Rickyv,

Setting 1 = Priority. Should be UTi (Utility First) Was UEI a typo?. If you select this, then Setting 12 & 13 becomes ineffective. (The V point when switching happens back and forth). 

In my view, you are between a rock and a very hard/expensive place here. In order to get setting 12 & 13 to be effective, you need setting 1 to be SOL or SBU. This means you run on batteries with Utility as backup. You want to run it the other way, which is setting 1 = UTi, and that leave you with Setting 29 = Low DC Voltage Cut-off. Set this to between 42 - 48 V, depending on how deep you want to cycle your batteries when Utility is out. Just remember, the lower you go, the more life (cycles) you take out of your batteries.

Typically, With SoC @ 80%, you can get approx 1-2000 cycles out of a good set of batteries, but at 30% SoC, the same batteries will only give you closer to 200 - 300 cycles. Big difference. Food for thought!

Setting 2: = Max Solar Charge. Rule of thumb here is 10% of your bat bank's capacity should be the charging current. In you case 10% of 105Ah is roughly 10A. 60A is way too high, and not recommended for long term survival of your batteries. Not critical now, as you don't have panels yet. Use the next setting up from that, which is 20A.

Setting 5 = Battery Type. I would use the USE setting. Specially if the default FLD setting don't match your Lead Crystal Batteries. Once you set this to USE, you now have to set the following as well:

    Setting 26 = Bulk Charge Voltage. This value is from your battery spec sheet. You need to multiply this by 8 (8 batteries in series). But for first pass 58.4 is OK.

    Setting 27 = Float Charge Voltage. Get form spec sheet. Same procedure as Setting 26 (x8). 54V looks OK, but tweak these two setting as per spec sheet.

Setting 11 = Max Utility Charge. See Setting 2. Setup mine at 2A. So you can go anything between 2A - 20A. Depends on how fast you want the batteries to be full again before the next cycle. 

Some free advise. You may have read this on PF already. The Expert will not protect your batteries properly, so get a BMV700/702 to do this properly. The Axpert's SoC value are way off, and you cannot use it to protect your batteries. The next thing is to get/run ICC. This software can be setup to switch according to the BMV, plus then you will know/measure exactly what is going.

But Rome wasn't build in a day, so plan, save and install the correct goodies to protect your investment, otherwise you may end up with a lemon...

5 hours ago, Chris Hobson said:

Hi 

Most of your settings are fine.

I would reduce program 2 to 20 A in anticipation of you going over to solar

Program 11 is good.

Program 12 raise to 47 or 48 depending on load.

Program 13 raise to 55 or 56V also in anticipation of you going to solar.

Program 29 should remain on the default 42 V.

I'll give a full explanation when I don't have to deal with a touch screen.

 

Thank you for the response Chris. have changed the last few settings

5 hours ago, Sidewinder said:

Rickyv,

Setting 1 = Priority. Should be UTi (Utility First) Was UEI a typo?. If you select this, then Setting 12 & 13 becomes ineffective. (The V point when switching happens back and forth). 

In my view, you are between a rock and a very hard/expensive place here. In order to get setting 12 & 13 to be effective, you need setting 1 to be SOL or SBU. This means you run on batteries with Utility as backup. You want to run it the other way, which is setting 1 = UTi, and that leave you with Setting 29 = Low DC Voltage Cut-off. Set this to between 42 - 48 V, depending on how deep you want to cycle your batteries when Utility is out. Just remember, the lower you go, the more life (cycles) you take out of your batteries.

Typically, With SoC @ 80%, you can get approx 1-2000 cycles out of a good set of batteries, but at 30% SoC, the same batteries will only give you closer to 200 - 300 cycles. Big difference. Food for thought!

Setting 2: = Max Solar Charge. Rule of thumb here is 10% of your bat bank's capacity should be the charging current. In you case 10% of 105Ah is roughly 10A. 60A is way too high, and not recommended for long term survival of your batteries. Not critical now, as you don't have panels yet. Use the next setting up from that, which is 20A.

Setting 5 = Battery Type. I would use the USE setting. Specially if the default FLD setting don't match your Lead Crystal Batteries. Once you set this to USE, you now have to set the following as well:

    Setting 26 = Bulk Charge Voltage. This value is from your battery spec sheet. You need to multiply this by 8 (8 batteries in series). But for first pass 58.4 is OK.

    Setting 27 = Float Charge Voltage. Get form spec sheet. Same procedure as Setting 26 (x8). 54V looks OK, but tweak these two setting as per spec sheet.

Setting 11 = Max Utility Charge. See Setting 2. Setup mine at 2A. So you can go anything between 2A - 20A. Depends on how fast you want the batteries to be full again before the next cycle. 

Some free advise. You may have read this on PF already. The Expert will not protect your batteries properly, so get a BMV700/702 to do this properly. The Axpert's SoC value are way off, and you cannot use it to protect your batteries. The next thing is to get/run ICC. This software can be setup to switch according to the BMV, plus then you will know/measure exactly what is going.

But Rome wasn't build in a day, so plan, save and install the correct goodies to protect your investment, otherwise you may end up with a lemon...

HI Sidewinder

 

UEl is utility on the unit. Mine is definitely set to Utility only. My average load at night which is normally the only time we home is between 300-400 watts. I would obviously like to make the batteries last as long as possible. The Royals i have are Lead Calcium not lead Crystal. so basically run of the mill flooded lead acid. Finding details on these are proving to be a little difficult, although many places seem to sell them.

Having read a lot of posts about the BMV702 it is on my shopping list. I will have to try get myself more familiar with the whole setup still 

My bad on the Calcium vs Crystal. Please share your Inverter 's S/W version. You may have a different version that mine. (73.40, AFAIK)

On 7/10/2017 at 3:34 PM, Sidewinder said:

My bad on the Calcium vs Crystal. Please share your Inverter 's S/W version. You may have a different version that mine. (73.40, AFAIK)

Where will i check the software version?

It's probably on your monitoring software's screen, or you can just use the up or down button to cycle through the display modes till you get to one starting with "U1".