is the best one for me. I have a development background so neither should be a huge battle. I simply need time to research the best way to get started with it all. I also want to graph everything with Grafana so probably need influxdb too. Lots of new stuff to learn.
August 3, 20233 yr 10 hours ago, p_i said: Pity there's no try-before-you-buy option for Solar Assistant. I need to investigate Home Assistant and Node Red and decide which is the best one for me. I have a development background so neither should be a huge battle. I simply need time to research the best way to get started with it all. I also want to graph everything with Grafana so probably need influxdb too. Lots of new stuff to learn. There was/is a try before you buy option. I was offered a 1 month trial a while back . Had full functionality for a month. Perhaps email them and enquire if that's still on offer.
August 3, 20233 yr Author 10 hours ago, p_i said: Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was under the impression that since I have nothing on non-essential I shouldn't have the little house on that screen. I've now changed the setting to enable that (only Zero Export ticked on the System Mode screen) and the grid showed negative usage. A few seconds later I clicked why: the CT coil was pointing towards the grid instead of the inverter. A little screwdriver action and the CT coil was turned around and now it correctly reflects usage from the grid. Yes, I know I could have fixed it by swapping the wires inside the inverters too. It now shows small positive and negative values on both inverters in the 0.1 to 0.2A range. I'm also seeing similar small usage on the House icon which might just be to make all the figures add up and balance since there's nothing on the non-essential side apart from the 2 inverters. I'll monitor further tomorrow and play with the trickle charge value. Thanks again! After watching the fluctuating positive and negative values for a while scratching my head and sleeping on it, I consulted the manual and determined that my initial setup was actually correct. As per page 52 on the manual I should use the first option so I'm back to that option. I'll monitor during the day to see how it looks now that the external CT is pointing towards the inverters like it should (and not in reverse like I had it initially).
June 19, 20242 yr Author Only a small update on my installation. Yes, I still need to neaten the fans on top of the inverters.
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.