Ted Lassoes the Sun!

[wingnut771]

Ok, so I am now confused (as usual).

If on system screen, I assume SoC = DoD ? So if you set it to 10% , the max the battery would go down to is 10% and charge to is also 10%.

Considering my previous logic , I thought setting 100% SoC would be the value the battery would be charged to and kept for that period e.g 08:45-18:30 PM

That's what I saw on the inverter when I played e.g. if SOC for certain time period was 25 then once it was reached e.g. discharge, it stayed at 25.

If the next time slot , the SoC is 45%,the inverter charges the battery to 45% and keeps it there.

So if you keep it at 10 DoD , then how does battery get fully charged during the day using Furpile and your settings?

Or is there another screen to manage DoD? (Which I don't think I have found yet)


View attachment 1348182

0% SoC = 100% DoD.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Ok so nothing to worry about . Gonna have to climb on roof in any case, to double check that I have the right panels - eeek!!!

Here's another thing that is confusing me.

So configured batteries to be 100% at day time using just solar and to top up after 6pm.

Right now, I know the system can generate at least 2.5kWp of energy but the house is requiring only 1.5kWh, but the inverter is not ramping up PV to charge the battery. I know if the Grid option was ticked , it would have sucked all that power from Eskom to get to required SoC level. So wondering what it could be doing. View attachment 1348088View attachment 1348090

Your settings would only ever have it charge to 100% using the grid between 18:30 and 20:30.

Rest of the day is a best effort via PV.

If set to battery priority it will do battery first until it reaches the set SOC. If set to Load it will service the house first then battery.

100% SOC is really a bit silly as it would never use the battery.

20-25% is a safer bet if you want some reserves for load shedding, depending what your battery allows as a minimum and what your shutdown percentage is. Mine is 15% so 25% is a safe load shed.

 

[TedLasso]

So that's the setting for today. Gonna see how much the battery charges via PV i.e will it actually use the PV available that is not being used by Load to actually charge the battery because yesterday the best it got to was 90 during day and it definitely did not use available PV to get to the 100 SoC it was configured for.

 

[SauRoNZA]

So that's the setting for today. Gonna see how much the battery charges via PV i.e will it actually use the PV available that is not being used by Load to actually charge the battery because yesterday the best it got to was 90 during day and it definitely did not use available PV to get to the 100 SoC it was configured for. View attachment 1348392

It can’t magically get to 100% if there isn’t enough PV to do so or your house uses all of it.

Set all your SOC’s to 25% and then work from there, your current settings make no sense.

SOC value is the lowest it will discharge to, so your basically not using your batteries at all at night which is silly because why charge them at all then?

You WANT to use the battery at night, not leave it almost fully charged as you have it there.

The last three slots are also non-sensical and somewhat pointless and can be reduced to one rule.

The 30% is only there because I was still expecting a load shedding. If there is none I make it 15% too.

Grid charge settings are for times when the PV won’t be there to help. Slot 2 would normally be unticked but I think I had a load shed there or something and just forgot.

My SOC over the past while to give you an idea of what to expect realistically from PV charging.

Note it’s only ever been charged from grid to 30% and no more.

By 19:00 I’m already at 80% because I did some cooking etc. So if I had your settings I would already stop using battery and pulling from grid.

Then after midnight it settles down to 500W an hour or so and I get to morning with about 30% left IF I had a fully charged battery.

Yesterday I wasn’t even at home and it was a great solar day with 29kWH of production and even so I only reached 84%.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

Here's mine FWIW. I have grid charge ticked in slots where there's evening load shedding and/or the geyser might come on and drain the batteries. Once I add more batteries then I won't need to manage it as closely.


It's based roughly on my base load = 5% per hour so it's allowed to drop 20% between 22:00 - 02:00. Modified it slightly for winter use.

Here's my rest of the year one.

Simple 4 hour blocks that roughly match base load. Grid charge only ticked in the afternoon slot in case of late afternoon GP showers. I managed to get zero grid usage on this with the geyser only running during the day...

 

[Speedster]

Here's mine FWIW. I have grid charge ticked in slots where there's evening load shedding and/or the geyser might come on and drain the batteries. Once I add more batteries then I won't need to manage it as closely.

