Solar generation in rain/cloudy conditions

wingnut771 said:
I wouldn't replace batteries, that's just pissing money against the wall.
Click to expand...

Tend to agree. My installer advised though not to mix sizes, even with same brand. He reckons they'd had issues with this. How true this is is beyond me but they're quite a big outfit, having done large commercial installations as well as residential. I could just add more 5.3kWh as they're in the garage and there is space.
 
Flanders said:
Tend to agree. My installer advised though not to mix sizes, even with same brand. He reckons they'd had issues with this. How true this is is beyond me but they're quite a big outfit, having done large commercial installations as well as residential. I could just add more 5.3kWh as they're in the garage and there is space.
Click to expand...
Nah, I've been watching Andy for 5+ years and he has sizes 100Ah-600Ah paralleled together. All that happens is the bigger capacity battery takes more of the load than smaller capacity while the parallel connection keeps voltages balanced and identical automagically.

Ask him what issues they had. Your installer is just taking the piss imho. Maybe he doesn't want the drama of trying to get comms working with different brands or something? Me personally I will forget about comms and just use voltage mode. This will void a sunsynk warranty I think so just buy the cheapest crap out there.

Andy even demonstrated an extreme example of paralleling a 5Ah with 300Ah. The 5Ah took a smidge of the load while the 100Ah took the rest.

Not sure why I'm bothering posting the video as no one watches them anyway because they are "too long" but here it is for what its worth :P

 
wingnut771 said:
Nah, I've been watching Andy for 5+ years and he has sizes 100Ah-600Ah paralleled together. All that happens is the bigger capacity battery takes more of the load than smaller capacity while the parallel connection keeps voltages balanced and identical automagically.

Ask him what issues they had. Your installer is just taking the piss imho. Maybe he doesn't want the drama of trying to get comms working with different brands or something? Me personally I will forget about comms and just use voltage mode. This will void a sunsynk warranty I think so just buy the cheapest crap out there.

Andy even demonstrated an extreme example of paralleling a 5Ah with 300Ah. The 5Ah took a smidge of the load while the 100Ah took the rest.

Not sure why I'm bothering posting the video as no one watches them anyway because they are "too long" but here it is for what its worth :P

Click to expand...

I will interrogate him when I do eventually do my next upgrade. They're a very helpful bunch and don't mind shooting the breeze about these things.
 
denmendez65 said:
You can kinda see how many more panels you need now. Seems enough to generate an extra 150kWh a month should do the trick to cover winter. Thats about 3 more 550W panels.

Your inverter seems to be the bottleneck now, though. Can it take the extra panels? Is that why you are going the MPPT route?

Would adding a second Nava help since you can parallel the 2? And add the panels to that?
Click to expand...

Yes so I'm really impressed with my navasolar. If I switch grid off I can pull the full 5.2kW before it starts moaning for overload so capacity wise I'm happy with it.

The only real issue is it has only 1 x build in mppt with max 5000w but a max voltage of 500 vdc and with my 8 x JA solar 595w panels in series that voltage is maxed out. I could try to get maybe 4 of those panels and then do hald in parallel but cost wise doesn't make sense hence I wanted to go the victron mppt route because I'm happy with the ac capacity of my navasolar inverter.

It seemed the Victron route is the best way to get more pv into the batteries and whatever excess load I need if the navasolar has lowish pv like today when I switch the geyser on it pulls 3.65kWh so its dipping into the batteries a bit so the Victron will supplement that when needs be.
 
wingnut771 said:
Nah, I've been watching Andy for 5+ years and he has sizes 100Ah-600Ah paralleled together. All that happens is the bigger capacity battery takes more of the load than smaller capacity while the parallel connection keeps voltages balanced and identical automagically.

Ask him what issues they had. Your installer is just taking the piss imho. Maybe he doesn't want the drama of trying to get comms working with different brands or something? Me personally I will forget about comms and just use voltage mode. This will void a sunsynk warranty I think so just buy the cheapest crap out there.

Andy even demonstrated an extreme example of paralleling a 5Ah with 300Ah. The 5Ah took a smidge of the load while the 100Ah took the rest.

Not sure why I'm bothering posting the video as no one watches them anyway because they are "too long" but here it is for what its worth :P

Click to expand...

Flanders said:
I will interrogate him when I do eventually do my next upgrade. They're a very helpful bunch and don't mind shooting the breeze about these things.
Click to expand...

Yeah I have 4 x of the same capacity on paper but not really because the latest 2 I added was older so less capacity but they cycle well together. Different brands also. The only issue for me is communication if you are battery befok like me now I like to monitor them so if the batteries don't communicate with each other, you don't get that stats in stuff like solar assistant or your inverter apps for example but compatibility wise, they work well.
 
