SauRoN's SomeWatt Solar Install

SauRoNZA said:
Well so far I must say I am unexpectedly surprised at just how much PV I've gotten out in a pretty shitty cloudy day in Cape Town.

Between 13:00 and now when it was turned on I've generated 10.9kW which I didn't expect at all.

Will be very interesting to see what the full day looks like tomorrow.
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I've done 19.5kW today (so far with 9.72kW of panels), but my battery depleted to about 20% overnight (due to the the shitty rain day), so i'm only on 82% battery at the moment (and I doubt I'll get it to full by the end of the day).
 
shadow_man said:
I've done 19.5kW today (so far with 9.72kW of panels), but my battery depleted to about 20% overnight (due to the the shitty rain day), so i'm only on 82% battery at the moment (and I doubt I'll get it to full by the end of the day).
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kWh people, kWh. Come now, we're not Luddite's anymore.

Units of electricity = kWh
Instantaneous power usage = kW
Panel capacity = kWp
 
Speedster said:
That's really cool!

I think you mean kWh though... I guess now that the solar is up and running, next step is to get the terminology right.
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Yes indeed.

Although I guess you could argue they are kW until you’ve used them and measured it over time.

 
SauRoNZA said:
We have sun power!!!

View attachment 1315138

I know it's nicer to look at but I am worried about the open connections on the front with two small kids in the house so I'm going to look at finding some thick rubber and cutting it to fit into those half-moon slots in the front.

They'll receive a full education tonight, but just to be safe regardless.

View attachment 1315140

View attachment 1315142

Going to need to figure out a way to combine PV1+PV2 into a single value in Home Assistant because it doesn't seem like the Inverter will give that to me.

View attachment 1315146

My wife is of course trying to kill it dead with a heater and I'm running the geyser on purpose.

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Sweet! Congrats! May it serve you well and have many happy non ls days!
 
AfricanTech said:
I heard from someone that you have to trickle a tiny amount from Eskom or your meter goes fubar

Not sure of the veracity of this
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Some unsynk no matter what... you need a dedicated plug for this. @RonSwanson can shed more light on it.

My system needed a dedicated plug - get it when doing the install dont do it after the fact.

1653493318159.png
 
Pixies said:
But it looks like it's not doing anything. The trickle feed is a setting in the Sunsynk unit so I don't think the plug is used for that...
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The prepaid meter is not plugged in at the moment.

The solar system from the moment it was switched on unsynked my prepaid meter. It refused to communicate with the outside unit (would not top up). The dedicated plug upstream from everything is the only way you can top up.

Some are SUPER sensitive. No amount of trickle feeding makes a difference as I said @RonSwanson can shed more light on it.
 
Pixies said:
Is that only a prepaid meter thing then? I don't have prepaid and don't have it so assume I'm not affected.
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Yeah some meters are incredibly sensitive, and when backfeed is detected would trigger the anti tamper, which requires a call to the muni to reset.

Mine is fortunately too dumb to detect direction and simply adds backfeed to your consumption. The amount is so small that it's not an issue. I have a dedicated plug anyway though...
 
Mike Hoxbig said:
Yeah some meters are incredibly sensitive, and when backfeed is detected would trigger the anti tamper, which requires a call to the muni to reset.

Mine is fortunately too dumb to detect direction and simply adds backfeed to your consumption. The amount is so small that it's not an issue. I have a dedicated plug anyway though...
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Yeah I have backfeed added to consumption and unsyncing
 
Pixies said:
But it looks like it's not doing anything. The trickle feed is a setting in the Sunsynk unit so I don't think the plug is used for that...
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For some meters, the CUI (that's the display unit with buttons) talks to the actual meter in the street cabinet via PLC. It usually gets plugged into a plug point in the home, but the PLC is iffy and it often takes quite long to recharge units after a code is punched in, or to pull stats from the meter. So even normal use is a pain, with timeouts and comms errors, and when you install an inverter it simply refuses to connect. Installing a dedicated plug point on the non-essential circuit between the inverter and the meter works very well, the meter also gets super fast. It's only some meters, not all. Yet other meters go into panic mode and completely shut down when they detect zero usage, and that's the purpose of the 10-100W trickle feed on the Sunsynk. My own meter has the first problem, so I had a dedicated plug installed, but not the second, and I have successfully disabled the trickle feed.
 
RonSwanson said:
For some meters, the CUI (that's the display unit with buttons) talks to the actual meter in the street cabinet via PLC. It usually gets plugged into a plug point in the home, but the PLC is iffy and it often takes quite long to recharge units after a code is punched in, or to pull stats from the meter. So even normal use is a pain, with timeouts and comms errors, and when you install an inverter it simply refuses to connect. Installing a dedicated plug point on the non-essential circuit between the inverter and the meter works very well, the meter also gets super fast. It's only some meters, not all. Yet other meters go into panic mode and completely shut down when they detect zero usage, and that's the purpose of the 10-100W trickle feed on the Sunsynk. My own meter has the first problem, so I had a dedicated plug installed, but not the second, and I have successfully disabled the trickle feed.
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In this content PLC = Power Line Communications

That obviously wouldn't work (well) for devices plugged in behind the inverter, hence the running a plug point from the Eskom / Muni side for the keypad for meter units that require it.

You can request the muni change out your meter if its a little unhappy - some of the older conlogs really don't like solar. You will need a registered system to do so though.
 
Snyper564 said:
Some unsynk no matter what... you need a dedicated plug for this. @RonSwanson can shed more light on it.

My system needed a dedicated plug - get it when doing the install dont do it after the fact.

View attachment 1315520
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This must be a Gauteng thing?

I keep only seeing it mentioned by you guys up north. Have never seen or heard of it for any Cape Town install.
 
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