View attachment 1348442
It's based roughly on my base load = 5% per hour so it's allowed to drop 20% between 22:00 - 02:00. Modified it slightly for winter use.

Here's my rest of the year one.
View attachment 1348460
Simple 4 hour blocks that roughly match base load. Grid charge only ticked in the afternoon slot in case of late afternoon GP showers. I managed to get zero grid usage on this with the geyser only running during the day...

Since we're sharing

 

[TedLasso]

Thanks Chaps for putting up with my questions. It's day 4 of my operation.

Some of my questions were based on assumptions and reality of what the system was doing and hence some silly questions and settings on my part.

What I can say is that with yesterday's settings and the spare PV capacity actually available, the inverter did not charge the battery to the so called 100% it was set at.

Today, with the same base load and actions, it's also managed to charge the battery via PV to 90% before it started discharging.

What I have learnt so far is the following:-
1. I have already manage to time my heavy loads to coincide with the PV production so two geysers, pool and battery seems to be sorted by 4pm.
2. Thanks to the disabling grid on the day time slot, PV will charge the battery as it's available. The important bit here is not to have it at 100%, because for whatever reason yesterday, it did not use spare PV capacity to charge the battery. PV only ramped up when I created a load.

The 100% thing was my misunderstanding. But I guess you need to live it to know it

So today, as @furpile @SauRoNZA and @Mzezman had said, when there was a heavy load, the system took the electricity from the battery (e.g. when kettle, etc turned on) . Also thanks to @Speedster @Mike Hoxbig for your tips.

I think the biggest takeaway for me was how to be smart about it. This is actually cool, because if now that I think about it (loadshedding outages excluded) ... even having a battery at 90% and the house using it in the evening when oven or heaters turn on, is 'cheaper' because that battery was charged by PV and not the grid. Then if the min SoC is reached overnight, the inverter will take power from grid, but 300w for a few hours is better than 2800w for example. So for now, I am leaving GRID disabled on every time slot unless I know there could be a time slot where my battery SoC level may not be enough to last the 2 hour slot.

Once I get the solar assistant installed in brought into Home Assistant, then I could proactively enable Grid when required.

I think i got how it works now!!

 

[SauRoNZA]

There we go now you are getting it.

You want to use that PV as much as possible hence you have the batteries to further it’s usage and store it for later.

My geyser goes on 2 hours after sunrise only and off immediately at sundown and this seems to strike a fair balance.

If I really need it any other time I just turn it on remotely and if it’s at night it’s has a timer automation so it only runs for an hour.

So outside of Load Shedding messing up your planning and it running so low it turns off you should be golden running it all the way down as often as possible.

Today I ran the dishwasher, two loads of washing and some tumble dryer on top of the usual geyser and only got to 72%.

Now I’m at 40% but I’ll pretty much run at 500-650W for the rest of the night until the geyser goes on the morning which means I should just barely make it without needing any grid.


****

In your shoes I would probably want to do something about the two geysers. Put in more efficient lower powered elements if getting rid of one entirely isn’t an option.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Since we're sharing

View attachment 1348488

Must day this is what I wanted and it grates my tits that I didn’t know about the Dyness 15% lock.

Had I known I would still have gone Dyness but gotten the Powerbox units instead.

If I replayed it right now would just get 2 x 10kWh Powerboxes, much cleaner install and setup and they can go down to 5%.

What I gained through paying less I pretty much lost again with the 15% limit bringing real use capacity down so the Powerbox price difference would have balanced out. Either way there wasn’t stock; but had I know I would have waited.

 

[Mzezman]

Must day this is what I wanted and it grates my tits that I didn’t know about the Dyness 15% lock.

Had I known I would still have gone Dyness but gotten the Powerbox units instead.

If I replayed it right now would just get 2 x 10kWh Powerboxes, much cleaner install and setup and they can go down to 5%.

What I gained through paying less I pretty much lost again with the 15% limit bringing real use capacity down so the Powerbox price difference would have balanced out. Either way there wasn’t stock; but had I know I would have waited.

I suppose you could still do it, sell 2 of the a48s and buy 1 powerbox

 

[SauRoNZA]

I suppose you could still do it, sell 2 of the a48s and buy 1 powerbox

Nah not worth the effort or cost.

