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3kw Microcare GTI


Weasel

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I'm looking to go off-grid now, i don't think we'll be allowed to feed back into the grid anytime soon and my loads are quite low so i'm not saving as much as i could be on the GTI. My bill is only around R400 and i think that's all from night time consumption. I Bought a Victron multiplus which i think is better quality and more versatile, and if someday we could feed back i should be able to set it up like that as well, in theory at least.

 

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Welcome Langeraat!

 

Lekker Weasel, going for the Victron. Expensive yes, but very good.

They have all you need if ever you want to feed back. @plonkster would tell you all and more about all that!!!

 

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yea i've read some of the posts and it seems he is the one to talk to, i would like to pick his brain a bit. Personally I've worked with victron's before just never had the money for one myself, undeniably good, and blue.

 

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Amen brother.

When you need software to read the Victron, and you have a cable, either Plonksters or solWEB (soon) can help.

What controller are you getting?

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It started with a BMV. Then a 150/70 Mppt. Now also looking for the cash to get a Multiplus 3000. Biggest issue at the moment is deciding between 24v (currently 4 T105) or 48V.  I think both have their benefits.

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13 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Waar is @plonkster:D

He must come and enjoy this moment! There was one, then two ... and then three four and five ... how many more!? :D

hehe, Sounds like your enjoying this as much as i am :) 

how about some unboxing porn, must say this can't be helping me selling my GTI... lol

2016-04-14 20.05.59.jpg

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12 minutes ago, Louw said:

It started with a BMV. Then a 150/70 Mppt. Now also looking for the cash to get a Multiplus 3000. Biggest issue at the moment is deciding between 24v (currently 4 T105) or 48V.  I think both have their benefits.

yes well, being able to push more power into your batteries on the same amperage is a big benefit. also less losses in cables and inverters are typically more efficient. on the other-hand 24V is so much more comparable. loads of DC-DC stuff you can use directly which is really nice. having 24v already is probably going to be an issue if you want to up to 48 introducing new batteries and that whole can of worms.

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2 minutes ago, viper_za said:

I like the led display with the static text :lol:

With Victron, it just works, no need for silly displays to see IF it is even on, it just WORKS. (rofl)

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The other benefit of 24V is that i.e 500AH at 24V = 250AH at 48V. However a 12x500AH 2V batteries would cost less than 24x250AH 2V batteires. But then you would need double the amount of MPPT'S to charge the same amount of energy into the batteries.

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10 minutes ago, Weasel said:

Is that why you have a BMV 702? 

Too look after my batteries of course ;)

 

10 hours ago, Weasel said:

I have a 3KW Microcare GTI inverter a little over a year old, Looking to sell for R9k

Just to put some marketing up at the bottom of the thread too

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4 minutes ago, viper_za said:
10 hours ago, Weasel said:

I have a 3KW Microcare GTI inverter a little over a year old, Looking to sell for R9k

Just to put some marketing up at the bottom of the thread too

yes, someone buy the GTI, i need to pay off my multiplus. :D

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Okay, probably not the best part of the forum, seeing as it is classifieds... but okay. If you're going off-grid and none of that feed back and/or hub stuff, it's simple. You need the Multiplus and the MK2 cable. You could get away without the mk2 (I did for a long time) but it's good to have. Those are minimum requirements.

Charge controller doesn't HAVE to be Victron (I ran a microcare for a long long time) but it helps if it is.

If you have money left, add a BMV. You can get away without it (I still do) but it makes life much simpler.

If you still have money left, add a CCGX.

I can help with assistants setup if you want to do grid fallback.

One definite drawback of a pure victron setup (jdp has mentioned this in the past) is that none of the equipment has any LCD screens or anything. If you don't put up a CCGX (or perhaps my bluelantern open source project) you have no idea of voltage and current. If you don't want to buy the CCGX (it is rather expensive), I Can help you out with a Raspberry Pi based solution, although that STILL has no LCD unless you add one yourself :-)

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STM32F7!? Awesome. I have an F4, and somewhere I have an F3 still in original packaging. I did briefly investigate the possibility of using the STM32 for this, because it has the ability to act as a USB host and should be able to talk to the MK2, but it was just way too much effort for a proof of concept.

I started on a python project that runs a small web server (mostly to serve up data in json and tie things together), an angular front end (so the gui is a browser app), and some plugins that allows it to harvest data from charge controllers and inverters.

The code is here: https://github.com/izak/ib.bluelantern

It has support for Victron MK2 inverters (Phoenix and Multiplus, haven't tested a Quatro) and for VE.Direct charge controllers.

Some work has been done to support the BMV, but it is not fully integrated yet. The idea is that the system works out battery charge/discharge by looking at the difference between charge and discharge figures, UNLESS there is a BMV in the system in which case it uses that instead. This last bit isn't there yet.

I have a hack in place to interface VE.Can controllers (the 150/70 and 150/85) as well. Basically, I convert a subset of the CAN protocol to a subset of the VE.Direct protocol so that it works out of the box with the existing plugin. By subset I mean it is so minimal it doesn't even do checksums.

https://github.com/izak/arduino-victron-canbus

Thanks to TTT, there is a plugin for Morningstar PWM controllers:

https://github.com/izak/ib.bluelantern.morningstar

To see a running example, look here:

http://ispburger.ddns.net:6543/

If you look at night, there will be nothing there.

I think the minimal steps I need to make it useful, is add some voltage gauges, an info tree (where you can inspect anything, even temperature values).

After that, I want to implement a "charge counter", a make-shift battery management module that works out the delta between charge and discharge so you have an idea of the state of charge. In other words, a software-BMV. I'll have to fudge in some kind of "efficiency" factor as well... when I get there.

In other words, project isn't finished. I got busy with work stuff after I got the initial stuff going, of which the largest part was building the CAN interface.

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You guys musn't get the Juniors confused sometimes... Especially when they are member of different forums where terms are used that are similar/same!!!

Seriously I had to re-read some of the comments about 2/3 times to understand context... A Disco (Not just a 70's dance craze), is a Landrover Dicovery on the 4x4 forums (took me 10 minutes to figure out WTF Weasel was on about... I don't know many of the terms here yet, but seriously a Landy does not fit into a Solar Power discussion:D:D:D

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2 hours ago, KLEVA said:

A Disco (Not just a 70's dance craze), is a Landrover Dicovery on the 4x4 forums

It's a "Discovery" here too. Its a series of development boards made by SGS Thompson, labeled "Discovery" because that's what it is meant for. It is meant to discover what you can do with that particular SOC. They sell them for like 11 USD or R250 or so... dirt cheap. A 32-bit processor that costs less than some genuine arduino boards... :-)

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