Neuk_'s Home ESS - Round Two

Neuk_

Neuk_

Honorary Master
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Johannesburg, South Africa
We moved house in late November 2022 and left our small Victron ESS behind as my BIL bought our old house which gave us an opportunity for a fresh start with a new ESS at our new house. Our previous house was a typical Parkhurst size house, when we renovated we removed the electric geyser and oven/stove top, installing a gas 'geyser' and electric oven with gas stove top. All our appliances were well rated in terms of energy use and we mostly used LED lighting throughout, so our electricity use was on the light side. We had the following running which although small did it's job very well and in good, summer weather we hardly used any mains electricity...

  • Victron Multiplus 3kVa 48v Inverter/Charger
  • Three PylonTech US3000C Batteries
  • Victron Energy SmartSolar MPPT 250/70-Tr Solar Charge Controller
  • Victron Venus GX
  • Ten CanadianSolar 360w PV panels

Our new house is much larger, with two electric geysers, two electric ovens, underfloor heating, swimming pool and all the usual lighting and electronics so when I was looking at a new ESS it was always going to be larger. I decided on the following, not really based on any concrete electricity use, more on what I thought we would need to not only run the house but also have some extra for things not traditionally run through an ESS like the electric geysers.

  • SunSynk 8.8kW Hybrid Inverter
  • Sixteen 545w Longi Mono PV Panels
  • Three PylonTech UP5000 Batteries

At the moment the electric geysers, ovens and underfloor heating are not run through the inverter but I have plans to get at least the electric geysers running through either the Aux port or using the Smart functionality. We had some issues with running wiring to and from the existing main DB so we never got anything connected to the Aux port but I wanted the system in as soon as possible with all the LS and grid issues and before we leave for our upcoming holiday. It is early days but I am impressed with everything thus far, we are able to run a lot more than our old system but that was to be expected, I am glad we went for the size inverter and PV arrays that we did as even on overcast or cloudy days we can make decent power.
 
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Inverter, batteries, fuses, DB's, etc. in a cupboard in my office with the cupboard doors removed for now until I can get cooling sorted out.

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PV panel placement was tricky and isn't ideal so it may be changed in the future but has worked well thus far with decent PV being generated from around 06:00 - 18:00 and a peak of just under 7kW being seen at one point.

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The lack of airflow in that cupboard would give me anxiety, do you plan to keep it open ?
 
semaphore said:
The lack of airflow in that cupboard would give me anxiety, do you plan to keep it open ?
Click to expand...

No, doors removed for now, partly to help the install and partly for air flow for now, my plan is to have vents cut in the doors and then use extractor fans triggered by temperature or load or something to move air around.
 
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Neuk_ said:
No, doors removed for now, partly to help the install and partly for air flow for now, my plan is to have vents cut in the doors and then use extractor fans triggered by temperature or load or something to move air around.
Click to expand...
Plug into inverter temps and trigger I’d say.
 
Is that one string split in orientation? How does it perform compared to the other one?

Fans should be easy. You can just do a dc-dc buck converter and put some pc extractor fans at the top of the door and vents at the bottom. I would run them permanently.
 
B-1 said:
Is that one string split in orientation? How does it perform compared to the other one?

Fans should be easy. You can just do a dc-dc buck converter and put some pc extractor fans at the top of the door and vents at the bottom.
Click to expand...
This is on my to do list for December break. Current plan is a sonoff basic to a small 240V fan
 
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semaphore said:
Plug into inverter temps and trigger I’d say.
Click to expand...

I do plan on getting Home Assistant up and running again so will look in to that, at the moment we have a ceiling fan that is set to automatically come on if the temperature in the room is at 25 Deg C or over.
 
B-1 said:
Is that one string split in orientation? How does it perform compared to the other one?

Fans should be easy. You can just do a dc-dc buck converter and put some pc extractor fans at the top of the door and vents at the bottom. I would run them permanently.
Click to expand...

Yeah, we planned to put all 8 panels on the one side of the house but they wouldn't fit, so just put two panels at the back for now to get up and running and will keep an eye on it.
 
Speedster said:
This is on my to do list for December break. Current plan is a sonoff basic to a small 240V fan
Click to expand...
I would do at least 2 fans for redundancy. I suspect they will just run all the time in such a small space unless you maybe add 2 fans and a few vents.
 
Neuk_ said:
Yeah, we planned to put all 8 panels on the one side of the house but they wouldn't fit, so just put two panels at the back for now to get up and running and will keep an eye on it.
Click to expand...

Usually your panels only perform as good as the worst one. So 6 panels should do better than having the 2 extra ones at a weird orientation.

If you go to the equipment/custom page on the sunsynk.net site you can pick the 2 PV inputs and compare them to each other. Will be interesting to see.
 
B-1 said:
Usually your panels only perform as good as the worst one. So 6 panels should do better than having the 2 extra ones at a weird orientation.

If you go to the equipment/custom page on the sunsynk.net site you can pick the 2 PV inputs and compare them to each other. Will be interesting to see.
Click to expand...

I'll have a look when I get a chance, I haven't noticed any thing major, that string is sort of NW facing so loads are light at the end of the day.
 
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Neuk_ said:
I used The Google :ROFL: I need an application and API key which I got from Ambient Weather and inputted in to SunSynk. It doesn't update quickly at all though but it works.
Click to expand...
I generated those on the Ambient Weather site, but they don't seem to work :-(
 
B-1 said:
Is that one string split in orientation? How does it perform compared to the other one?

Fans should be easy. You can just do a dc-dc buck converter and put some pc extractor fans at the top of the door and vents at the bottom. I would run them permanently.
Click to expand...
I'd do it the other way around. Fans at the bottom and vents on top. Hot air already rises. Otherwise you're making the fans work harder to get the hot air out...
 
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