We finally want to pull the trigger & go Solar

[Hazy_Living@79]

Thanks, sorry I should have put some more info - we running a 8KW Deye, 10Kwh Volta battery and 8x 620 Watt Jinko Panels - we really wanted more panels but as it is had to "finance" some of the costs, we'll look at expansion a bit later down the line

The principle that I follow is that I use the grid to keep the battery at certain minimal levels during the evening. This may change for you but my TOU settings are:

Time 1 - 00h00 - 10h00 -Grid charge - Batt 25%
Time 2 - 10h00 - 11h00 - No grid charge - Batt 30%
Time 3 - 11h00 - 15h00 - No grid charge - Batt 40%
Time 4 - 15h00 - 18h30 - No grid charge - Batt 90%
Time 5 - 18h30 - 20h30 - Grid charge - Batt 75%
Time 6 - 20h30 - 00h00 - Grid charge - Batt 50%

When you have grid charge ticked, if your SOC hit that's level i.e. 25% between midnight and 10h00, then the grid will be used to supply your load until you have enough solar to charge it.

It's not a one shoe fit type thing, you're going to have to play around a bit to see what works for you. But if your usage is low during the evening, 10kwh should cover you sufficiently, and your panels should be sufficient to recharge your battery and run your house load most days.

I also have the system set up to prioritize load, rather than prioritize battery

 

[BLG]

So our daytime usage is probably negligible - both myself and partner work from home, we have opted to move certain loads to the day that we used to do at night ie: Dishwasher & Geyser. We have 3 kids with their own gaming PCs, I also have a gaming PC and try to enjoy some "downtime" after work - my dad lives on the property and is retired, so an additional small load to consider during the day and night (tv, fridge, airfryer, microwave, 30litre geyser) I would say our night time use is probably slightly higher than your "average" household and would like to prioritise battery for the evenings as much as possible and within reason (our battery is specced to handle lows of 20% but even though im very new at this cannot say i am comfortable dropping that low very often but im open to everyone's experiences

 

[spit]

I keep mine at 20% all the time. We haven't had a power outage for about 13 months. I've manually changed it to charge the batteries when there's a storm or a bit of weather, but that's only been 2 or 3 times. It feels like additional wear on the batteries to have the grid charge them, or at least that's just how my mind works.

 

[BLG]

Wear is not a factor if they're LiFePO

How so though? I notice they rated at 6000 cycles, is that flat to full, 6000 times or 6000 "top-ups" ?

 

[Hazy_Living@79]

How so though? I notice they rated at 6000 cycles, is that flat to full, 6000 times or 6000 "top-ups" ?

Full to flat to full

 

[BLG]

So it has been going like this all day, I am surprised we actually got it to 70% (we started the day with 43% SOC) - yesterday by 12pm we hit 100% full battery, today it's miserable and grey but i suppose rather we get introduced to the limitations early on....

 

[SauRoNZA]

So now that we been using the system for around 2 days we looking to "tweak" it, our installer used the below settings for the various time slots & SOC targets, might be more of a blanket approach or a general middle-ground for savings versus backup - What are you guys using for your different needs and scenarios? View attachment 1909823

Wasting all the good battery you paid for I reckon.

Mine runs to 15…on all slots.

20 if Load Shedding is active.

Should be no reason to use 100 ever if you have solar attached.

What system did you end up with and what is your base load more or less overnight?

 

[SauRoNZA]

The principle that I follow is that I use the grid to keep the battery at certain minimal levels during the evening. This may change for you but my TOU settings are:

Time 1 - 00h00 - 10h00 -Grid charge - Batt 25%
Time 2 - 10h00 - 11h00 - No grid charge - Batt 30%
Time 3 - 11h00 - 15h00 - No grid charge - Batt 40%
Time 4 - 15h00 - 18h30 - No grid charge - Batt 90%
Time 5 - 18h30 - 20h30 - Grid charge - Batt 75%
Time 6 - 20h30 - 00h00 - Grid charge - Batt 50%

When you have grid charge ticked, if your SOC hit that's level i.e. 25% between midnight and 10h00, then the grid will be used to supply your load until you have enough solar to charge it.

It's not a one shoe fit type thing, you're going to have to play around a bit to see what works for you. But if your usage is low during the evening, 10kwh should cover you sufficiently, and your panels should be sufficient to recharge your battery and run your house load most days.

I also have the system set up to prioritize load, rather than prioritize battery

Why use grid charge at all if you have solar?

 

[Hazy_Living@79]

Why use grid charge at all if you have solar?

Its not so much charging from the grid. Its ensuring that if I have a power outage, which is fairly frequent in my area, my battery will have that minimum capacity to last me through till the morning. The evening slots are in case we do some baking or extended cooks, then my battery wont drop below those amounts before those times.

 

[s0lar]

Go solar? Come at me bro!

 

[clickingbuttons]

I regularly discharge my Deye batteries to 12 percent and SOH after one year of doing this is still 100%.

 

[SauRoNZA]

I regularly discharge my Deye batteries to 12 percent and SOH after one year of doing this is still 100%.

Mine has been discharging to
15% pretty much all of the last 4 years since I got them.

Still at 97% SOH.

 

[BLG]

Wasting all the good battery you paid for I reckon.

Mine runs to 15…on all slots.

20 if Load Shedding is active.

Should be no reason to use 100 ever if you have solar attached.

What system did you end up with and what is your base load more or less overnight?

