Defective Solar System Installation

Why is nothing going to charge the battery? You've got solar and grid to just cover load? Not charge the battery which is saying it's at 30%?
 
Lupus said:
Why is nothing going to charge the battery? You've got solar and grid to just cover load? Not charge the battery which is saying it's at 30%?
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Probably the settings in inverter are wrong or Patrice Motsepe's GoSolar company wants you to use the grid to help out his BEE pals and get rich at the same time.
 
Maelly said:
Due to an installation/ configuration defect the system has not been delivering the "promised bill savings" — municipal billing treated (some??) generation as grid consumption.
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Did the municipality confirm that ALL solar generation is treated as consumption?
Maelly said:
Municipality recorded small grid exports (deemed as consumption — recommended a bidirectional meter
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"Grid exports" can either be as the inverter is set to try and reduce your grid consumption so it continually tries to push solar production to a level where nothing is incoming from the grid. Another type of export happens when the inverter is powering a heavy load like a washing machine heating element and the load shuts off suddenly - the inverter is a bit slow to react and "overshoots" where for a moment it pushes 2000W to the grid. The small exports when loads switch off should not affect the bill in a meaningful way unless you are running a laundromat from home (the loads switching off type exports might cause especially pre-paid meters to trip as a tamper condition).

Depending how/where the CT clamp/grid meter was installed and/or the inverter setup the attempt to keep the grid consumption zero could end up going "through" the meter looking like consumption (as others have indicated some meters will count energy in any direction as consumption). In this case all your solar/battery production would be "billed" by the meter. If this is the scenario then the solar rental company cocked up and owe you - I do not interpret your account of the solar rental company's response as them acknowledging their installation caused inaccurate billing. Not even the municipality version supports that "small exports" make up the full bill.

It is also possible that the CT clamp is/was installed in a way that the inverter and thus solar rental company were/are not "seeing" the consumption from things like the pool and geyser, so their/solarman app estimation of percentage of total use from grid is not accurate. If this is the case you likely would have had as much savings as possible but the numbers would appear to be off. If this is the case, them reimbursing for inconvenience seems fair, but your expectation of cancellation without penalty without much merit.
 
Maelly said:
For whatever reasons explained numerous times - it seems that my full "Monthly Consumption" is being treated as grid only by the municipality (impact meters/ electricity bill) - whereas the Service provider says an average of 43% (full 2025) is grid. This is the contention! Not the size of the system!
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I still don't see how your meter see's anything provided by the battery or solar panels? I am assuming the installation has been done correctly and it is installed after the main meter though...
 
Lupus said:
Why is nothing going to charge the battery? You've got solar and grid to just cover load? Not charge the battery which is saying it's at 30%?
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Why can't solar cover 780W of load even if not charging battery? Is it cloudy?
 
wingnut771 said:
How it’s going in coct:
View attachment 1890150
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gtfo-gtfoh.gif
 
wingnut771 said:
Would explain why battery isn't charging then? 30% minimum soc set?
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With badly set up yeah. Most systems will have it set to pump into the batteries from solar and grid.
 
Lupus said:
JHB right now is basically just covered in a thick gray cloud
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I did say it looks like March might follow the course of last year. Even though last year was mostly April. imagine what april will be lol
 
wingnut771 said:
Look on the bright side, you still have the other half of the battery to use.
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My 2nd geyser that covers the guest room won't switch on if the battery doesn't get over 70% SOC. I might have unexpected guests staying over from tomorrow though so will have to dip into the grid if that happens.

ill wait till 3pm though before complaining as things can still turn around.
 
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