Dawie's Solar Setup

DawieZA said:
It's been an interesting afternoon. Arrived home this morning and my tenant in the flat running off non-essentials complained that her prepaid meter (used for personal billing) keeps tripping. Checked the error message on the meter and it complains about low voltage supply.

Checked Solar Assistant and I could see a grid voltage drop every time her meter trips. Also, the lights in our house on essentials flicker during this time. At first, I thought it might be the grid supply in the area that is giving issues, but the issue seems to go away if I trip the inverter input breaker. Essentially simulating a power failure at the inverter.

Now I am wondering if it has something to do with the solar/battery power being fed back to the non-essentials, but why would that have an impact on the grid voltage... I will contact the installer on Tuesday, but was wondering if anyone else had seen this before?
Click to expand...
What's your grid trickle feed on the inverter set to?
 
DawieZA said:
It's been an interesting afternoon. Arrived home this morning and my tenant in the flat running off non-essentials complained that her prepaid meter (used for personal billing) keeps tripping. Checked the error message on the meter and it complains about low voltage supply.

Checked Solar Assistant and I could see a grid voltage drop every time her meter trips. Also, the lights in our house on essentials flicker during this time. At first, I thought it might be the grid supply in the area that is giving issues, but the issue seems to go away if I trip the inverter input breaker. Essentially simulating a power failure at the inverter.

Now I am wondering if it has something to do with the solar/battery power being fed back to the non-essentials, but why would that have an impact on the grid voltage... I will contact the installer on Tuesday, but was wondering if anyone else had seen this before?
Click to expand...
Just confirming I read correctly:
your inverter input breaker is the grid input into the inverter?
If yes, when that is off your tenant doesn't trip?
Can you disable feeding back to non-essentials and see if you still have the same issues?
Just thinking of ways you can troubleshoot
 
Thanks for all the ideas guys. Ended up opening my DB board and measuring the voltage from the city's prepaid meter at the mains circuit breaker. The voltage drop issue was present there as well. Ended up raising a service request with the city and they just found a issue at the street pole. Now waiting on another team to come fix the problem. In the meantime, we are off-grid for a while.

FYI, the tenant's prepaid meter is one of those that I manage myself. It is connected to a breaker on the non-essential side of my DB board. It seems to be a lot more sensitive than the city's prepaid meter.
 
DawieZA said:
The time has come to ditch some of my household's dependance on Eskom. Order placed with the installer last week and if all goes well, they should be starting the install tomorrow.

Here is the kit being used:

1 x Sunsynk 5.5kW Inverter
1 x Sunsynk 5.12kWh Battery
10 x JA Solar 545W Panels (this might change due to stock levels)

All plugs and lights in the main house will go on the essential load, plus some plugs and lights in a wendyhouse on my property. Geysers, jacuzzi, irrigation, large air-con, stove and flat will go on non-essential load.

Will post some photos as soon as possible.
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Seen the other day the GP I visit had installed such a system, my co-payment risen to over R100 a visit after the main cost went up from R350 to R550 at same time the Medical aid(Get R8000.00 a month already) increased their payment by over 8% inflation and they dont pay the ......as the lady at counter explained="Sir the R100+ is just a shortfall" and she chewing her bubble gum ......So there you go.
 
The live wire clamped to the blue phase on the bundle at the pole came loose when that clamp failed. It seems to have been arcing for a while before we noticed it. The city replaced both the live and neutral clamps. Everything sorted now. I am really happy it was not an inverter issue.
 
W@P said:
Those batteries are still fresh. Or is that just SA counting cycles since you got it?
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The batteries are only a few months old. They were installed in January and February. That is also why the one's got a higher cycle count than the other.
 
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Six months down the line and my system is purring along without any issues.

Now I have to start thinking about how I can add the flatlet to essentials side of the inverter. I was thinking of only having some circuits in the flat on the inverter, like all the lights and some of the plugs. I would really like to avoid tripping the inverter with high loads from the flatlet during load-shedding.

However, this will be difficult as the circuits are not part of my main DB. There is a sub-DB in the flatlet and thus only a single circuit in my main-DB. I would like to avoid having to run more cabling to the flatlet and was wondering if I could perhaps look at a load-shedding detector in my main-DB and then a smart circuit breaker in the sub-DB that will switch of the high load circuits. This would allow me to them move the sub-DB circuit in my main-DB to the essentials side of the inverter.

I shall ponder some more.
 
Getting close to the 1 year mark since my installation was completed. I had a look at my panels this morning and they are dirty as hell. Plan is to get on the roof this evening, clean them with water and not fall off the roof.
 
How much have you spent so far on the system?
I'm adding a second battery today and hopefully will add two more by end of the year or next year.
 
Fuma said:
How much have you spent so far on the system?
I'm adding a second battery today and hopefully will add two more by end of the year or next year.
Click to expand...
Plus-minus R200000 all in at the moment. It is shocking to see how much the prices have come down since the original install was completed just over a year ago.

My next upgrade will most likely be a west facing string of solar panels to compliment the east and north facing strings. That might need a standalone MPPT or paralleling of the east and west strings.
 
1 x Deye 8kW Inverter
1 x Deye 5.12kWh Battery
8 x JA Solar 465W Panels
R125k

New battery R25k. my installer came and realized they ordered the wrong battery. They'll come back again tomorrow

So for R150k for the system.

Planning on adding another two batteries (R50k) and 8x panels (this should be another R25k to R30k).
No regrets so far.

Deye 8kW inverter is going for R30k now. Eish
 
Fuma said:
1 x Deye 8kW Inverter
1 x Deye 5.12kWh Battery
8 x JA Solar 465W Panels
R125k

New battery R25k. my installer came and realized they ordered the wrong battery. They'll come back again tomorrow

So for R150k for the system.

Planning on adding another two batteries (R50k) and 8x panels (this should be another R25k to R30k).
No regrets so far.

Deye 8kW inverter is going for R30k now. Eish
Click to expand...
Nice system and will be a beast after those planned upgrades. How are the Deye batteries mounted?

My only regret is going for the 5.5kW inverter and not the 8kW version. Might look at a second 5.5kW inverter and parallel them somewhere in the future.
 
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