Flanders said:
I will interrogate him when I do eventually do my next upgrade. They're a very helpful bunch and don't mind shooting the breeze about these things.
Click to expand...
Our installer said the same thing basically, although you can mix them doesnt make it ideal - we have the Volta Stage 3 - 10Kwh battery and wanted to add a 5kWh later, but also makes sense we he explains these things can get out of hand when it comes to space (our space is limited) you add a 5Kwh now then realize you want more later and land up with several smaller batteries when one or two slightly bigger ones would do (our end goal is 20 to 30Kwh storage) so we would rather just save up for the second 10Kwh even if a 5kwh is more within reach affordability wise
 
wingnut771 said:
Nah, I've been watching Andy for 5+ years and he has sizes 100Ah-600Ah paralleled together. All that happens is the bigger capacity battery takes more of the load than smaller capacity while the parallel connection keeps voltages balanced and identical automagically.

Ask him what issues they had. Your installer is just taking the piss imho. Maybe he doesn't want the drama of trying to get comms working with different brands or something? Me personally I will forget about comms and just use voltage mode. This will void a sunsynk warranty I think so just buy the cheapest crap out there.

Andy even demonstrated an extreme example of paralleling a 5Ah with 300Ah. The 5Ah took a smidge of the load while the 100Ah took the rest.

Not sure why I'm bothering posting the video as no one watches them anyway because they are "too long" but here it is for what its worth :P

Click to expand...

Cleversolarpower by Nick is also pretty decent.

www.youtube.com

Cleversolarpower by Nick

This channel is all about giving you information about off-grid solar systems.
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

 
cavedog said:
Yeah I have 4 x of the same capacity on paper but not really because the latest 2 I added was older so less capacity but they cycle well together. Different brands also. The only issue for me is communication if you are battery befok like me now I like to monitor them so if the batteries don't communicate with each other, you don't get that stats in stuff like solar assistant or your inverter apps for example but compatibility wise, they work well.
Click to expand...

JamesTronics Home

Connect with your battery
shop.jamestronics.com shop.jamestronics.com

I wish I can find Andy's video review though. I tried but iBMS is too generic.
 
BLG said:
Our installer said the same thing basically, although you can mix them doesnt make it ideal - we have the Volta Stage 3 - 10Kwh battery and wanted to add a 5kWh later, but also makes sense we he explains these things can get out of hand when it comes to space (our space is limited) you add a 5Kwh now then realize you want more later and land up with several smaller batteries when one or two slightly bigger ones would do (our end goal is 20 to 30Kwh storage) so we would rather just save up for the second 10Kwh even if a 5kwh is more within reach affordability wise
Click to expand...
Watch the first 20 seconds:
 
sigh clouds again, same time as yesterday, plus it seems that is when the wife loves to put on the dishwasher, so now using battery instead of sun. Cause the cloud just hangs there
 
BLG said:
Our installer said the same thing basically, although you can mix them doesnt make it ideal - we have the Volta Stage 3 - 10Kwh battery and wanted to add a 5kWh later, but also makes sense we he explains these things can get out of hand when it comes to space (our space is limited) you add a 5Kwh now then realize you want more later and land up with several smaller batteries when one or two slightly bigger ones would do (our end goal is 20 to 30Kwh storage) so we would rather just save up for the second 10Kwh even if a 5kwh is more within reach affordability wise
Click to expand...
Tends to get cheaper as you go bigger anyway. R per kWh that is.
 
  • Love
Reactions: BLG
I have 2 x 5kwh, 1 x 10kwh, 1 x 14kwh and an old dodgy pouch cell DIY that used to be 10kwh all from different manufacturers and all in parallel. I just have comms to the 14kwh and the rest don't communicate. I haven't had a days trouble. I bought them knowing I wasn't going to get support from the manufacturers but because I got great deals on everything it was worth it.

Also, in terms of efficiency month to month, I find it best to look at daily kWh per kW installed. That levels it for systems of different sizes. Here is my record of my different systems for the last 6 years. I know some of the December values are quite low, mostly because we tend to be a away for a few weeks so the system idles and yields are bad.

1780320568349.png
 
wingnut771 said:
Watch the first 20 seconds:
Click to expand...
lol yeah he is clearly not worried about space, we have one small wall inside the house by the front door, now dedicated to the battery - inverter- db's and hopefully soon to come one more battery (the 10kwh volta's pretty big (or at least much bigger than they looked in the pictures before seeing it personally)
 
Lupus said:
sigh clouds again, same time as yesterday, plus it seems that is when the wife loves to put on the dishwasher, so now using battery instead of sun. Cause the cloud just hangs there
Click to expand...
My generation is basically 100W. At 3 it had dropped to only 300W from 1.5kW around 2:30.
 
Lupus said:
sigh clouds again, same time as yesterday, plus it seems that is when the wife loves to put on the dishwasher, so now using battery instead of sun. Cause the cloud just hangs there
Click to expand...
yip today was a little choppy for the PV, although not too bad we still managed to get back up 100% SOC for the evening considering we dropped down to 32% SOC at one point and only pulled 5kwh from grid Screenshot 2026-06-01 160503.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X