As a point of interest, @Gnome, what's the U1 (main firmware) version?

Good day.

Could someone assist me on how to use the Bluetooth functionality please. 

I would really appreciate some assistamce.

Thanx guys

Hi - I would like to buy the MTTP card. Indres 0848107816

@Gnome - I am interested in buying your spare Axpert MPPT Module. Hope it is still available. 

Can this inverter run everything from a fridge to a tv?

2 hours ago, Elidio said:

Can this inverter run everything from a fridge to a tv?

Yes. Fridges and TVs are relatively light loads (100 W or so). Both the 3 kVA and 5 kVA models will handle those sorts of loads effortlessly, provided of course that the battery can handle the load.

Heating loads tend to be around 2000 W (e.g. large microwave, kettle/jug, dishwasher when heating the water, washing machine when heating the water). A 5 kVA model would handle two of those on at once, but a 3 kVA model would only handle one at once.

🤣And teach the wife not to use her hairdryer or curlers when you not expecting a 2000W+ draw

On 2019/12/13 at 1:40 PM, Coulomb said:

Yes. Fridges and TVs are relatively light loads (100 W or so). Both the 3 kVA and 5 kVA models will handle those sorts of loads effortlessly, provided of course that the battery can handle the load.

Heating loads tend to be around 2000 W (e.g. large microwave, kettle/jug, dishwasher when heating the water, washing machine when heating the water). A 5 kVA model would handle two of those on at once, but a 3 kVA model would only handle one at once.

Can a 5k MKS II handle a kettle with 1500-2000 watt power consumption? It is connected with ~3.5kw Solar Pannels (10 * 405w Canadian Solar) + 4 Ritar Opzv Ritar 200Ah Batteries

I'm mostly worried that these kettle don't have a slow increase in power consumption (or that's what I think). 

Edited December 17, 20196 yr by Omarsz

7 hours ago, Omarsz said:

Can a 5k MKS II handle a kettle with 1500-2000 watt power consumption?

Yes, that should be fine. Their power consumption tends to lower slightly with time as the element heats up, as with most heating elements. There are heaters with negative temperature coefficients, but these don't tend to end up in kettles or washing machines, usually stand alone space heaters.

I've just bought one of these together with a Pylontech US2000 48V LiPo 2k4W battery. It seems to be working fine. The only thing is that although I can pair with it over Bluetooth it's not (doesn't appear to be) transmitting any data. The Android app Whatpower doesn't connect to it - even the phone is paired. Anyone managed to connect to the one of these using BT? Perhaps I need to configure the BT comms. protocol via the PC configuration software. I also need to connect the PV side today.

Hi all,

I have installed a Axpert king 5K with 12 PV Panels 360W 39VDC each four strings so 3 PV panels in series. I am planning on adding an extra two strings to try make it more efficient 2 panels in series. We are currently getting really bad PV production due to shading on the strings a total of 500W to 650W 70VDC . Before i add another string would like to know if there are any optimizer that could be compatible with this inverter to increase the PV production?  Would also like to know if anyone has used the Wifi card with this inverter supplied by Voltronic for remote monitoring. The blue tooth is not compatible with IPhone.  

There is very little support with  this inverter, any assistance will be appreciated 

Hi

Sorry for hijacking this threat for my own issue!

I installed a Voltex King 5kVa about 6 months ago along with 12x 300w Pv's and 2x 5Kw Lithium batteries.

The system has been running very well up to about 2 weeks ago. I noticed on the remote monitoring that the PV input is 0 for the whole day! Weh I got home I hard reseted it and it was working fine again. A few days later the same thing happened. After hard resetting it again starts using PV.

This morning I again noticed the same issue. It appears to be completely random. It was running fine this weekend and today while at work I checked it and saw the same issue.

It appears that the MPPT does not reset sometimes during the night??

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

18 hours ago, KobusC said:

I noticed on the remote monitoring that the PV input is 0 for the whole day!

What Voc are your panels, and how are they connected?

