Adding solar to inverter-battery systems 101

Khinah23 said:
I spoke to the Lalela technical department regarding adding an additional battery onto the inverter, they said it is not adviceable to do so and the current battery set up is just not cutting it. Hence was thinking if it can charge via solar that would be great and a bigger battery. There is only one income in her house and that is hers.
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I think it's time to ditch the LA's and go with LFP, then you don't have to worry about "charging it in time".
 
Khinah23 said:
I spoke to the Lalela technical department regarding adding an additional battery onto the inverter, they said it is not adviceable to do so and the current battery set up is just not cutting it. Hence was thinking if it can charge via solar that would be great and a bigger battery. There is only one income in her house and that is hers.
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Yes, I am saying use the Lalela so that you can be able to charge both on solar and grid, it makes much better sense to me.
 
TheChamp said:
Yes, I am saying use the Lalela so that you can be able to charge both on solar and grid, it makes much better sense to me.
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I did ask their technical team, they said I can damage the inverter by adding solar as an additional charging component as the lalela inverter is not solar compatible to start of with.... Maybe explain to me how you see this for example .....Panel to charger controller to battery and inverter to battery???
 
AlphaJohn said:
You can charge a 10 000 AH battery with a 100W solar panel, just gonna take a lot of days to do so.

Its not a question about if you can charge, its a question if you can replace what you used in a set amount of time. To gauge that you gonna need to measure your consumption and work from there.

Also saying 2 TV's is useless ie: I have 2 TV's 1 average 60W or less the other close to 200W. <-Depends on TV

Get a Kill-A-Watt
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Did, I bought a power meter and build a little box to measure my appliances long time ago. So I used the same box to measure her tv.

AC power meter – Voltage Current Power Energy Panel Meter​

1675406252661.png
 
Khinah23 said:
I did ask their technical team, they said I can damage the inverter by adding solar as an additional charging component as the lalela inverter is not solar compatible to start of with.... Maybe explain to me how you see this for example .....Panel to charger controller to battery and inverter to battery???
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The "lalela" has no idea there is solar so it's a moot point. The "lalela" sees the battery. The solar controller "sees" the battery. They are both connected to the battery.
 
Just saw this thread and wanted to add my current setup.

Have an inverter with a built-in charge controller that's now also connected to solar panels since early Jan.
The inverter does apparently have an option to prefer solar over AC, but through testing it did not appear to be working correctly and was never using AC (even at night when the panels have 0 output).

I solved this by changing the inverter back to it's default settings (prefer AC over solar), connecting it's AC input to a smart plug and running Home Assistant scripts on a NAS (connected to the inverter so it's always on) to turn the plug off when the sun is up and cloud coverage < 80%, and turn it on when the sun is down or cloud coverage > 80%. These are set to run every 10 minutes, so even if the plug is offline (due to load shedding), it will eventually run again when power is back.

Now I'm running entirely on solar during the day and automatically switching to AC at night or when there are too many clouds
 
Zen17h said:
Just saw this thread and wanted to add my current setup.

Have an inverter with a built-in charge controller that's now also connected to solar panels since early Jan.
The inverter does apparently have an option to prefer solar over AC, but through testing it did not appear to be working correctly and was never using AC (even at night when the panels have 0 output).

I solved this by changing the inverter back to it's default settings (prefer AC over solar), connecting it's AC input to a smart plug and running Home Assistant scripts on a NAS (connected to the inverter so it's always on) to turn the plug off when the sun is up and cloud coverage < 80%, and turn it on when the sun is down or cloud coverage > 80%. These are set to run every 10 minutes, so even if the plug is offline (due to load shedding), it will eventually run again when power is back.

Now I'm running entirely on solar during the day and automatically switching to AC at night or when there are too many clouds
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This is a completely different topic of power blending which only the higher end of the range inverters can do.
 
wingnut771 said:
In the last pic the inverter would be connected to the battery terminals and then the solar lugs on top of the inverter lugs.
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Doesnt matter where they connected, can even connect inverter at the MPPT battery feed, as long as its the shared + and - from the battery. :p

Above is my setup, and it so that I don't need extra fuses
 
AlphaJohn said:
Doesnt matter where they connected, can even connect inverter at the MPPT battery feed, as long as its the shared + and - from the battery. :p
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I would like to see 100A go through the MPPT terminals, or even fitting 35mm² cable in them. It's non sensical taking the load from the controller with a long cable, enjoy the voltage drop.
 
wingnut771 said:
So for 4 hours 80Wh x 4 = 320Wh / 0.8 = 400Wh x 2 = 800Wh

800Wh / 12V = 67Ah

200Ah is plenty if you have enough time to recharge it, or get a 100Ah LFP.
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The problem is with charging, hence the solar idea. Inverter doesn't get time enough to fully charge battery during their loadshedding, off line and usage times.
 
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