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Posted (edited)

I am new here, been building up my system for some time now.

Started with the following a bit more than a year ago purely for loadshedding backup. System started as follows:

1. Axpert 5KVA (Mecer)
2. 4 x Vision 200ah AGM's

After a year I started having problems with the batteries and decided to upgrade to Pylontech and also at the same time bit the bullet and ordered the panels to start producing own power. Connecting the Pylontech's to the Axpert I realized that communication between batteries and inverter was not going to work, so also ordered the Raspberry PI with ICC software

System currently as follows:

1. Axpert 5KVA (Mecer)
2. 2 x Pylontech US3000
3. 6 x Canadian Solar 365W Poly KuMax
4. Raspberry PI with ICC software

Will be adding two more Pylontech US3000's (for total battery backup of 14 Kwh) as well as 6 more 365W panels in the next month or two

I will probably be asking a lot of questions as I have been lurking these forums as a guest for a long time looking for answers to all of life's power questions

Attached a few photos of my setup

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IMG-6248.jpg

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Edited by PhilFM
Posted

Ok, so it did not take long for me to need advice

I am playing around with voltage settings on the ICC, but struggle with a few things and would really appreciate some input/ideas what could be causing our frustrations.

The ICC/Inverter is set as priority output Solar First with battery charge as Utility and Solar. All other inverter settings as per attached

Next, we have the Battery Control set up to use time control with attached settings

We are experiencing the following problems.

1. At 4:00 in the morning the inverter switches over right on time to batteries, which then run the load until PV starts picking up from around 7, this then runs the load and starts to charge the batteries. Very nice, but then when batteries reaches full charge, the inverter starts switching loads between batteries and PV. We find that the batteries draws down a bit then starts charging from the PV to just do the cycle again, this is fixed by dropping the float voltage to 51V, but then batteries don't fully charge and a shortage from PV is still drawn from the batteries. This should however not be as per attached settings the priority is set as Solar Utility Battery from 10:00, which I understand means that a shortage on load should be drawn from utility and not batteries, batteries should only be used between 10:00 and 16:00 if both utility and PV is not available. Am I missing something here?

2. Even though the inverter switched over flawlessly at 04:00 from Utility to SBU, at 16:00 the afternoon it does not switch back to Utility as per schedule. Only if we manually change output priority to utility does it move over to utility and then after changing back to Solar First it seems to then stick to Utility as it should.

Attached the inverter and battery control schedule. Please if someone can have a look and see where something is very wrong? Please ask if something above does not make sense then I can try explain a little better

Thanks a lot

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Posted

Just some feedback on this matter

Spoke to Juan at Centurion Solar who helped a lot with the above matters, suggesting some new settings which seems to have sorted most of the problems.

Also as a note for someone that might run into the same problem:

On the battery control time grid. The older Axperts do not support the SUB function, if you do tick any times there, it only confuses the system. Only the new Axpert King will be able to support all three, Utility, SUB and SBU. So we are only running times for Utility and SBU now, no slots for SUB and everything switches as it should on the times it should.

Very happy to have gotten this sorted and moving forward in understanding more of how our systems works. Between the batteries and PV, we are currently basically running our house without grid for 12 hours a day. Which is already a huge saving for us. 6 More panels in the hopefully near future will stretch our ability also to generate enough energy later in the afternoon and also charge up the batteries earlier in the day, really looking forward to that.

Hope you all have a great, sunny day

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

A quick update on this project

So we installed another US3000, making it a total of 3 of them as well as installing 6 more panels. The extra panels is not really needed to carry extra load as we managed well with only 6, but double the capacity just increases the time we can run on batteries at night and charge them up quicker during the day, as well as stretching a few more watts at the end of the day.

We find we are also now going to be able to switch the old "heavy load" circuit to the inverter and just balance our load more during the day in order to now use the solar for the washing, coffee machine etc. Have been running these loads off a lead from the other circuits just to test and the system is really doing well with the extra loads.

We are learning more and more every day about how our consumption works and where we can improve and balance loads a little better

Some pics of the new equipment installed

 

Pylon x 3.jpg

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

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