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Axpert 5kva using a lot of power!


Marie1

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Please help! We have upgraded our batteries on our solar system 4 months ago. Currently having 9 x 300w panels and 12 sonic gel 100ah batteries. We've noticed that our average night time usage was 300w/h more than before. This morning we switched everything of in the house exept the inverter. On the efergy meter it still showed 330w. After shutting the inverter down, the watts went down to 0watts. Why is the inverter using so much power?

It wasn't like this before with the old batteries. We are using much more units per day now with 12 gel batteries, than with the previous 8 stride 105ah batteries. It doesn't make sense. 

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2 hours ago, Marie1 said:

Please help! We have upgraded our batteries on our solar system 4 months ago. Currently having 9 x 300w panels and 12 sonic gel 100ah batteries. We've noticed that our average night time usage was 300w/h more than before. This morning we switched everything of in the house exept the inverter. On the efergy meter it still showed 330w. After shutting the inverter down, the watts went down to 0watts. Why is the inverter using so much power?

It wasn't like this before with the old batteries. We are using much more units per day now with 12 gel batteries, than with the previous 8 stride 105ah batteries. It doesn't make sense. 

 

1 minute ago, Marie1 said:

Thank you, hope someone can help.

This is normal for the Axpert. It is a very low cost inverter charger and you get what you pay for. Gel batteries don't get properly charged with the Axpert. There is new firmware out that is supposed to address this problem. Your batteries won't last and you will have to replace them soon. It is important to upgrade the firmware OR put some panels on an external charge controller. I also recommend that you install a battery balancer.

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 Hello Marie

Before we start the first question would be do you have a BMV 700 or 702? This is very important as this help a lot in determining you problem. 

As to the general "losses"  as a rule the Axpert uses about 50w of energy on its own with no other load to it from here it gets a bit more tricky as your setup will determine what your general losses. 

But to start you will have to get a proper battery monitor. There is a firmware upgrade or mod that could use once you have found if that is your problem. 

Regards 

Paul 

 

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Mari, sorry, this may cause a heated debate. :D Just bear with us.

 

@TinkerBoy Mari said, and I quote:

5 hours ago, Marie1 said:

We have upgraded our batteries ... 4 months ago ... 12 sonic gel 100ah batteries ... average night time usage was 300w/h more than before. 

This morning we switched everything of in the house except the inverter. On the efergy meter it still showed 330w.

After shutting the inverter down, the watts went down to 0watts. Why is the inverter using so much power?

I DO AGREE that an Efergy is not nowhere as accurate as an Eskom meter on instant watts used due to the power factor, but it can still show you there is an issue somewhere.

Why yours did that in that short time, I cannot say bar that maybe, as you said at 2:14, the one was charging the battery?

So that video does not justify throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  :D

FWIW, the last 7 years my Efergy and Eskom readings each month where as close as damn. Instant measurements not, as I said, bit over a period, they are pretty damn close.

 

So the point is, from what Mari said, there was a before period and a after period, noted over months.

Maybe the inverters are charging the batts on top of the 50w Paul mentioned? 

Settings?
Gel's having an issue?
Viper load?

 

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Hi. Please throw your efergy away. It is the biggest problem with people getting wrong reading. I also had these issues in the past. The efergy does not read power factor. And it does not know the volts. Thus it gives completely wrong readings. The inverter uses 50 watts. That is it. 

You set the volts on the Efergy settings page.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

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Our system does not charge the batteries overnight. My problem is that we use to use an average of 300w per night. Now we use 600w per night. We changed the 8 stride batteries to 12 sonic gel batteries. I do not currently have a battery monitor, but will get one as soon as finances allow. Our efergy meter is quite correct with most of the readings, as every month on the 1st I compare the unit readings on efergy to the units used on my prepaid box, it does seem to be correct. Everything worked 100% with the old batteries, we got down from +-26 units to +-12 units per day. Bought the 12 gel batteries to aim to use under 10 units per day. Unfortunetaly from the date that we installed the new batteries, our units went up. Even on a warm sunny day, we use much more units than before(with more batteries) we've got so many settings from the solar company, it seems to me that they are not sure either.  Where can I get the new firmware? Please see my current settings:

1 - SbU
2 - 40a
3 - UPS
4 - 5d5 disable
5 - AGM
6 - LtE enable
7 - enable
9 - 50hz
11 - 2a
12 - 46v
13 - 54 v
16 - OSO only solar
18 - bON
19 - tEP
20 - LON
22 - AON
23 - byd disable
25 - FEN enable
26 - 56.4v
27 - 54.0v
28 - SIG
29 - 42.0v
30 - ONE
31 - Sbd disable

The gel batteries were bought new 4 months ago. How do I test if there are problems with them? Can I take it somewhere to be tested? I'm in Vredekloof, Cape town.

