Thanks to @Jacques Ester for connecting myself and @Steve87

 

Steve will be doing the installation which consists of the following:

• Sunsynk 8kW
• Freedom Won 10/8
• 14 x JA Solar 545W Panels

Quite excited about this.

 

Some updates & snaps...

The 15/12 FreedomWon arrived today & will take some snaps tomorrow as we make more progress.

Always good to see a new power station find a good home. 👍

More pictures are definitely required. 😂

Well done @Steve87 and @PearlJam.

Thanks @TimCamwe made good progress today & the initial DB work is done. The big challenge that this site has presented is that there is no ceilings to hide or duct AC wiring & the Inverter lays approximately close to +-35m of cable length away. 

Makes for a rather interesting ducting of wires & I always share the concerns of neatness so we proceeded only until both parties were happy. 

 

Also split the essentials & Non essentials. CBI Astutes to be added to this non essentials side. Pretty old hellerman breakers but we will keep what we have for now until, a more permanent solution can be made in the future. 

Loadshedding is causing so much havok, did not even get a chance to test the box once I left. This pic was sent by @PearlJam

22 hours ago, Steve87 said:

Thanks @TimCamwe made good progress today & the initial DB work is done. The big challenge that this site has presented is that there is no ceilings to hide or duct AC wiring & the Inverter lays approximately close to +-35m of cable length away. 

Makes for a rather interesting ducting of wires & I always share the concerns of neatness so we proceeded only until both parties were happy. 

 

Hi Steve87. Great looking installation!

A quick query; I note that the installation is +-35m away. If possible, please advise on how you extended the CT coil cable.

(I am currently finalising the installation position for a 5KW unit for personal use; DB in flat is also +-30m from envisaged inverter installation point in garage; I am struggling to find any info or guides on +30m CT cable lengths). Any insight on this would be appreciated.

 

As an aside, I note that the inverter incoming supply line and the load essentially connect to a  common neutral line (based on the installation guide). What are your thoughts on using single neutral from the inverter installation, (covering supply + load feeds), to the DB, or is it preferable/required to run separate/dedicated neutral lines for the feed and the load cables respectively? (I am looking at how best to limit cable runs and conduits required; if the neutrals for the inverter supply and load can be connected to an common bushbar close to the inverter position, and thereafter a single neutral cable run back to the DB, it may help simplify cable and conduit requirement). Any views on such would be appreciated.

kind regards

 

 

You cannot extend the CT beyond 10m in length & the current CT is already 10m. The limitations is 20m total & then that cable starts to get interference etc. You need to make use of a Suitable RS485 enabled smart Meter. The one I am using is the Chint Meter & you can see it in the non essentials & AC Combiner box. There is also a setting that needs to be changed in the Sunsynk or Deye that is on the same page where you have the Modbus addressing for parallel ops. 

I hope this helps. 

On 2022/12/13 at 7:07 PM, Steve87 said:

The big challenge that this site has presented is that there is no ceilings to hide or duct AC wiring & the Inverter lays approximately close to +-35m of cable length away.

I feel your pain with this problem, as 60% of my own house has no ceilings too. To get to the old wiring, the roof tiles need to be lifted, and the metal pipes with the wiring are then available. I suppose metal piping could be run under the eaves for the wires?

Hope the rest of the installation goes without any problems. 👍

4 hours ago, Steve87 said:

You cannot extend the CT beyond 10m in length & the current CT is already 10m. The limitations is 20m total & then that cable starts to get interference etc. You need to make use of a Suitable RS485 enabled smart Meter. The one I am using is the Chint Meter & you can see it in the non essentials & AC Combiner box. There is also a setting that needs to be changed in the Sunsynk or Deye that is on the same page where you have the Modbus addressing for parallel ops. 

I hope this helps. 

Maybe someone can try this extension of the CT wires, as explained in the link below, and give feedback? Theory of CT coils is explained, though not specifically for the SunSynk inverter.

https://learn.openenergymonitor.org/electricity-monitoring/ct-sensors/introduction

 

 

Further news to the whole CT coil extension. We abandoned the Meter control because the meter simply does not communicate back to the Inverter. We are confident that the Sunsynk sends it's RS485 signal but the meter even though selected does not talk back. We had 2 of these examples on site & they both did not work. The other meter that is supported according to Sunsynk is the Enstrom meter. 

I will reach out to Sunsynk support to see exactly why this meter does not work . We extended the CT coil wiring & actually cut the coil wiring off to as small as possible & used Shielded CAT5e cable over a distance of 42m & it worked beautifully. This should give all others trying to do this some confidence. 

So for the record the Chint DDSU666 meter is a no go at the moment for Sunsynk 8kW inverter. 

With further investigation our meter was preset with a Modbus number of 20 & the Sunsynk if memory serves only goes to 16 so we will adjust the Modbus number & try the pairing again. 

