Hi all

I hope you are doing well

I have recently installed a 8kw/10kwh Sunsynk system and 4.5kw of panels and wanted to confirm my understanding of how best to optimize the settings:

1. I assume that barring load-shedding it should be fine to pull these batteries down to ~ 30% overnight?
2. I currently have my geyser and stove on my non essential circuit - and I do not see them on my monitoring application.
   1. I assume that they will only charge via PV/battery if I disable the 'Limit To Load' setting on my inverter and set it to 'Limit To Home'
   2. I assume that there is no way to channel only excess PV and not battery to my non essentials?

Thank you so much 

3 hours ago, SilverMane said:

I assume that barring load-shedding it should be fine to pull these batteries down to ~ 30% overnight?

Yes. That should leave you enough room if LS hits in the morning to maintain the base load and utilise solar. 

 

3 hours ago, SilverMane said:

I currently have my geyser and stove on my non essential circuit - and I do not see them on my monitoring application

Yes that is annoying for me too. Since I want them to appear in my stats - with grid present, any excess power needs beyond 8,000w (per setting) will be taken from the grid. i.e. with grid present, these non-essentials won't overload the inverter and with grid gone, they fall away anyway. 

 

3 hours ago, SilverMane said:

I assume that they will only charge via PV/battery if I disable the 'Limit To Load' setting on my inverter and set it to 'Limit To Home'

Yes, on the app you switch from Limit to Load to Limit to Home - only then will your non-essentials benefit from PV/Battery, subject to your pre-set battery minimum SOC settings for that time block (i.e. if the min SOC is reached, solar feeds both essentials and non-essentials, but will augment from the grid if needed). What I've done is that I keep my 'limit to home' setting enabled, but am slightly more conservative on the SOC settings / time blocks. I've also moved my two geyserwise timer settings to slightly different times, with more boosting (and solar banking) during sunshine hours in the afternoon. Both also have the wifi enabled so I can override remotely.

Since my "minister of interior and domestic affairs" is keen to always have reasonably hot water available for showering purposes while the teenager insists on evening showers (different geysers) this required some management. So as not to have the morning geyser boost kill the available battery SOC I've made peace with tapping into Eskom for that - it's less than an hour - and my min battery SOC for that period (when the early morning boost happens) is high enough that in practice the geyser will always just tap into eskom for that boost - or use only a small amount of battery if its available in abundance. Obviously, if there's no grid that boost wouldn't happen, but that applies irrespective, since geyser is a non-essential. My setup is broadly similar to yours except about 3kw more panels. 

 

3 hours ago, SilverMane said:

I assume that there is no way to channel only excess PV and not battery to my non essentials?

The way I understand it is that the inverter can't distinguish between these available power sources for this purpose. There's also the Aux port but I'm not 100% familiar with it and don't use it myself. 

The geyser is a useful excess solar PV energy dump and the wifi switch (geyserwise wifi) allows remote boosting. And as with many, I hate leaving stuff at the till, and that includes having abundant sunshine but nothing to dump excess solar to. Both geysers are already solar geysers, so will largely fall away as power dumps in summer. Thats where the oven with its 4kw element comes in  - hence the need to keep things on 'limit to house' and do less manual switching. I don't have HA or SA automation. 

Edited July 27, 20233 yr by Kalahari Cruiser
typo

Welcome to the land of no load shedding 😆

I have everything connected as essentials which includes 2 x geysers. 2 x stoves connected as non-essentials.

