1 x Growatt SPF 5000ES Inverter

2 x A48100 - Dyness 4,8KWH LI-ION Batteries

8 x JA-545W JA Solar Panels

 

Original installation only had 1 battery added a second last month, this is used in an office environment, mostly PC's and lights, gate motor, alarm and CCTV running of here.

Small kitchen + aircons run of Eskom, we also have a big Diesel generator in case.

 

Happy so far but wish we put in a better inverter one time, maybe a 8KW and if we could add more panels, with the rains + erratic loadshedding schedules recently we suffered with solar production and used a lot more grid power in last 2 weeks than we would have liked.

 

Got the system configured in SBU mode for now, and charge by SOL only.

 

Using normal Shine monitoring app. 

 

 

Edited December 20, 20222 yr by blaine666

3 minutes ago, blaine666 said:

1 x Growatt SPF 5000ES Inverter

2 x A48100 - Dyness 4,8KWH LI-ION Batteries

8 x JA-545W JA Solar Panels

 

Original installation only had 1 battery added a second last month, this is used in an office environment, mostly PC's and lights, gate motor, alarm and CCTV running of here.

Small kitchen + aircons run of Eskom, we also have a big Diesel generator in case.

 

Happy so far but wish we put in a better inverter one time, maybe a 8KW and if we could add more panels, with the rains + erratic loadshedding schedules recently we suffered with solar production and used a lot more grid power in last 2 weeks than we would have liked.

 

Got the system configured in SBU mode for now, and charge by SOL only.

 

Using normal Shine monitoring app. 

 

 

You could add another Growatt in parallel and end up with 10 Kw, also consider adding 2 more panels, split the strings to 6 each in series.

3 minutes ago, Antonio de Sa said:

You could add another Growatt in parallel and end up with 10 Kw, also consider adding 2 more panels, split the strings to 6 each in series.

 

Thanks, we have looked into this option and will further pursue in the new year, our main issue is by 3PM the sun is on the other side of our building so solar drops a lot and that's why we figured panels on that side will most probably help, but we need a more professional opinion, somebody to come out and check for us.

We also only wanted 1 inverter to run but if we have to add a second we will, winter is going to be interesting as most of staff use a small bar heater under their desks, I counted approx 6 of them, this won't work for us.

 

3 minutes ago, blaine666 said:

 

Thanks, we have looked into this option and will further pursue in the new year, our main issue is by 3PM the sun is on the other side of our building so solar drops a lot and that's why we figured panels on that side will most probably help, but we need a more professional opinion, somebody to come out and check for us.

We also only wanted 1 inverter to run but if we have to add a second we will, winter is going to be interesting as most of staff use a small bar heater under their desks, I counted approx 6 of them, this won't work for us.

 

Question. You say in winter your consumption will increase quite a lot due to the extra heaters, fair enough, so let's presume extra 7 extra Kw's on you consumption. than you must consider 3 in parallel = 15 Kw. in any case Growatt gives you the option of blending PV with grid power by changing the setting to SUB, = Solar, Utility, battery.

34 minutes ago, Antonio de Sa said:

Question. You say in winter your consumption will increase quite a lot due to the extra heaters, fair enough, so let's presume extra 7 extra Kw's on you consumption. than you must consider 3 in parallel = 15 Kw. in any case Growatt gives you the option of blending PV with grid power by changing the setting to SUB, = Solar, Utility, battery.

 

Yeah, I didn't think of the blending option like that, it will work for us, we don't need to be off-grid. Our ideal is to preserve batteries mainly for night as overnight consumption is constant +-450w from 6PM till 8AM and for spring the day when we have loadshedding, so we will just have to turn off appliances so they don't drain batteries.

Edited December 20, 20222 yr by blaine666

6 minutes ago, blaine666 said:

 

Yeah, I didn't think of the bleeding option like that, it will work for us, we don't need to be off-grid. Our ideal is to preserve batteries mainly for night as overnight consumption is constant +-450w from 6PM till 8AM and for spring the day when we have loadshedding, so we will just have to turn off appliances so they don't drain batteries.

Yeap, in that case even two in parallel should do, as long your consumption doesn't exceed 10 Kw, with the 8 Kw's of battery back power you have you should be able survive even a 4 hour load shedding. And in case you don't have enough PV to charge your batteries Growatt gives the option to charge the batteries from grid. on setting 14.  SNU = Solar and utility. 

11 minutes ago, Antonio de Sa said:

Yeap, in that case even two in parallel should do, as long your consumption doesn't exceed 10 Kw, with the 8 Kw's of battery back power you have you should be able survive even a 4 hour load shedding. And in case you don't have enough PV to charge your batteries Growatt gives the option to charge the batteries from grid. on setting 14.  SNU = Solar and utility. 

This is more or less our daily currently, when the cleaning lady is in we have spikes due to the vacuum but nothing major, we wish we could have monitored the Kwh usage of all other items not powered by inverter just so we could see total building usage. Also wish we could change from SUB to SBU more easily and change the charge setting from SOL only to SOL + Util remotely if needed, I tried doing it online through the monitoring app, most times it don't work.

 

 

Edited December 20, 20222 yr by blaine666

I have two growatt in parallel, my all house is connected to them. no split DB. check, in the attached dashboard, last 6 hours of my house consumption, charging my battry + 3 KW geyser on and now and then the wife using some appliances in the kitchen. Using settings on SBU, now and then I can see the effects of clouds when the PV (green ) droping.

 

Charging my battery. at very low current. nice sunny day don't have to charge at high Amps, plenty time to get to full SOC.

4 hours ago, Antonio de Sa said:

I have two growatt in parallel, my all house is connected to them. no split DB. check, in the attached dashboard, last 6 hours of my house consumption, charging my battry + 3 KW geyser on and now and then the wife using some appliances in the kitchen. Using settings on SBU, now and then I can see the effects of clouds when the PV (green ) droping.

 

Charging my battery. at very low current. nice sunny day don't have to charge at high Amps, plenty time to get to full SOC.

Awesome, thanks for sharing,  how do you get these graphs, what app are you using?

 

8 minutes ago, blaine666 said:

Awesome, thanks for sharing,  how do you get these graphs, what app are you using?

 

My son designed for me; he is an IT "boffin" --- I'm BC "before computers" all I know is that he used Modbus protocol to retrieve all the data from both the inverter as well as the battery. all this information it's archived in our home server in case of some warranty issues with the OEM of my equipment. My system has been running for 15 months and I have all the data archived.

2 hours ago, Antonio de Sa said:

My son designed for me; he is an IT "boffin" --- I'm BC "before computers" all I know is that he used Modbus protocol to retrieve all the data from both the inverter as well as the battery. all this information it's archived in our home server in case of some warranty issues with the OEM of my equipment. My system has been running for 15 months and I have all the data archived.

Wow, that’s some serious talent.. 

@blaine666

Just order yourself a solar assistant PI and connect it to your inverter and you will be able to change and monitor your settings remotely very easily and it also has some automated changes it can do. 

Works very well on the Growatts. 

Will also give you almost realtime data and these fancy graphs as they also use the same graphing framework. 

Hi, I got one last week, so far it’s helping a lot with remote changing of settings, the only issue is I have two batteries but I cannot drill down into each one to see more I for like how it shows on their video, I am using “inverter settings”. Loving the graphs and not having to wait five minutes for data.