June 5, 20206 yr Good day all. Hope you can help me. We recently decided to bite the bullet and do solar.I was wondering if anyone could assist me with getting the settings right on my system. We have the following: 4 x Pylontech US3000 3.5KW Batteries 12 x JA Solar 300W Mono Panels 1 x Axpert HYbrid 5000W Inverter 1 x Rasperry Pi We have changed all lights to LED. Have Solar geyser and have left the oven on Eskom Grid.Some days early morning system switches off completely.Does not revert to Grid to get power. Please help. Regards Piet van der Westhuizen
June 5, 20206 yr Hi Piet it sounds like your Pylons are getting drained to the point where they shut down - which means that the setpoint for the Axpert to switch back to Utility is set too low. When you say that you have a Pi, does that also mean that you are running ICC? And do you also have the cable to connect the Pylons to the Pi? If you are running ICC, then we can set everything through there. If not, we will need to go through the individual settings on your Axpert. Please post answers to my questions above - and then we will take it from there
June 6, 20206 yr 12 hours ago, Piet van der Westhuizen said: We recently decided to bite the bullet and do solar. Welcome to the "solar club" and the forum. 12 hours ago, Piet van der Westhuizen said: 1 x Axpert HYbrid 5000W Inverter The Axperts aren't actually hybrids, at least per most people's definitions. Is it a King or VM III like model? If so, you can use a special cable to the battery to get better control. 12 hours ago, Piet van der Westhuizen said: 1 x Rasperry Pi Does it have monitoring firmware like ICC yet? Here is my latest, ever changing pylontech settings cheat sheet, assuming you don't or can't use the special cable. For you, setting 02 will come to 140 A.
June 6, 20206 yr Author 22 hours ago, wolfandy said: Hi Piet it sounds like your Pylons are getting drained to the point where they shut down - which means that the setpoint for the Axpert to switch back to Utility is set too low. When you say that you have a Pi, does that also mean that you are running ICC? And do you also have the cable to connect the Pylons to the Pi? If you are running ICC, then we can set everything through there. If not, we will need to go through the individual settings on your Axpert. Please post answers to my questions above - and then we will take it from there HI Andy I do have a cable connected to pylons yes. We have the centurion Solar icc on the pi. Current settings on the Axpert as follows 1)
June 6, 20206 yr Author Just now, Piet van der Westhuizen said: HI Andy I do have a cable connected to pylons yes. We have the centurion Solar icc on the pi. Model name on side of unit:SOL-1-AX-5P Current settings on the Axpert as follows 1)SBU 2) 30 AMP 3)APL 4)SDS 5)USE 6)LTD 7)TRD 9)50HZ 11)10AMP 12)46 VOLT 13)50VOLT 16)CSO 18BON 19)ESP 20)LON 22)AON 23)BYE 25)FEN 26)53.2 27)53.2 28)PAL 29)42 VOLT 30)ONE 31)SBE 32)AUT 33)EDS 34)58.4VOLT 35)60 36)120 37)30D 38)D15 39)ADS 1)
June 6, 20206 yr Thanks Piet Your Back to Grid setting (#12) is too low at 46V. Thereabouts is where the Pylon BMS shuts down to protect itself - which is why your system then completely shut down. As per @Coulomb recommendation above, you should set this to 48V. But instead of having to do this on the Axpert itself, you can more conveniently do it through ICC. Here are my ICC settings: As you have 4x Pylons, you can set both Max PV and AC Charging Current to whatever the highest value that it will allow (as long as less than 140A) You can also increase the Bulk Voltage to 52.5V instead of my 52.5V (I have also done that since this screenshot was taken) My Back to Discharge value is significantly higher than Coulomb's value as I want ICC to control the switching between battery and utility instead of the Axpert itself I've found that my SOC-based switching back to utility (see below) typically happens at voltages above 48V, so I leave the Back to Grid Voltage setting at 48V as a safety net The other very important setting is under the Battery tab: Here you define at which SOC (from Pylon BMS) you want ICC to switch the Axpert. Here you need to experiment a bit. For the To Grid value you need to keep in mind that the Axpert will still draw its self-consumption from the battery even when running on utility. So you need to keep a few % as reserves to make sure that the Axpert's self-consumption does not bring you to below 20% SOC until there sufficient PV to balance the self-consumption. For the To Solar SBU value you need to see at about what time you PV production exceeds your load and what the SOC is at that point (to avoid multiple switching back and forth in the morning) The other setting that I noticed is #28. If I am not mistaken, you inverter is set to parallel mode. If you are only running a single inverter, I believe you should rather that set to single. If I am not mistaken, you can only change that setting when AC, PV, and loads are disconnected and the inverter is switched off (but batteries still connected). At least that is how it works on my old Axperts For the rest of the settings I will leave it to our experts ( @Coulomb) to comment if anything else should be changed
June 7, 20206 yr Quote Current settings on the Axpert as follows 2) 30 AMP 30 amps is very low; that's appropriate for just one Pylontech US3000. Set it to 140 A, even though your present panels will rarely allow more than 70 A of charging. Quote 12)46 VOLT 13)50VOLT @wolfandy has already explained these two; thanks, Wolfandy. Fixing these will solve most of your problems. Quote 26)53.2 27)53.2 These are the manufacturer's numbers. They're quite high, and have been shown to cause the batteries to switch off at times. Use something like 52.5 V for 26; you can use 52.5 V also for 27 so you don't have to worry about the premature float bug, or use my suggested 51.8 V for slightly longer battery life. Quote 28)PAL You only mentioned one inverter; leaving this on PAL (paralleled) can cause weird problems. Change it to SnG (single inverter), but note that you have to have the inverter switched off for this to work. If you have the power on, it will silently fail to change the setting. Have a charging source connected (AC-in and/or solar), so the inverter doesn't completely switch off when you turn off the switch. Quote 29)42 VOLT You should change this to 46 V, or 2 V lower than whatever you decide for setting 12.
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