300 W are often 60-cell these days, but they might be 72-cell. If so, and if you have them connected 3S4P, then you might have too much voltage. Now that it's getting cooler (a chance of snow today 200 km from here), the panel voltage will be higher, and might have exceeded the maximum. You should be staying away from 130 V (where the SCC power starts reducing) even with no load on the panels. Anything over 145 V is dangerous for this model, and the SCC could disconnect for that reason. (However, the capacitors will still be connected and stressed, even though the panels are "logically" (not electrically) disconnected.

Hello,

How is the king inverter doing that you have installed?

I'm in the process to get one.

 

 

23 hours ago, Barryv said:

king inverter doing that you have installed?

Who are you asking?

Weber and I are still waiting for the firmware to settle down.

11 minutes ago, Coulomb said:

Who are you asking?

Weber and I are still waiting for the firmware to settle down.

@Gnome or any one with a King inverter.

 

Need to learn more of it.

On 2018/08/25 at 7:19 PM, Gnome said:

Sigh, I set my battery voltage too high last night and completely killed one of my batteries. They are cheapo "Excis" 100Ah batteries (Bought in 2015). I set the Axpert to Flooded battery in the configuration menu but I think this is what did it in. During the bulk stage it hit 14.6v per cell and I guess that was too high for one of the batteries. Or it is too old, who knows. Either way the battery starting making spluttering/cracking noises (probably outgassing). It has a dead cell now. Put any load on it and the voltage quickly drops to 9v.

 

Will a Victron Batteries balancer not work? I have 4x 240 ah Gel and don't want to kill a battery. 

with balancer the batteries stay in the same voltage and if there is a problem then it will give alarm off.. 

1 hour ago, Barryv said:

Will a Victron Batteries balancer not work?

Not sure, I don't really buy Victron stuff, bit too expensive and they never seem to offer the features I need.  I am now using an HA02 battery balancer

All my AGM batteries are now within 0.1v of each other.  I monitor my battery voltages per battery.  I created a small per battery voltage monitor using a 4x ATTiny13, each of them simply gets the current voltage and is collected over "serial" by a single STM32F103 which then aggregates the data and I monitor it that way.  (cost me around R100 to build, R34 for the STM32 and around R10 each for the ATTiny + some resistors and a perf board).

Obviously that isn't for everyone, but you don't really need the monitoring.  I only did it to verify the HA02 works as I hoped.

1 hour ago, Barryv said:

I have 4x 240 ah Gel and don't want to kill a battery. 

The Axpert King will start up with the charger set to AGM which has much lower charging voltage.  Then my suggestion is to set "USE" (User defined) and set the battery bulk charge and float voltages correctly.  I did that and my batteries are holding up really well.

You can find how to set those in the manual

1 hour ago, Barryv said:

with balancer the batteries stay in the same voltage and if there is a problem then it will give alarm off.. 

I can't speak for other battery balancers but with the one I got the balance isn't really a problem for me anymore.  The thing about an alarm is, it isn't per-se going to save you.  You may not hear it in time or the damage can happen pretty quickly.  But I also don't think that it is a problem you should expect to have.  Get a balancer first, then figure out what more you need, else you are spending a bunch of money on a problem you may not have.

But for lead-acid, I would say the battery balancer is a must.

Obviously if you are using Lithium it has its own balancer so it is pointless to have one.

 

Edited August 19, 20205 yr by Gnome

20 minutes ago, Gnome said:

Not sure, I don't really buy Victron stuff, bit too expensive and they never seem to offer the features I need.  I am now using an HA02 battery balancer

 

Victron battery balancer is not so expensive to buy 1 but to run 48v you will need to get 3 off them. I like the to get the BMV-702 to monitor the batteries. 

23 minutes ago, Gnome said:

Obviously if you are using Lithium it has its own balancer so it is pointless to have one.

maybe next year I get me a pylontech with the tax money. but then I want to go semi off grid.

25 minutes ago, Gnome said:

The Axpert King will start up with the charger set to AGM which has much lower charging voltage.  Then my suggestion is to set "USE" (User defined) and set the battery bulk charge and float voltages correctly.  I did that and my batteries are holding up really well.

You can find how to set those in the manual

Thank you for the tip. I'll have to go download the spec of the batteries.