I run the geysers during the day during sun hours separately so there is some juice being given to the battery...as I have mine set to 50% SOC which it reaches by about midnight every day then it switches to grid. Which is perfect as I have the geysers run early morning both at the same time as no other load is running between 03:00 - 06:00.
_________________________________________________

1. I currently have my geyser and stove on my non essential circuit - and I do not see them on my monitoring application. > I would suggest getting Solar Assistant it will then give you the visibility of the non-essentials load. See my pic attached...
   1. I assume that they will only charge via PV/battery if I disable the 'Limit To Load' setting on my inverter and set it to 'Limit To Home' > correct, Limit to Home will allow the loads for essential and non-essential to be serviced by PV and Battery according to your SOC settings.
   2. I assume that there is no way to channel only excess PV and not battery to my non essentials? > new to this myself...but I think you could but it would be lots of admin to ensure your SOC on the battery is set to the current charge its at, at the time of switch on your non-essentials-so if you battery is at 80% you change SOC to not go below 80% and PV + Grid will be used for the load...or you set your battery to 100% during daylight hours...which means PV will power your loads for essential & non-essential and will supplement from the Grid if need be. But if its LS it will supplement from the battery irrespective of SOC setting.

Edited July 27, 20233 yr by Carl Anthony

5 hours ago, Kalahari Cruiser said:

8 hours ago, SilverMane said:

I currently have my geyser and stove on my non essential circuit - and I do not see them on my monitoring application

Yes that is annoying for me too. Since I want them to appear in my stats - with grid present, any excess power needs beyond 8,000w (per setting) will be taken from the grid. i.e. with grid present, these non-essentials won't overload the inverter and with grid gone, they fall away anyway. 

I wonder if this is a limitation in the SunSynk app. I’m using SOLARMAN with my inverter and I can see everything - essential and non-essential loads.
Or maybe your CT is not installed at the right place. 

Edited July 27, 20233 yr by PowerUser

4 hours ago, PowerUser said:

I wonder if this is a limitation in the SunSynk app. I’m using SOLARMAN with my inverter and I can see everything - essential and non-essential loads.
Or maybe your CT is not installed at the right place. 

Yeah they should definitely check the CT coil installation - the default SunSynk app my side does indeed show non-essentials. See photo below; we can see both non-essential geysers power on after loadshedding (until the CBI Astutes power them off for the evening) for a peak of 6.5kW…

Edited July 27, 20233 yr by JayMardern

57 minutes ago, JayMardern said:

Yeah they should definitely check the CT coil installation - the default SunSynk app my side does indeed show non-essentials. See photo below; we can see both non-essential geysers power on after loadshedding (until the CBI Astutes power them off for the evening) for a peak of 6.5kW…

Thanks - do you have your inverter set to limit to load or limit to home? I will have a look in the morning 

3 minutes ago, SilverMane said:

Thanks - do you have your inverter set to limit to load or limit to home? I will have a look in the morning 

Here ya go:

 

14 hours ago, PowerUser said:

Or maybe your CT is not installed at the right place. 

@SilverMane As @PowerUser suggests, have you checked that the CT coil is installed correctly and out side of your circuits, i.e. at the main incoming live from outside the main db and pointing in the right direction.

Mine also shows essentials and non-essentials data.

Thanks guys

I will confirm today - but it seems that it is either due to my settings being set to limit to load, or an issue with the CT.

I did some playing around with the app last night, and found the metric “P-External-CT-L1“.  This seems to show all power coming in from the grid, including my non essentials as I can see spikes of 4kw that I assume is my geyser.

12 minutes ago, SilverMane said:

I did some playing around with the app last night, and found the metric “P-External-CT-L1“.  This seems to show all power coming in from the grid, including my non essentials as I can see spikes of 4kw that I assume is my geyser.

Great, same here. When I switch back to 'limit to load' (ie cutting out the non-essentials from solar, and on the main display stat), the P-External-CT-L1 still shows the full grid draw (have tested with geyser) when this parameter is included. Would be nice if the main app display/overview also differentiated between the two at the grid icon, or if the layout allowed some customisation - I know the inverter display has much more differentiation. I suppose SA etc. can do all of that. 

14 hours ago, PowerUser said:

Or maybe your CT is not installed at the right place. 

