hi all

my existing setup is made up of a 8kva sunsynk inverter, 8.2kw bsl battery and 10 550w JA solar solar panels. system runs pretty much runs the full house.

 

we recently moved house and we moved our system with us. the orientation and shape of our new house means we basically stop generating solar power around 1630 in afternoon (summer).

question is, is it better/ more cost effective to add more panels to roof we have space for another 6 panels) to give me more afternoon generation (especially in winter) or just get another battery? or do i bite bullet and do both?

 

cheers

jean

 

19 minutes ago, JeanB said:

hi all

my existing setup is made up of a 8kva sunsynk inverter, 8.2kw bsl battery and 10 550w JA solar solar panels. system runs pretty much runs the full house.

 

we recently moved house and we moved our system with us. the orientation and shape of our new house means we basically stop generating solar power around 1630 in afternoon (summer).

question is, is it better/ more cost effective to add more panels to roof we have space for another 6 panels) to give me more afternoon generation (especially in winter) or just get another battery? or do i bite bullet and do both?

 

cheers

jean

 

Just my 2 cents, if you manage to run the house load and your battery is fully charged before the sun goes down you should be OK. However, winter is another story, you will have to wait and see. 

51 minutes ago, JeanB said:

hi all

my existing setup is made up of a 8kva sunsynk inverter, 8.2kw bsl battery and 10 550w JA solar solar panels. system runs pretty much runs the full house.

 

we recently moved house and we moved our system with us. the orientation and shape of our new house means we basically stop generating solar power around 1630 in afternoon (summer).

question is, is it better/ more cost effective to add more panels to roof we have space for another 6 panels) to give me more afternoon generation (especially in winter) or just get another battery? or do i bite bullet and do both?

 

cheers

jean

 

One needs to know at what time your battery is normally fully charged. 

At what SOC is your battery in the morning? 

As you can generate up to 40kWh a day on average the above answers can be a good indicator. Panels are the cheaper option as a 500W can generate 2.5kWh of power per day at about R2000. Batteries cost about R4000 per 1kWh of storage and at best you can use only  0.8kWh daily. 

58 minutes ago, Scorp007 said:

One needs to know at what time your battery is normally fully charged. 

At what SOC is your battery in the morning? 

As you can generate up to 40kWh a day on average the above answers can be a good indicator. Panels are the cheaper option as a 500W can generate 2.5kWh of power per day at about R2000. Batteries cost about R4000 per 1kWh of storage and at best you can use only  0.8kWh daily. 

batteries usually charged by around 0830 in summer and around 945 in winter. i set the inverter to a SOC of 60% as we often have loadshedding in the early morning so we can get day started and keep alarms etc running.

challenges come in late afternoon when either use eskom or batteries when household is getting ready for dinner (air fryer etc.) 

20 minutes ago, JeanB said:

batteries usually charged by around 0830 in summer and around 945 in winter. i set the inverter to a SOC of 60% as we often have loadshedding in the early morning so we can get day started and keep alarms etc running.

challenges come in late afternoon when either use eskom or batteries when household is getting ready for dinner (air fryer etc.) 

In a way you already have a lot of PV to support more battery storage. Further it does seem as you getting through by only using 40% of the battery power. 

It does not appear as if you need more PV or battery power.

Just my point of view. 😀

2 hours ago, JeanB said:

stop generating solar power around 1630 in afternoon (summer)

Unless added panels will produce much later in the afternoon, I'd say more panels are probably not worthwhile now... unless you can make use of the energy when it is being produced, but I suspect not really... if you are using the battery mainly to support solar during the day and rolling blackouts, once solar is gone, then maybe more battery capacity, if you are expecting longer outages (likely), I have one of those BSL's and a 5kW Sunsynk, it was not enough energy between solar stop production, at the moment around 18:00 local time and solar start production, at the moment around 08:00 local time. We are off grid entirely though and I have added a 15kW battery, basically a JK BMS and 16 * 304Ah cells from Apexium, now, early morning, worst I've see so far is 48% SOC out of the two batteries combined, but 55% SOC is not totally off the cards either, but fully charged is likely, but not guaranteed by 14:00 or so, but with some clouds the last few days, maybe 90% to 95% SOC, by the time the solar produces nothing of real value anymore.

Anyway, I'd say more battery capacity is not a bad choice, if you are wanting to be less and less reliant on the grid, but depending on where you are and assuming cloudy days at times, having more panels would not be the worst option either...

 

5 hours ago, JeanB said:

hi all

my existing setup is made up of a 8kva sunsynk inverter, 8.2kw bsl battery and 10 550w JA solar solar panels. system runs pretty much runs the full house.

 

we recently moved house and we moved our system with us. the orientation and shape of our new house means we basically stop generating solar power around 1630 in afternoon (summer).

question is, is it better/ more cost effective to add more panels to roof we have space for another 6 panels) to give me more afternoon generation (especially in winter) or just get another battery? or do i bite bullet and do both?

 

cheers

jean

 

From the information you have given, I would definitely say get more batteries. It will of course depend on many factors such as where you are located, your monthly energy usage and the percentage daytime vs nighttime usage, etc. A chart showing your production power, consumption power, and battery SOC over an average day will be very helpful. As a rule of thumb, if your batteries get fully charged quite easily and almost every day you probably have enough panels, if you run out of power at night and need to use the grid, you don't have enough batteries.

Edited December 24, 20232 yr by HendrikBigChief

On 2023/12/24 at 12:45 PM, JeanB said:

batteries usually charged by around 0830 in summer and around 945 in winter. i set the inverter to a SOC of 60% as we often have loadshedding in the early morning so we can get day started and keep alarms etc running.

challenges come in late afternoon when either use eskom or batteries when household is getting ready for dinner (air fryer etc.) 

 

Last month I opted to add a second battery to take my setup from 5kw to 10kw, connected to 8KVA Deye. I set the 6am SOC to 40% from 60% and this has increased my savings that my ROI is capped at 5 years. Our SOC was high as we run a small business from the property and need to make sure we have enough power in mornings.

Not only are we no longer tripping our inverter, but we noticed a massive improvement in stability - my dimmer switch no longer causes flickering during load shedding, I no longer see dips when the fridge switches on and the inverter draws from the batteries quicker when I experience clipping on the panels.