So we landed up getting an 8Kw Deye, a 10Kwh Volta Stage 3 battery and 8 Panels (620 Watts) I have adjusted the Work mode to this for now since the installer's settings seemed a bit conservative and more of a backup oriented setup with less "savings" in mind. We'll see how this goes for a while. OH, we put everything on Essential load except the stove/oven and had the Team connect the generator up to the Gen input for last resort emergencies (the generator is a 7KW petrol, manual start type)

 

[BLG]

Our evening base loads appear to be roughly 900 watts to 1.4Kw with a few 2-3kw bursts (not sustained) here and there, I dont have too much data to work with right now as we only got it installed on the 20th, but the few exports I gave to Copilot had the following summary:


Summary: Your evening base load is ~1.3 kW, translating to ~10–11 kWh total between (17:00–23:00). One battery covers it if full, but a second battery would give you breathing room for spikes and bad weather days.

Consolidated Overnight Profile​

• (23:00–06:00)
• Base load: ~0.5–0.7 kW continuous
• Spikes: 1.5–3 kW (short bursts, appliances cycling)

Battery Implications​

• Evening (17:00–23:00): ~10–11 kWh
• Overnight (23:00–06:00): ~6–7 kWh
• Combined non‑solar hours (17:00–06:00): ~16–18 kWh

With one 10 kWh battery, you can cover either the evening or the overnight, but not both without leaning on grid. With two batteries (~20 kWh), you’d comfortably cover the entire non‑solar window, even with spikes, and still have margin for cloudy mornings.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Our evening base loads appear to be roughly 900 watts to 1.4Kw with a few 2-3kw bursts (not sustained) here and there, I dont have too much data to work with right now as we only got it installed on the 20th, but the few exports I gave to Copilot had the following summary:


Summary: Your evening base load is ~1.3 kW, translating to ~10–11 kWh total between (17:00–23:00). One battery covers it if full, but a second battery would give you breathing room for spikes and bad weather days.

Consolidated Overnight Profile​

• (23:00–06:00)
• Base load: ~0.5–0.7 kW continuous
• Spikes: 1.5–3 kW (short bursts, appliances cycling)

Battery Implications​

• Evening (17:00–23:00): ~10–11 kWh
• Overnight (23:00–06:00): ~6–7 kWh
• Combined non‑solar hours (17:00–06:00): ~16–18 kWh

With one 10 kWh battery, you can cover either the evening or the overnight, but not both without leaning on grid. With two batteries (~20 kWh), you’d comfortably cover the entire non‑solar window, even with spikes, and still have margin for cloudy mornings.

Those spikes sound like the geyser, especially if it’s while you are sleeping.

Otherwise likely the kettle.

If you get a CBI Astute Smart Controller fitted to your geyser circuit breaking you can just turn it off overnight.

Run it from 08:00-20:00 or something like that.

 

[BLG]

Our Geyser is a big boy (4Kw+) i think its my Dad's little Ariston 30L geyser kicking in at intervals through the night - We have a Smart Switch on the geyser for a few weeks now and pretty much leave it turned off every night and run it for maybe an hour a day.

 

[BLG]

So I did not want to beat up the battery yesterday and ran this off the Grid for a while...coupled with a few things running in the background the Geyser really hammers the system. Our next purchase most certainly is going to need to be a Geyser Solar controller or something similar to bring this down, in Total we pulled 15.03kWh from the Geyser - better than last Sunday 's 20.64kWh

 

[ice_cubes]

Its not so much charging from the grid. Its ensuring that if I have a power outage, which is fairly frequent in my area, my battery will have that minimum capacity to last me through till the morning. The evening slots are in case we do some baking or extended cooks, then my battery wont drop below those amounts before those times.

I also do a 30-minute grid charge every night "just in case" we have a power outage. We have a cable-theft problem in our area.

 

[Lupus]

So I did not want to beat up the battery yesterday and ran this off the Grid for a while...coupled with a few things running in the background the Geyser really hammers the system. Our next purchase most certainly is going to need to be a Geyser Solar controller or something similar to bring this down, in Total we pulled 15.03kWh from the Geyser - better than last Sunday 's 20.64kWh


View attachment 1910520

View attachment 1910521

Start figuring out why the geyser is using so much. As that means a lot of hot water is being used.

 

[BLG]

Start figuring out why the geyser is using so much. As that means a lot of hot water is being used.

Yeah 5 of us in the same house standing queue to bath is always going to be a slight problem...

I am looking into getting one of these Ceramic type elements that play along "better" with solar setups apparently (LEDARS PTC Element) or an alternative, downgrade from 4Kw to a 2Kw element and run it a little longer when we have surplus output from the panels during the day.
I noticed if i run the geyser for around 1.5hrs between 12 and 2pm roughly, i can still have a decently hot bath by 6 or 7pm. I am now in the habit of turning the geyser on at 12pm - roughly an hour after the battery hits 100% SOC - the panels supply 3/4 of whats needed for the geyser and the remaining 1kw+ is covered by the grid - if theres no spotty cloud cover I let the battery supply the remaining 1/4 required (limited to 10%) and it still gets around an hour of PV to recharge back from 90% to 100% before the 3pm slump kicks in (sometimes i only finish up with 96% to 98% battery SOC but its a good SOC to enter the evening with.

I try to run everything from battery and achieve a 40% SOC by 10pm when we get into bed (sometimes successful, sometimes not)

I must say I am learning a great deal about these things and it has been fun so far