4 hours ago, Cassie said:

The 5th one.  Taken just now.  Shows the battery graph with a strange dip below the 0 mark - I noticed the grid displays a similar graph pattern.  What does that mean?

Grid seems to have gone down for a very short period, if you go to the graphs section on ICC and to Grid Trends, you can get more info, like grid frequency and voltage.

13 hours ago, Coulomb said:

I keep forgetting that a lot of SA readers use ICC; I don't use it myself. So I don't know whether ICC can overcome these deficiencies or not. I don't think it can change charge stages, for example. I know it can influence changing back to utility and back to battery transitions.

I have not found anything in ICC that changes charge stages as described in your firmware. I can more conveniently adjust the Axpert program settings (Bulk/Float voltage, max charging amps, etc), but that is it regarding charging

10 hours ago, Cassie said:

My son (an electro-physics engineer in Canada) also advised me, when I ordered the Pylon, that I should never charge it higher than 80%

 

This is the first time that I hear about not charging it higher than 80%. Maybe the resident experts here know something that I don't

10 hours ago, Cassie said:

and not draining it below 40%

I believe the Pylon is built to be discharged down to 20%. I typically do not discharge it exactly down to that level, but around 23% or so to keep a bit 'spare' in case something unexpected happens

10 hours ago, Cassie said:

and ICC showed 1 cycle

This info is from the Pylon BMS. To my understanding, a cycle represents a deeper discharge. Only running it down to 70% or so and then recharging it I believe will not register as a cycle. I do not know what the exact SOC (or cell voltage) is at which point the BMS registers a discharge as a cycle

But if you are only using your system as UPS at the moment, then it sounds about right

11 hours ago, Cassie said:

I will contact the supplier of the Raspberry and get the instructions how to manage the inverters via ICC.   I was wondering if there is not perhaps instructions for ICC on the forum somewhere?

I believe we can also help you with that here 🙂

In ICC, you need to select the bigger tab 'Settings' and then the smaller tab 'Axpert parallel setup'. This is where you can set the different options and values of the various Axpert programs. At the bottom you can set your desired Bulk and Float charging voltages. Just click on 'Set' after you have changed an option/value to send the command to the Axpert. It will respond with an 'Ok' in the white box next to the relevant 'Set' button if the Axpert setting has been changed (or 'Error' if something went wrong - usually just try again or check if another setting might be in conflict with what you are trying to change, e.g. trying to set the Battery Cut-Off Voltage higher than the Back-to-Grid Voltage)

If you want, post a picture of your settings here and we can check for you

11 hours ago, Cassie said:

Shows the battery graph with a strange dip below the 0 mark - I noticed the grid displays a similar graph pattern.  What does that mean?

As @francois said, your grid briefly went down (red line down to 0) and ran on batteries (purple line below 0 means you are drawing power from your batters - see you other pics when you were in loadshedding). When the power came back, your inverters started charging your batteries (purple line above 0) until they were full again

@Cassie: One other question: How many Pylons do you have and which model (US2000 or US3000)?

17 minutes ago, wolfandy said:

I believe we can also help you with that here

Thanks but I found the ICC manual and was able to change the settings.

 

18 minutes ago, wolfandy said:

(or 'Error' if something went wrong

I discovered if you set bulk charge before float charge you get an error.  Interesting that float should be set first.

4 minutes ago, wolfandy said:

One other question: How many Pylons do you have and which model (US2000 or US3000)?

Only one US3000, but I made provision to accommodate another US3000.  But I first want to install my panels now.  So the extra Pylon will have to wait for money to come in.

8 minutes ago, Cassie said:

Only one US3000, but I made provision to accommodate another US3000.  But I first want to install my panels now.  So the extra Pylon will have to wait for money to come in.