How is the King inverter doing, and any problems with the surges from when the power comes back on? 

I've spoken to a guy last weekend and he lost 2 macer inverters with load shedding. The electrician installed the wrong surge protectors. (Lightning only)

so I want to install a Delay time on my inverter ac-in. so when the power returns, the timer will start, and after a few seconds the power to the inverter switch on. 

Just to make sure that there are no problems  if the power spikes/dips or surges  

1 hour ago, Barryv said:

Victron battery balancer is not so expensive to buy 1 but to run 48v you will need to get 3 off them. I like the to get the BMV-702 to monitor the batteries. 

That sounds super complicated and expensive to me.  Are you accounting for the power drain of all this stuff also?  Why so complicated?

1 hour ago, Barryv said:

Thank you for the tip. I'll have to go download the spec of the batteries.

Yep exactly, that is what I did, set the settings exactly as the data sheet said and never had problems.

1 hour ago, Barryv said:

How is the King inverter doing, and any problems with the surges from when the power comes back on? 

I haven't had any problems.  The Axpert King also has MOVs for the incoming supply.

1 hour ago, Barryv said:

I've spoken to a guy last weekend and he lost 2 macer inverters with load shedding. The electrician installed the wrong surge protectors. (Lightning only)

so I want to install a Delay time on my inverter ac-in. so when the power returns, the timer will start, and after a few seconds the power to the inverter switch on. 

Just to make sure that there are no problems  if the power spikes/dips or surges  

That sounds very vague to me.  You can't really just install components and hope for the best.  I would get a scope and look at what happens when power comes back on.  If it is an industrial or semi-industrial area it is probably because there are large inductive loads.  When you suddenly disconnect power the voltage will spike up to possible thousands of volts.  There are regulations about that sort of thing and it could be that someone is installing non-complaint equipment onto the grid to save a few RRRs.

MOVs which are typically used to protect against this sort of thing can also only do so much.  May be that you need something that clamps faster (TVS diodes) or something that can clamp much higher currents (GDT).

The only thing coming close to a silver bullet is an isolation transformer.

TL;DR buy the right solution for the right problem.  MOVs are a good step but frankly anyone telling you that will solve all your problems doesn't know what they are talking about.

Edited August 19, 20205 yr by Gnome

On 2018/08/24 at 9:15 PM, Gnome said:

Communications board close-up:

What is the network port for?

I see it has a bluetooth icon on the screen, can I connect to it?

4 hours ago, Barryv said:

Communications board close-up:

Ah. The Kings and other models with the removable display have a very different communications board to other models. This appears to be an isolating board; the transformer will be generating ±12 V from the high frequency power source. As far as I know, all these RJ-45 connectors are internal serial ports, not meant to be connected to by users. One of these will go to the removable display unit, which has all the user-accessible ports.

4 hours ago, Barryv said:

I see it has a bluetooth icon on the screen, can I connect to it?

I'm still getting up to speed on Kings. It may well be that you can only connect to it from the Android Watchpower app. My understanding is that later models of the removable display have WiFi (probably as well as Bluetooth, but maybe instead of); you may be able to connect with either of those.

King users may be able to provide more detail. The manual seems to be poor on these points.

On 2018/08/24 at 8:15 PM, Gnome said:

Communications board close-up:

Can I buy this part please 

 

Yes a low frequency inverter will power fridges and  freezers but a King will work no problem too. 

12 hours ago, janhoza said:

inverters that are stated as 'low frequency' specifically for allowing use with fridges.

A fridge has a high start-up load compared to its running load, perhaps a little over one kVA for a second or so. That might bother an 800 W inverter if it has other loads on, but will not be any sort of problem for a 5 kW inverter with a decent battery.

Low frequency (50 Hz) designs can tolerate an overload for much longer, of the order of 10-30 minutes (compared with 5 seconds for an Axpert). Their power limitation is generally the temperature of their transformer, which is very large and heavy, and able to absorb a lot of heat for tens of minutes. An Axpert's limit is the temperature of the semiconductors, which are attached to heat-sinks that are only designed for rated load. There is no heavy (tens of kilos) transformer to absorb heat.