Ok so we finished up & Certified everything officially today. Here are the snaps. @PearlJamopted for the larger 15/12 FreedomWon & the massive challenge of the no ceiling kept us mighty busy but I have to give it to the team I work with they were magic & produced very neat work under some very tricky constraints. We also did not try to reconnect the Chint meter. As explained before the Chint comes with a preset Modbus value of 20 & the Sunsynk only reads up to 16. We hooked up a Oscilloscope & we saw the RS485 signals from the inverter to the Meter but the meter never spoke back & this was the reason. 

But we reverted to basics & used the CT but used it with CAT5e shielded cable & it works. The total distance is +-45m. I'm a firm believer of don't fix what ain't broke.

@PearlJamThank you for the opportunity & for your patience, it's never easy to have contractors in your home & close to festive season. 

Edited January 11, 20233 yr by Steve87

Lovely to see a completed and working install. Well done to @Steve87 and I'm sure @PearlJam will be so happy to have this system, especially as we now have stage 6 load-shedding. Welcome to the world of power generation.

Been having some amazing sunshine the last couple days but I wanted to share the capabilities that the Sunsynk 8kW inverter has in that it can exceed the 8kW rated capacity. Well, let's just say it can only invert up to its rated capacity & the rest is pass through from the Grid. This feature only works when the Grid is available. Solar assistant best displays the data. 

You can clearly see the inverter load is at 9.57kW & the Grid was used as pass through. 

 

Edited January 13, 20233 yr by Steve87

I thought I will add some thoughts after roughly a  month of being online.

 

In my case I am happy that I went with the 8kW inverter as well as the bigger battery 15/12.  Although the battery can't get us through the night "off-grid", it is getting close enough.  And it is within the levels that I require on my own calculations as to what Eskom usage saving I would like to get from the system.  I am yet to change over to gas cooking which is my next step and then a possible solution for the electric geyser in the future after that. 

 

Our daily usage for 2022 was average 68kWh per day, based on my calculations I wanted to get to 30kWh per day and with my last CoJ bill and some calculations it seems I am there.  This will however be confirmed during the next few months.

 

The one thing that I saw is that on the cloudy days the 7.6kW array produces 8.4kW roughly and peaks now and again at the limit set in the inverter of 9kW.  During these extremely hot days we experiencing during the last week or so, it peaks at 6.8kW which I then take as the heat soaking that I read about.  I generally get in the lower 40kWh production per day on fair days and have produced over 50kWh on a few days

23 minutes ago, PearlJam said:

I thought I will add some thoughts after roughly a  month of being online.

 

In my case I am happy that I went with the 8kW inverter as well as the bigger battery 15/12.  Although the battery can't get us through the night "off-grid", it is getting close enough.  And it is within the levels that I require on my own calculations as to what Eskom usage saving I would like to get from the system.  I am yet to change over to gas cooking which is my next step and then a possible solution for the electric geyser in the future after that. 

 

Our daily usage for 2022 was average 68kWh per day, based on my calculations I wanted to get to 30kWh per day and with my last CoJ bill and some calculations it seems I am there.  This will however be confirmed during the next few months.

 

The one thing that I saw is that on the cloudy days the 7.6kW array produces 8.4kW roughly and peaks now and again at the limit set in the inverter of 9kW.  During these extremely hot days we experiencing during the last week or so, it peaks at 6.8kW which I then take as the heat soaking that I read about.  I generally get in the lower 40kWh production per day on fair days and have produced over 50kWh on a few days

And best of all - no loadshedding 

4 minutes ago, mzezman said:

And best of all - no loadshedding 

Oh yes, forgot about that!

On that topic, with stage 5 and higher, it does take some management with the 4 hour loadshedding after hours to maximize battery usage whilst not running out of power.

2 hours ago, PearlJam said:

Oh yes, forgot about that!

On that topic, with stage 5 and higher, it does take some management with the 4 hour loadshedding after hours to maximize battery usage whilst not running out of power.

Once you figure out your routine and usage it becomes easier - especially on sunny days as during the day you run completely on solar then at night you optimise your batteries for the LS slots

1 hour ago, mzezman said:

Once you figure out your routine and usage it becomes easier - especially on sunny days as during the day you run completely on solar then at night you optimise your batteries for the LS slots

The big thing is that the 4 hour slots interfere with my standard settings depending on what time it is as I cater in my timing to run off grid when reaching the % SOC, but if it is 4 hours it might run lower, especially the LS slots like 2h00 - 6h00 or something in that region.  Our "idle" usage vary between 600W and 750W.  Will see how I can change it to a point where I don't have to think about loadshedding.  It might involve using much less battery early evening and then just maybe not use the full 70/75% every night dependent on LS