Hi there, 

Corneel here, this is my second post but here is my first installation.

I am a mining engineer doing mining finance at a bank - no formal electrical training apart from 1 semester at varsity 25 years ago...  And a one-day solar overview course a few years ago. 

I only got my installation's CoC this morning so I did not want to post my installation in case I made a mess! At least I have not seen any smoke yet! 😂

The main DB is around the corner in the garage. I do woodwork there and I did not want to put the Inverter and battery in such a dusty environment, hence the installation in the passageway. 

Comments are welcome! 

 

This is just 3 of the 5 panels, the other two are on other sections of the roof. 

 

When money allows, I will add another string of 2.7 kW and another battery.  (We use about 30 kWh a day so the current system is a bit small). Even with the second string and battery I will still not be able to generate 100% of own consumption.  And my roof is too small for more panels so we will stick with that final size. 

Welcome @Corneelhopefully it's not your last installation. This machine will earn it's keep. Nice job!!!

You need 4 panels with the same orientation for the string to produce decent power. Voltage of 3 panels will be too low.

How much power are you getting on a day from your 5 panels?

18 minutes ago, iiznh said:

You need 4 panels with the same orientation for the string to produce decent power. Voltage of 3 panels will be too low.

How much power are you getting on a day from your 5 panels?

I have 5 panels all facing North on just 1 string ( getting c 240 volts). Max was 16.1 kWh on the best day, average probably 12 to 14.

I am still playing around with the "Time of Use" settings to see how to maximise production & self use. I still often get clipped when the battery is full and the demand is lower than production. 

15 minutes ago, Corneel said:

am still playing around with the "Time of Use" settings to see how to maximise production & self use. I still often get clipped when the battery is full and the demand is lower than production. 

Then this is great time to send the PV to the geyser, stove or pool on the none essential side. 

Do you know how to do this yet? Otherwise I can post a very simple explanation. The Guys at Sunsynk need to really simplify this because it's made up to be rocket science & it's not. Its a single menu to tick or untick. Still a way to go to make this menu more western in my opinion. Maybe they will load an update to get this done. I'll post it anyways & the logic in which I understand it. 

Edited January 4, 20232 yr by Steve87

It's here where the magic happens between non essentials & essentials. This menu screen controls the function. This page is page 2 of the system mode page. 

ZERO EXPORT: as the name implies if ticked no power will leave your home to your outside meter & go to Eskom. 

SOLAR EXPORT: again as the name implies if you want to export PV power to Eskom then tick this.

LIMIT TO LOAD ONLY: 

Here is where the magic happens! The load they are referencing is the backup or essential load. So if you tick this to "limit to the load only" means you will ONLY SUPPLY THE LOAD ( ESSENTIALS)

However, when unticked this will send power to the Non- Essentials that is not on the Backup load. It will send PV & or battery depending on your Page 1 settings in terms of SoC. 

Remember this function only works when the Grid is present. Because it's Grid tieing technology. When the Grid is gone ie. Loadshedding the Islanding mode or in Voltronics terms backup mode is in operation & so you cannot Grid tie anymore. Therefore this functionality is lost. 

Edited January 4, 20232 yr by Steve87

31 minutes ago, Steve87 said:

Then this is great time to send the PV to the geyser, stove or pool on the none essential side. 

Do you know how to do this yet?

Yes, I do. 

The Deye look slightly different, but same concept. 

"Zero export to CT" - This means zero export to the municipality. I had this wrong the first day and exported 3 kWh to the grid - oops! Now the municipal meter is showing an error message. Still waiting to hear from the municipality... 

But when there is more demand than from essentials and battery, it is used by the non-essentials. 

The next section decides to charge the battery first, or to first support the load. But I the found that the battery is full at c 10:00,and if there is a lull in demand across both essential an non-essential, production is clipped. So I put it to "Load first", now the battery is only full around 11:00. Then the pool pump (with heat pump) kicks in and all available production goes to that. 

By 16:00 the pool pump swith off, and very little else is running in the house and thus some production is clipped again. 

 

So it is this screen that I am still playing around with:

The 80% in the middle of the day now allows a bit of the battery to be used to supplement the pool pump demand, and then the battery gets charged again after 16:00. (I previously had this at 95% and I could see this small change did make a difference) 

 

The "Grid Charge" setting is to ensure the battery has some juice in case of an early morning Load Shedding.  In essence I am using my battery to assist Eskom a bit during the peak demand (16:00 to 21:00) and then use the grid during the early morning hours to recharge back to 60%. 

 

This is what today's production looked like:

Black circles is probably the geyser's heat pump. 

The purple line is the pool pump (+heat pump) demand. 

The yellow circle is when we had load shedding - as you can see, production was used to charge the battery back to 100% but were clipped for the remainder of the load shedding. 

 

And this was the result:

 

Great explanation for the Deye users! I wish they made this easier to understand with a simple English menu option. However, the lost in translation from Mandarin to English is clearly evident. It's always good to note that Mandarin is a very complex language & engineers really struggle to bridge the link between themselves imagine trying to keep the Marketing & sales ppl happy at the same time. 

We will get there hopefully not too far in the future 😂😂

Good afternoon Folks. 

Planning on installing a similar system but with a Sunsynk 5kw inverter. Question I have is 6 460w JA Solar panels to little. I am worried about solar yield in winter. We use about 20kw per day or less. No big draw items on during the day besides the pool and wellpoint which runs for an hour or two each day.

 

The panels will all face north or north-east. This section of my roof is in the sun whole day.

 

Sorry for the hijack.

2 hours ago, jdido87 said:

Good afternoon Folks. 

Planning on installing a similar system but with a Sunsynk 5kw inverter. Question I have is 6 460w JA Solar panels to little. I am worried about solar yield in winter. We use about 20kw per day or less. No big draw items on during the day besides the pool and wellpoint which runs for an hour or two each day.

 

The panels will all face north or north-east. This section of my roof is in the sun whole day.

 

Sorry for the hijack.

As a high level thumbsuck, no, you most likely have to double up and put one such string on each MPPT, and also ensure enough battery capacity, and even then it's touch and go in winter. On average you should generate enough, a fair excess in summer, but you will fall short in cloudy weather.

Best, though, would be to measure your actual usage patterns, and use an online solar calculator to work out your generation for your location and panel orientation.

Edited January 14, 20232 yr by GreenFields

17 hours ago, GreenFields said:

As a high level thumbsuck, no, you most likely have to double up and put one such string on each MPPT, and also ensure enough battery capacity, and even then it's touch and go in winter. On average you should generate enough, a fair excess in summer, but you will fall short in cloudy weather.

Best, though, would be to measure your actual usage patterns, and use an online solar calculator to work out your generation for your location and panel orientation.

Thank you for your response @GreenFields.

The idea is not go completely of the grid but to deal with loadshedding and reduce the cost of electricity. We had use any internal lighting at night, mostly just 2 out of the 4 LED downlights in the bathroom and the LED light in the kitchen. In terms of television, only 3 LED tv's are on at night. Then it is just the alarm, POE cameras and outdoor LED lights. The outdoor lights accumulate to a total of 400w but this will drastically be reduced, down to around 200w. I assume that a 5kw battery should be sufficient to cover this during loadshedding. I will in future get more battery capacity but for now I want to make sure I have decent solar yield.

 

Can you perheprs refer to me a website, I have looked but I cannot seem to find a good one.