Solar generation in rain/cloudy conditions

wingnut771 said:
How did the evil fascists measure this? Didn't we all have spinny meters back then?
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Yes at home.
I worked on big Electric furnaces. They had a system from Conlog, which did the measurement.
During normal working hours you had to stay with in the limits. But at night time it shifted to use all available energy. Not going to go into detail.
 
HowTo said:
Yes at home.
I worked on big Electric furnaces. They had a system from Conlog, which did the measurement.
During normal working hours you had to stay with in the limits. But at night time it shifted to use all available energy. Not going to go into detail.
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Oh, I thought we were talking about residential plebs. Of course big industrial customers paid less over night, that is understandable. They probably had an Eskom liaison too.
 
HowTo said:
Since we all here, Deye why do you need to 30ma trickle charge. At the end of the month it boils down to more then 3kW usage.
On my 5kW sunsynk i disable this.
I know before every stones me, Pre-Paid meters. We are not on pre-paid.

Any other inverter suggestion.
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HowTo said:
Installer said no. I know it is being used for Pre-Paid.
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So prepaid or not, but honestly its besides the point your installer is not explaining corectly.
1 trickle feed doesnt matter if prepaid or not, its some meters will have issues if no constant flow -
so can you switch it off - depends you need to test
you can test this by lowering the trickle by a watts every few days and see if it causes any issues, lower it till you get to 0 without issue or as soon as you get an issue put it a watt or 2 higher.

and I have a Deye inverter, on prepaid and i have mine set to 0
 
So after doing all the neutral earth bonding stuff I saw that it wouldnt be that difficult to make the 5kW the main inverter. Took me about 2 hours to reconfigure the wiring. My PV is now connected to the 5kW. Charge controller I left on the GEL bank. 5kW charges the 3.6kW also between 9 and 3pm.

I can now monitor my PV generation, something I couldnt do before as didnt have a dongle on the 3.6 and the price for it was too close to SA/HA. I can also see when the GEL bank gets full as the timer that controls the charging has energy and power metering, so easy to see when they go to float.

As expected, my generation is utter garbage before 9am in June/Winter. The drawing below basically shows why. Morning sun and panel angle.
Untitled.png
Only 120W around 8am // 700W at 9am and rising
WhatsApp Image 2026-06-30 at 09.05.41 (1).jpegWhatsApp Image 2026-06-30 at 09.05.41.jpeg

I am kinda glad I didnt have monitoring for PV as I would be hyperfocused on trying to fix this. But because I had survived last winter without issues and this one hasnt been too bad with the batteries getting full fine I wont lose sleep over it.

I will now see exactly when both banks get full which my money is at 12 pm.
 
denmendez65 said:
So after doing all the neutral earth bonding stuff I saw that it wouldnt be that difficult to make the 5kW the main inverter. Took me about 2 hours to reconfigure the wiring. My PV is now connected to the 5kW. Charge controller I left on the GEL bank. 5kW charges the 3.6kW also between 9 and 3pm.

I can now monitor my PV generation, something I couldnt do before as didnt have a dongle on the 3.6 and the price for it was too close to SA/HA. I can also see when the GEL bank gets full as the timer that controls the charging has energy and power metering, so easy to see when they go to float.

As expected, my generation is utter garbage before 9am in June/Winter. The drawing below basically shows why. Morning sun and panel angle.
View attachment 1918349
Only 120W around 8am // 700W at 9am and rising
View attachment 1918354View attachment 1918353

I am kinda glad I didnt have monitoring for PV as I would be hyperfocused on trying to fix this. But because I had survived last winter without issues and this one hasnt been too bad with the batteries getting full fine I wont lose sleep over it.

I will now see exactly when both banks get full which my money is at 12 pm.
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Dumb question but why did you put your panels on south roof instead of north roof?
 
wingnut771 said:
Dumb question but why did you put your panels on south roof instead of north roof?
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Its on garage roof. I have 3 garages, corrugated roof. By far the easiest place to install them vs playing around with tiles, leaks etc. was self installing so thats what I had to work with.

Any extra panels like the 8 I would add a couple of years from now would go on the North roof of the house which currently has nothing. I would also add 6 to 8 on the south roof of the house coz why not. Take up whatever charge is there after around 12pm.

WhatsApp Image 2026-06-30 at 11.43.24.jpeg

Tiles are a killer, look how easy it is to do the coruugated roof.
 
denmendez65 said:
Its on garage roof. I have 3 garages, corrugated roof. By far the easiest place to install them vs playing around with tiles, leaks etc. was self installing so thats what I had to work with.

Any extra panels like the 8 I would add a couple of years from now would go on the North roof of the house which currently has nothing. I would also add 6 to 8 on the south roof of the house coz why not. Take up whatever charge is there after around 12pm.

View attachment 1918404

Tiles are a killer, look how easy it is to do the coruugated roof.
Click to expand...
Corrugated doesnt leak?
 
wingnut771 said:
Corrugated doesnt leak?
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The stand-offs have these rubber seals. When you drill through it seals. Also I have open garage underneath except the first one. Water goes in either way into a drain. Better there than inside the house. But, no leaks from the corrugated roof.

Screenshot 2026-06-30 115900.jpg
 
Installers came, and they tested at my plug socket where the Mecer popped with this:

1782904526331.png

They tested all 3 lights were on, they turned the knob, and it tripped the earth leakage. I then asked them to trip the grid at the main switch in my main DB so the deye would go into island mode; this then will also remove the neutral-earth bond from the Eskom transformer. Then I asked them to test all 3 lights on again, turned the knob, and the earth leakage tripped.

So this means the Deye is doing the neutral earth bonding, and I don't need an external contactor, and everything looks to be in working order.

So I think it was just time for that Mecer to die. I have brand new gels, like 8 months old, that now I don't know what to do with.
 
adam_g said:
Installers came, and they tested at my plug socket where the Mecer popped with this:

View attachment 1918670

They tested all 3 lights were on, they turned the knob, and it tripped the earth leakage. I then asked them to trip the grid at the main switch in my main DB so the deye would go into island mode; this then will also remove the neutral-earth bond from the Eskom transformer. Then I asked them to test all 3 lights on again, turned the knob, and the earth leakage tripped.

So this means the Deye is doing the neutral earth bonding, and I don't need an external contactor, and everything looks to be in working order.

So I think it was just time for that Mecer to die. I have brand new gels, like 8 months old, that now I don't know what to do with.
Click to expand...
Upgrade mecer to PSW so you still have a plan b if the deye and substation blow up at the same time:
1782905238272.png
 
IMG_1948.jpeg

So much solar going to waste. Only this much pulled off the panels and there is nothing left to run. All batteries were full some time ago. Pool ran, fish pond ran.

Summer will be even worse🤣.
 
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