Hi all, i have a 5.48 kodak inverter

4x 4.8kw Mecer bateries

12x 555w pannels 

Pannels in banks of 4

I am only getting a max of 1.6kw charge on a full sunny day

Not getying my batteries full from the sun. Have to use eskom to charge now. 

Eskom getting switched of next week

What can be wrong?

Please assist

Edited September 28, 20241 yr by johans9
More info

3 hours ago, johans9 said:

Hi all, i have a 5.48 kodak inverter

4x 4.8kw Mecer bateries

12x 555w pannels 

Pannels in banks of 4

I am only getting a max of 1.6kw charge on a full sunny day

Not getying my batteries full from the sun. Have to use eskom to charge now. 

Eskom getting switched of next week

What can be wrong?

Please assist

You say you get 1.6kw charge but what is the total yield of the pv? Maybe your load priiority is SUB or SBU in which case load is priority, then charging. So maybe the pv is delivering more than 1.6kw but is routed to load. 

Edited September 28, 20241 yr by BritishRacingGreen

@johans9 Please post the label on the side of the unit so that we can see which 5kW unit this is from Kodak, also advise if the technical data for the solar panels are known or available?

@GerhardK83 canadian 555w pannels

@BritishRacingGreen set at SUB

Load is at around 450w

so taking that into account i am still only getting about 2kw outoff 12 pannels

5 minutes ago, johans9 said:

@BritishRacingGreen set at SUB

Load is at around 450w

so taking that into account i am still only getting about 2kw outoff 12 pannels

Ok, then yes your total yield is a low in relation to 12 x 555W. You should be enjoying at least a good average of 4kw on peak if not more. What is the pv voltage when you drawing that odd 2kw from it.? 

4 hours ago, johans9 said:

@GerhardK83 canadian 555w pannels

Thanks for the photo, so now we determined that the Kodak inverter is a VMIII with a 5kW DC input from the solar panels with a maximum open circuit voltage of 500VDC and  with the 12 X 555W solar panels theoretically there should be 6.66kW of power coming in from the solar panels.

 

What do you mean that the Pannels in banks of 4?

4 in series and the output of the 4 in series in parallel?

The solar panels can be either one of these two if they are 555W and not fake Canadian Solar panels.

HiKu6 CS6W-555MS Monofacial 49.8Voc, 13.25A Imp and 14.05A Isc.
BiHiKu6 CS6W-555MB-AG Bifacial 49.8Voc, 13.25A upto 15.9A Imp and 14.05A upto 16.86A Isc.

You might get better performance by changing the panel arrangement from 4S3P to 6S2P. This model might be limiting the panel current to some 10 A, though that sounds very low to me.

There also might be some problem with the panel wiring, such that you are only effctively getting one string's power. I'd expect about 75% x  555 x 4  = 1665 W max from each string.