CT is installed correctly. The issue isn't about not seeing non-essential loads, more that it didn't appear in the general stats / diagram overview (on app) when set to "limit to load". I suppose there's some logic behind it. 

Perfect , yes - that seems to be my understanding as well.

Just did a test where I disabled 'limited to load' and turned on my oven. I saw a 3kw spike on my load on the inverter itself (still waiting on the app to update). So that all seems to be working as intended. It seems the inverter/app default display is 'blind' to non essential loads and it needs to be inferred from the P-External-CT-L1 metric. So it seems like now I will have to manually tick and untick the limit to load depending on my PV and my battery situation.

Does anyone have any recommendations for management software or timer modifications for geysers? I have quite a bit of excess PV most middays, and it seems the perfect place to put it. But it also feels like 4 kw is quite a bit, and I don't want it draining my battery.

 

1 minute ago, SilverMane said:

still waiting on the app to update

You can reduce the refresh rate to 60 seconds (default is 5 minutes, I think). 

 

2 minutes ago, SilverMane said:

It seems the inverter/app default display is 'blind' to non essential loads and it needs to be inferred from the P-External-CT-L1 metric.

So it seems - thanks for the P-External-CT-L1 headsup, i hadn't added that as my preferred charting metrics and nice that it's included there at least (I'd still prefer it on the main display). 

 

3 minutes ago, SilverMane said:

So it seems like now I will have to manually tick and untick the limit to load depending on my PV and my battery situation.

I was doing same - and have since kept things on the "limit to home", so all data shows on main display, and while grid is present any load beyond the 8kw inverter rating just gets drawn from grid. As mentioned earlier, I now have a slightly more conservative battery regime, and/or am timing geyser use in an early morning time bracket where de facto it will take from grid, as I've hit the minimum SOC already (or am close to it). I've just retrofitted my two geyserwise displays with the tuya wifi option (one needed a new display plus power box, while the other just needed the PCB), and can now add them into the mix remotely via app when there's excess PV and I need to dump / utilise free energy that would otherwise go to waste. I've also set timers to a slot where there's most likely to be excess PV available. Yes there are ways to automate this, but my setup is actually quite simple. Since both are solar geysers, in the summer months it will mostly be moot, as the geyers will be hot enough and hardly be able to be used as excess PV energy dumps. 

10 minutes ago, SilverMane said:

feels like 4 kw is quite a bit

That's a lot yes, others can comment about replacing the element with something smaller. Mine are 2kw and 3kw respectively, and one really notices the impact on the 3kw unit when used in combination with a few other power users (8kw inverter/ 10kwh battery setup). When there's 3-5kw winter PV available - haven't experienced summer yet - it's obviously ok. 

1 hour ago, SilverMane said:

Does anyone have any recommendations for management software or timer modifications for geysers? I have quite a bit of excess PV most middays, and it seems the perfect place to put it.

I am using home assistant to achieve this (https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/), it fetches all the data from the inverter and schedules the water heating once my battery has achieved a desired SOC. I am using a smart switch to trigger the heating

I can also switch between "limit to load" and how you call it "P-External-CT-L1" automatically using sunset/sunrise as the trigger. (Or the battery SOC or any other parameter that you think will run your house optimally) 

If this is something that interests you then I will explain more 

Hi all.

So the "Load" figure on the graphs shows all the load that your Inverter is configured to support. When you set "Limit to Load" then "Load" only shows essential load - because that's what you asked for. When you set "Limit to Home" then "Load" includes non-essential load - again because that's what you asked for.

But I understand your frustration - It would be great to be able to see the essential AND non-essential load shown separately, rather than just lumped together.

Look at this post where I explained my solution using a custom graph inthe Sunsynk monitoring system.  

TLDR: look at the values for P-L1. That is the power flowing across the Inverter's "GRID" port.  Positive means power from grid entering the inverter. Negative means the Inverter is pushing power out to the non-essential loads.