Something to revisit in 10 years.

What I would maybe do is ask the installer for some kind of buy back exchange deal when I want to put the 4th one in and see if that makes sense to then switch to 2 x 9.6kWh rather than 4 x 4.8.

 

[Speedster]

Nah not worth the effort or cost.

Something to revisit in 10 years.

What I would maybe do is ask the installer for some kind of buy back exchange deal when I want to put the 4th one in and see if that makes sense to then switch to 2 x 9.6kWh rather than 4 x 4.8.

The extra 5% is 0.5kWh, not really worth too much effort. My SoC is set to 10% although they're specced for 95% DoD so I could drop to 5%, but the conservative part of me thinks it's safer to keep the margin.

 

[SauRoNZA]

The extra 5% is 0.5kWh, not really worth too much effort. My SoC is set to 10% although they're specced for 95% DoD so I could drop to 5%, but the conservative part of me thinks it's safer to keep the margin.

Yeah it’s 1.44kWH across all three batteries compared to the 5% which I probably still wouldn’t use for LS and all those reasons.

Problem is it’s about 10k price difference for that 1.44kWh spare so really not worth it.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

Yeah it’s 1.44kWH across all three batteries compared to the 5% which I probably still wouldn’t use for LS and all those reasons.

Problem is it’s about 10k price difference for that 1.44kWh spare so really not worth it.

Look at the bright side, you'll get more life out of them with the lower DoD...

 

[TedLasso]

So should I be concerned by the amount of dust already sitting on my panels after 10 days? It's not like I am living near a construction site.

We've seen in other posts that washing them down (or rain doing that job) can help increase performance if they are caked in dust.

Just wondering how often I will need to do the rinsing thing. Thankfully should be able to do it from the ground if required.

In other welcome news: the hadedas have vacated this section of the roof. They no longer chill here. Really hope they never poop on the panels. That stuff is toxic

 

[Steijn1]

So should I be concerned by the amount of dust already sitting on my panels after 10 days? It's not like I am living near a construction site.

We've seen in other posts that washing them down (or rain doing that job) can help increase performance if they are caked in dust.

Just wondering how often I will need to do the rinsing thing. Thankfully should be able to do it from the ground if required.

In other welcome news: the hadedas have vacated this section of the roof. They no longer chill here. Really hope they never poop on the panels. That stuff is toxic View attachment 1352840

There was a post where someone found minimal difference in efficiency between dusty panels and rinsed panels.
Unless they are seriously soiled I plan to do mine once every 6 months.

 

[SauRoNZA]

So should I be concerned by the amount of dust already sitting on my panels after 10 days? It's not like I am living near a construction site.

We've seen in other posts that washing them down (or rain doing that job) can help increase performance if they are caked in dust.

Just wondering how often I will need to do the rinsing thing. Thankfully should be able to do it from the ground if required.

In other welcome news: the hadedas have vacated this section of the roof. They no longer chill here. Really hope they never poop on the panels. That stuff is toxic View attachment 1352840

Nothing some rain won’t take care of.

 

[TedLasso]

Finally, some good solar after a few crappy days

 

[TedLasso]

Gonna dump forecast solar in HA as it is truly not accurate. Solcast much better.



What is crazy is that in the chart above it is 'accurate' to the hour but if I use the energy dashboard which includes the same sensor for solar forecast (the dotted line), there appears to be a 1 hour offset (I mean I think I know why - but why is the energy dashboard experiencing a time offset difference when the same sensor used in other charts is not having a GMT offset issue. Can't seem to find where it would need to be changed. Anyway not that critical

 

[Speedster]

Gonna dump forecast solar in HA as it is truly not accurate. Solcast much better.

View attachment 1352972

What is crazy is that in the chart above it is 'accurate' to the hour but if I use the energy dashboard which includes the same sensor for solar forecast (the dotted line), there appears to be a 1 hour offset (I mean I think I know why - but why is the energy dashboard experiencing a time offset difference when the same sensor used in other charts is not having a GMT offset issue. Can't seem to find where it would need to be changed. Anyway not that critical

View attachment 1352974

Solcast is working well for me. Only issue is I have some shading issues which impact my afternoon production and I can't find a way to have solcast keep this in mind.