hi guys,it is great to be on a forum with people that supply a great amount of assistance.I am a retired ex Eskom official with 46 years distribution  experience  with a wire man's licence(don't shoot me pls).I have a 5 kw SunSynk inverter,7.2 kw of panels and a hubble 5 kw battery.I did my own installation with a bit of assistance from an installer. I may have a problem with the discharging of the battery up to 10 % while exporting to the munic I am on grid tie.Can someone pls supply some advice in layman's terms. I can supply my e mail and password so you can see the graphs

10 hours ago, David Hird said:

discharging of the battery up to 10 % while exporting to the munic

You should not be exporting to the grid (unless you are allowed and get credit for it). Do you have the CT (current transformer) that came with the inverter installed? If so there would be options on the inverter setup to allow export to the non-essential side as well as to the grid, you should probably only allow export to the non-essential side. I need to look at my settings again, there may be another option to prevent exporting from battery, which is probably also a good option to use...

Good morning,I have an approved gridtie installation.the CT is installed correctly.

1 hour ago, David Hird said:

Good morning,I have an approved gridtie installation.the CT is installed correctly.

That's now clear as mud to me, maybe just yes or no on...
Are you allowed to export to grid?

On my Sunsynk, there is:
Zero Export with the following options underneath
Solar Export and Limit to Load Only, the Solar Export, if ticked, should prevent the battery to get exported, I would think and the Limit to Load Only is presumably to allow export to the grid also, if un-ticked, I would imagine. Since Eishkon is AWOL and has sched the load permanently here, I can't double check on how these settings work correctly, if my explanation is wrong, maybe one of the grid connected Sunsynk owners can chime in and correct me.

I am allowed to export on to the munic system and I receive credits thks so far

8 minutes ago, David Hird said:

I am allowed to export on to the munic system and I receive credits thks so far

OK, then a change of immediate subject: There's a running discussion about whether or not it makes financial sense to sell back. There is no one answer, because different municipalities offer different re-sell tariffs with different admin fees attached to them.

So would you care to share who supplies you with power and what sort of saving your are acheiving.

From my POV as a client of City Power in Johannesburg, the potential savings are very small, and the cost of converting to the feed-in tariff is non-trivial, so I can't see way to make it work for me.

1 minute ago, Bobster. said:

OK, then a change of immediate subject: There's a running discussion about whether or not it makes financial sense to sell back. There is no one answer, because different municipalities offer different re-sell tariffs with different admin fees attached to them.

So would you care to share who supplies you with power and what sort of saving your are acheiving.

From my POV as a client of City Power in Johannesburg, the potential savings are very small, and the cost of converting to the feed-in tariff is non-trivial, so I can't see way to make it work for me.

Good morning,yes a very tender subject.I originally had,a 3kw grid tie inverter with 16 x310w panels .It worked very well, for 10 months of the year I had an account of R84.00 /month which was the admin fee.Port Elizabeth decided that they were losing money and changed the tariff which resulted in me having to upgrade to 7.2 kw panels and a 5kw inverter .Saving in winter R900.00,saving in summer R1850.00/month I am only using my battery  for load shedding at this stage.

26 minutes ago, David Hird said:

I am allowed to export on to the munic system and I receive credits thks so far

Ok, not sure how, long term, this is sustainable, since I have friends in Australia and they are dealing with high grid Voltages, since everyone is exporting to the grid and mostly at times when there is a glut of energy and no use for it.... anyway, the Solar Export should probably be ticked to prevent the battery to also get exported...

Selling excess power is not an option at this stage in Port Elizabeth.8 months of the year I only pay admin fees of 160.00 in the winter months 2 x R1000.00 and 2 xR500.00 accounts .I have a solar geyer and gas hob

2 minutes ago, Kalahari Meerkat said:

Ok, not sure how, long term, this is sustainable, since I have friends in Australia and they are dealing with high grid Voltages, since everyone is exporting to the grid and mostly at times when there is a glut of energy and no use for it.... anyway, the Solar Export should probably be ticked to prevent the battery to also get exported...

Yes,I am aware of that,I don't think that the power problems will be corrected in the next 5 -10 years so we ae safe for the time been

2 minutes ago, David Hird said:

Yes,I am aware of that,I don't think that the power problems will be corrected in the next 5 -10 years so we ae safe for the time been

Ok, but the more pertinent part of the post was:
anyway, the Solar Export should probably be ticked to prevent the battery to also get exported.

This would apply whether you export to the grid or not...

3 minutes ago, Kalahari Meerkat said:

Ok, but the more pertinent part of the post was:
anyway, the Solar Export should probably be ticked to prevent the battery to also get exported.

This would apply whether you export to the grid or not...

It is ticked 

@David Hird Eerily similar experience here, had NMBM grid-tie back in the old days when it was one-to-one with no flatrate. Got my knickers in a knot with the changes to the billing, and now use a 5kW hybrid and 5kWh battery, while trading power with NMBM. The setting names I use on my 5kW Deye inverter should be able to translate to your Sunsynk because it's basically the same thing.

Crux is, it takes a bit of understanding of the work mode settings, with tweaking of the TOU function settings, and understanding NMBM's billing time slots to get the best that works for you. I'm still making changes once in a while.

____________________

Deye...

Selling First -

This is the mode that will sell battery power and solar power to the grid. Rather avoid it. Not worth it to sell battery power now. Maybe in Winter, with specific TOU settings to sell battery during peak times only. Otherwise with reducing the TOU "Selling" power to zero "0" or the value of your baseload for non-peak times.

 

Zero Export to CT - with Solar Sell box ticked -

Good to use in theory. Better than selling to the grid. Better in conjunction with the TOU setting and then using the "Power" setting to limit the battery draw to household baseload if you don't want to drain your battery on non-essential loads. Might have to align TOU settings with geyser timer settings to get it right. The function seems a bit buggy on my Deye. Seems to increase the power usage of the loads for no good reason. Could be a CT fault on my side. I might use it again in Winter.

 

Zero Export to Load - with Solar Sell box ticked - 

What I'm using at the moment. Works well to export sun power by day, but by night I'm using the grid for non-essential loads. I will NOT do this once the Winter tariffs arrive. Much better then to switch to Zero export to CT and use battery power as much as possible during evening peak times or the rates will kill you.

_________________

Translations from Deye functions to Sunsynk:

1. Zero export to Load

2. Zero export to CT

3. Selling first

___________________

Copy/paste from old thread... Sunsynk... not sure if the names have changed.

1. Use available power for the essential load only.
   Power to the LOAD port only.
   On the latest version of Sunsynk's App this is labelled "Zero-Export + Limit to Load Only".
    
2. Use available power for both essential and non-essential.
   Power to the LOAD port, and to the GRID port, using the CT to prevent EXPORT.
   On the latest version of Sunsynk's App this is labelled "Limited to Home".
   Based on the chat above I think on the Deye App this is labelled "Zero Export to CT".
    
3. Use available power for all loads and export any excess.
   Power to the LOAD port, and to the GRID port, even EXPORTING past the CT to the grid.
   On the latest version of Sunsynk's App this is labelled "Selling First".

 

Hope this helps. Let me know if it makes sense.

Edited March 11, 20242 yr by GreenFields
Name updated

Perfect thks I intend purchasing  a 2nd battery to used on peak periods