Hi, first post and all 

I got a 5kw Sunsynk inverter and 5kw battery backup last year April and added some panels (10 x 545W) a few months later. This got us some savings although it'll obviously take a long time to get a full ROI. Also ended up getting another 5kw battery last week for some extra redundancy should we have another massive outage due to vandalized infrastructure etc. Being new to all of this I have some questions which I was hoping some of you folks would be able to help answer.

• I see various HA integration options in threads here but am not clear on whether any of them allows one to keep the integration with the Sunsynk app or whether everything is shifted to HA.
• Probably more of a question for a dedicated HA forum but in terms of adding data analysis or integrations with ESP/Weather is that common?
• The original installer seems to have closed his business or something so I'm struggling to get the system registered with CoCT. First step seems to be a CoC but it looks like noone wants to certify a system not installed by them  Do I have any options here or am I stuck not being able to register the system and incur fines later on.
• As I understand it the batteries aren't supposed to go under 20% charge (do I have that number right?) but my batteries show up as a total of 8kw on the inverter. Is there a reason why the inverter should be set to shutdown at 20% then?
• I initially had the target state of charge set to be 40% from 12AM to 8PM which had the battery charge up nicely during the day and the house covered by the panels for most of the day. The guys installing the battery last week changed it to maintain 100% during the day and run down to 60% from 20:00 to the next morning. I assume I had some faulty logic when I set the target at 40% for the day but I for the life of me can't work out what the difference is.

Looking forward to see if I can at least write some code once I've sorted out how to integrate with the inverter.

 

 

2nd last bullet: not entirely sure what you referring to but you don't want to discharge your battery to deep iot to extend its life.  Depth of discharge you can go down to depends on manufacturer.  If the 20% refers to the Time of Use setting then you'll use batteries instead of grid till you get to 20%.

 

Last bullet: if you want to see savings choose "load first" setting.  With that amount of panels you should be able to run your load and charge batteries during the day using solar.  Of course this is load , orientation of your panels, etc .....dependant.  I would not use 100% during the day but stick to the 40%.  Use your solar and battery power to maximize savings.  

47 minutes ago, AndrewJdc said:

2nd last bullet: not entirely sure what you referring to but you don't want to discharge your battery to deep iot to extend its life.  Depth of discharge you can go down to depends on manufacturer.  If the 20% refers to the Time of Use setting then you'll use batteries instead of grid till you get to 20%.

So my question is mainly around the fact that the battery is supposed to be a 5kw but only shows up as a 4kw (so already 20% that's not used) and then having it run down to a minimum of 20% which effectively gives you 3.2kw of a 5kw battery. I could just be misunderstanding though.

 

50 minutes ago, AndrewJdc said:

Last bullet: if you want to see savings choose "load first" setting.  With that amount of panels you should be able to run your load and charge batteries during the day using solar.  Of course this is load , orientation of your panels, etc .....dependant.  I would not use 100% during the day but stick to the 40%.  Use your solar and battery power to maximize savings.  

So that's what I thought too. I can easily run the house and charge the battery during daylight hours regardless of whether I've set it to 40% or 100%. I think I'll change the setting back to what I had it as :).

18 hours ago, axisK said:

So my question is mainly around the fact that the battery is supposed to be a 5kw but only shows up as a 4kw (so already 20% that's not used) and then having it run down to a minimum of 20% which effectively gives you 3.2kw of a 5kw battery. I could just be misunderstanding though.

 

So that's what I thought too. I can easily run the house and charge the battery during daylight hours regardless of whether I've set it to 40% or 100%. I think I'll change the setting back to what I had it as :).

Normally one would not want to keep the batteries at 100% during the day time. This shortens their life. So rather use say 80% if you really want to keep them charged in case of a  power failure. 

Just my view. 

Edited October 15, 20241 yr by Scorp007