Thanks - and I know that challenge 😁

Just one advice: A Pylon does not like to be charged or discharged at more than 37A (approx. 1800W) over longer periods of time. I noticed in your first picture a brief spike higher than that. Short spikes like that are not a problem (the Pylon can handle spikes up to 100A). Just be mindful that your loads do not exceed 1800W during loadshedding (which it has not on the graphs that you have shared) - even though your 2x Axperts are able provide up to 8000W combined in theory

8 hours ago, Cassie said:

I discovered if you set bulk charge before float charge you get an error.  Interesting that float should be set first.

It will be that you can't set the float setting to higher than the bulk setting. So if decreasing both and they would temporarily cross over, you need to do the float setting first, to "make room" for the bulk setting.

17 hours ago, wolfandy said:

Just one advice: A Pylon does not like to be charged or discharged at more than 37A (approx. 1800W) over longer periods of time. I noticed in your first picture a brief spike higher than that.

My supplier of the Axperts and the Pylontech also advice me not to charge higher than 20amp.  He set it remotely via the Raspbery at 20amp.  However when I discussed the ICC "instruction manual" with the suppliers of the Rasberry yesterday, they changed it to 40amp and said the Pylontech performs better if charged at 40amps.  But I changed it back again to 20amps later. 

3 minutes ago, Cassie said:

they changed it to 40amp and said the Pylontech performs better if charged at 40amps.

US2000s have a 25 A limit, which if you have an odd number (like one) has to be rounded down (to 20 A for the case of one). For US3000s, it's 37 A per module; 40 A is pretty close. There is no reason to go below 30 A for a US3000.

6 minutes ago, Coulomb said:

For US3000s, it's 37 A per module; 40 A is pretty close. There is no reason to go below 30 A for a US3000.

Thanks Coulomb,  I don't think  there is a setting for 30amp on the Axperts.  So is it then OK if I set it on 40amps as was suggested by Raspberry suppliers?  

I noticed last night it was taking really some time to bring it back on full charge on the 20amp setting.

Edited July 14, 20205 yr by Cassie
...ad think...

6 minutes ago, Cassie said:

So is it then OK if I set it on 40amps as was suggested by Raspberry suppliers?

The safest thing is to put it to 30 A; I'd be surprised if your Axpert didn't have a 30 A setting. 40 A is ~8% over the recommended long term maximum. Depending on your panels, time of year, weather, etc, they may spend little time there, so it would be of no concern. If you're often recharging from utility to beat the next load shed, then it's a bit more of a risk.

21 minutes ago, Coulomb said:

I'd be surprised if your Axpert didn't have a 30 A setting

Sorry I was wrong, there is a 30A setting and I changed it to 30A.  

I also set the bulk on 53.1 and the float on 53.0, is that OK

3 hours ago, Cassie said:

I also set the bulk on 53.1 and the float on 53.0, is that OK

Recommended settings here in the forum (and what is also working well for me) are 52.5V for Bulk/Absorption and 51.8V for Float

5 hours ago, wolfandy said:

Recommended settings here in the forum (and what is also working well for me) are 52.5V for Bulk/Absorption and 51.8V for Float

Thanks I'll change that.  Another urgent question how do I reboot/restart ICC after I made changes or do I just reboot the Raspberry with that reboot button below the ICC window on the Raspberry?    Is this the correct way?  In the terminal window  -  restart the system by typing:  sudo restart now

31 minutes ago, Cassie said:

Another urgent question how do I reboot/restart ICC after I made changes or do I just reboot the Raspberry with that reboot button below the ICC window on the Raspberry?    Is this the correct way?  In the terminal window  -  restart the system by typing:  sudo restart now

You do not need to restart ICC or reboot your Pi after you have made changes. Just click on the 'Set' button next to the value that you have changed (purple boxes) to have those changes send to your Axpert. Just for safety I would also recommend pressing the 'Save' button in the bottom right (red box) to save the values to ICC

There are very few options in ICC (e.g. selecting to use the Pylon BMS values on the 'Settings - Battery' tab) that are only accessible when ICC is not 'active'. For this you can press the 'Stop/Start' button in the top left (orange box)

I only restart ICC or reboot my Pi if I have installed an ICC update, updated the Pi OS, or had some type of problem