What is Viper load?

 

Please bare with me, my husband is not home often because of his work, and I have to figure this out by myself. 

Thank you

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The efergy meter is connected to the main incoming Eskom line. I've switched everything off one by one, thereafter all the switches off on the db box untill only the inverter switch was left. With everthing    

off exept the inverter, the reading was 330w. If I look at my history reports, we used +-300w/h during the night (having this system for 1year 1/2 years) After installing the new batteries, our usage are now 600+w/h during the night. I have not change or add any electric units. We did not use heaters, electric blankets etc. during winter. Our heatpump runs during the day. When waking up this morning I saw on the efergy the current use are 650w, so I thought, let me switch of everything one by one to see what is using the extra watts. I saw the watts going lower when switching of the fridge etc. To make sure I didn't miss something, I switched off the switches at the db box. It stayed at 330w with only the inverter left, when I switched the inverter off, the watts went down to 0. This was early morning.

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I think the inverter is charging the batteries.  Can you measure the amps going into the batteries with a clamp meter?

Another question: Are all the settings correct for the new set of batteries on the Axpert (ie Float, etc)

Regards
Mark

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55 minutes ago, Marie1 said:

Please bare with me, my husband is not home often because of his work, and I have to figure this out by myself.

Hi Marie

My suggestion would be to get someone knowledgeable and with the correct testing equipment to check out the system. My suggestion would be Mike here on the forum. He stays in Yzerfontein but work in Cape Town often.

Trying to figure this out via forum messages is simply going to frustrate you more.

Cobus

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1 hour ago, Marie1 said:

Please see my current settings:

1 - SbU
2 - 40a
3 - UPS
4 - 5d5 disable
5 - AGM
6 - LtE enable
7 - enable
9 - 50hz
11 - 2a
12 - 46v
13 - 54 v
16 - OSO only solar
18 - bON
19 - tEP
20 - LON
22 - AON
23 - byd disable
25 - FEN enable
26 - 56.4v
27 - 54.0v
28 - SIG
29 - 42.0v
30 - ONE
31 - Sbd disable

The gel batteries were bought new 4 months ago. How do I test if there are problems with them? Can I take it somewhere to be tested? I'm in Vredekloof, Cape town.

Hi Marie

For a 300Ah battery bank setting 2 should be 30A for lead acid batteries. AGM batteries can take a higher charge. I have just check your battery datasheet and it makes no mention of charge rate therefore I would go with 30A until you have better information with regard to your batteries. I would set  program 12 to 48V to protect your batteries and if you have heavy loads >2000W I would lower it to 47V.

Program 31 should be enabled so that you can power your daytime load directly off the panels.

Difficult to tell exactly what is going on but I have a theory. Your panels previously use to fully charge your 8 Stride batteries. Now  your battery bank is bigger it may have been heavily discharged intially and now the panels are playing catchup. You enter early evening with batteries not fully charged and the batteries quickly drop to 46V (or a heavy load is dropping them to 46V), the Inverter goes into bypass mode and since there is no AC charging you end up with a greater Eskom consumption overnight. 

It is difficult to tell exactly what is going on without data.

Chris.

 

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I have an OWL meter, which is pretty much the same thing a the Efergy. It's roughly 10% off. Where it fares worst is where you would expect it, with loads that have a bad power factor. The loads with the worst power factor in my house are the MR16 downlights, because the iron transformers aren't properly loaded down. This causes the meter to read about 5 times higher than what is really used. I consider this an extreme case.

In addition, I find that the Efergy/Owl reads in steps of around 16W, it has a very hard time with loads between 0 and 30W, often getting it very wrong.

We know the Axpert uses around 50W in standby. Times 5 gets you to 250W, which is close enough to what you're seeing. This assumes that the inverter has a poor power factor... which it very well might have. I think @Coulomb explained once that the Axpert uses a trick called the Ldi/dt effect (or TI trick as he called it) to down-convert and charge the batteries. It uses PWM to pulse half the transistors in the bridge. Now when I hear PWM... I hear bad power factor. So once again, without having real data, I would say it is likely that the inverter -- when trickle charging -- has poor power factor.

Now the only part of the puzzle that remains is this: Why would this show up now when it didn't with the previous bank. I can only guess that this bank might need a slightly different current to float-charge. In fact, it might be because they use LESS current that the power factor changes enough to be this much worse.

So I believe we might have explained why you're seeing 300W when it should be closer to 50W. Best way is to get a proper power meter. Cheapest way, if you just want to check and don't mind hacking a plug and socket into the input line, is to get the Efergy plug-in meter. That can show real power and even power-factor. It's not a brilliant meter -- the Kill-a-watt is better (and still crap) -- but it's a great deal more accurate than the clamp meter.

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Thank you eveyone, Chris I will change the settings like you suggest, will the batteries also charge from those settings during the day?

Will make a plan to get a battery monitor asap. Do anyone know where I could buy one? 

Where can I get the new firmware?

With the efergy meter doing the readings correct or not, our units per month are much more than before, lets see what the change in settings will do. 

 

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Morning Marie

Going through the info you supplied just a couple of questions

12 hours ago, Marie1 said:

After installing the new batteries, our usage are now 600+w/h during the night.

From what I understand you are measuring on your Eskom "input" side - so you are now using "more" Eskom power at night?

 

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12 minutes ago, Marie1 said:

Thank you eveyone, Chris I will change the settings like you suggest, will the batteries also charge from those settings during the day?

Will make a plan to get a battery monitor asap. Do anyone know where I could buy one? 

Where can I get the new firmware?

With the efergy meter doing the readings correct or not, our units per month are much more than before, lets see what the change in settings will do. 

 

@Camel looks like you are needed :P (Camel is our BMV guy Marie , but I see that the Power shop also stocks them at a decent price)

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4 minutes ago, Marie1 said:

With the efergy meter doing the readings correct or not, our units per month are much more than before, lets see what the change in settings will do. 

Ok I think you answered my Question regarding your load -

I am correct:

  • Since the new batts installed you are using more Eskom units?
  • If so when do you use your batteries?
  • Does the inverter switch over to Grid during the night?
  • Do you monitor the data that comes from your inverter with software?

Best Regards

Paul

Ps. I might get in hot water here but even if the meter is not measuring accurately (in other words it is not calibrated) it should still measure consistently and if you did not change any settings on it it will give you a general good indication as to how the usage is going. 

 

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Yes Paul, using more units. Batteries get charged in the mornings when solar kick in, when reaching a specific volt, grid utility switch off (+-10h00 in the morning) and utility use goes to solar and battery (battery used only when load are high). The inverter switch over to grid during the night, usually quite early, because then the batteries are drained. Sometimes the batteries will last till about 24h00, but very seldom. My husband have the watchpower software. 

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11 hours ago, Chris Hobson said:

Hi Marie

For a 300Ah battery bank setting 2 should be 30A for lead acid batteries. AGM batteries can take a higher charge. I have just check your battery datasheet and it makes no mention of charge rate therefore I would go with 30A until you have better information with regard to your batteries. I would set  program 12 to 48V to protect your batteries and if you have heavy loads >2000W I would lower it to 47V.

Program 31 should be enabled so that you can power your daytime load directly off the panels.

Difficult to tell exactly what is going on but I have a theory. Your panels previously use to fully charge your 8 Stride batteries. Now  your battery bank is bigger it may have been heavily discharged intially and now the panels are playing catchup. You enter early evening with batteries not fully charged and the batteries quickly drop to 46V (or a heavy load is dropping them to 46V), the Inverter goes into bypass mode and since there is no AC charging you end up with a greater Eskom consumption overnight. 

It is difficult to tell exactly what is going on without data.

Chris.

 

Hi Chris, we have a 100Ah bank. Will the settings stay the same?

IMG_0573.JPG

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31 minutes ago, Marie1 said:

Yes Paul, using more units. Batteries get charged in the mornings when solar kick in, when reaching a specific volt, grid utility switch off (+-10h00 in the morning) and utility use goes to solar and battery (battery used only when load are high). The inverter switch over to grid during the night, usually quite early, because then the batteries are drained. Sometimes the batteries will last till about 24h00, but very seldom. My husband have the watchpower software. 

I think this confirms what @Chris Hobson said earlier. Your batteries are not charged sufficiently / wasn't from the beginning and so if you switch over to grid early evening this will account for the higher usage on the grid. 

Personally I would get the BMV as soon as possible so that you can see what the state of your batteries are and to protect your investment. The risk is just too high to take a chance without it. I would even go as far as saying , use eskom power at night even if it is only until you can confirm that your batteries is properly charged. The costs in paying eskom for those couple of nights will be a lot cheaper than replacing your batteries. 

Regards

Paul

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