Upgrades to Solar. Suggestions needed

@Pho3nix

Rereading your OP, I suspect that you made a typo - you have a 5 kW Deye inverter, not a 5 kW Deye battery? The Deye can push power back to your non-essential loads.

If so, do you know if the installers installed a CT around the live cable going to the main breaker in your DB? It is basically a plastic thing that clamps around the cable, with a wire (thin, usually black and white) running back to your inverter.

If there is a CT, then only your inverter configuration needs to be updated to push excess solar power to your non-essential loads. I have configured several Sunsynk inverters, but no Deye inverters yet, so I'm not 100 % sure what the Deye / Solarman alternative to the Sunsynk option is. I think it is "Zero Export to CT" in the System Work Mode. On Sunsynk the inverter won't push battery power to the non-essential loads, but you may need to set the minimum battery level in the time of use settings (System Work Mode 2) to make sure that it doesn't deplete your battery into the geyser.

1761246449938.png

Once your CT is working correctly, your excess solar capacity will go to the geyser or oven (without rewiring the geyser or oven).

Do you have a timer on your geyser? If you can set the geyser to start heating up at 12h30, then once your battery is full the solar capacity will go to the geyser. That will give your some saving (not much, I expect ~1.5 kWh per day). But we can then see how much your geyser use daily and try to calculate potential savings if you were to put in a smaller element or install additional panels.
Then you get quotes for the additional panels, and calculate if there will be an ROI before you move.
 
Tacet said:
@Pho3nix

Rereading your OP, I suspect that you made a typo - you have a 5 kW Deye inverter, not a 5 kW Deye battery? The Deye can push power back to your non-essential loads.

If so, do you know if the installers installed a CT around the live cable going to the main breaker in your DB? It is basically a plastic thing that clamps around the cable, with a wire (thin, usually black and white) running back to your inverter.

If there is a CT, then only your inverter configuration needs to be updated to push excess solar power to your non-essential loads. I have configured several Sunsynk inverters, but no Deye inverters yet, so I'm not 100 % sure what the Deye / Solarman alternative to the Sunsynk option is. I think it is "Zero Export to CT" in the System Work Mode. On Sunsynk the inverter won't push battery power to the non-essential loads, but you may need to set the minimum battery level in the time of use settings (System Work Mode 2) to make sure that it doesn't deplete your battery into the geyser.

View attachment 1857931

Once your CT is working correctly, your excess solar capacity will go to the geyser or oven (without rewiring the geyser or oven).

Do you have a timer on your geyser? If you can set the geyser to start heating up at 12h30, then once your battery is full the solar capacity will go to the geyser. That will give your some saving (not much, I expect ~1.5 kWh per day). But we can then see how much your geyser use daily and try to calculate potential savings if you were to put in a smaller element or install additional panels.
Then you get quotes for the additional panels, and calculate if there will be an ROI before you move.
Click to expand...

So I’d like to comment on every post on the thread but I’ll jump on this one. I have a Deye inverter :)

I chatted to the installer yesterday about my request and he mentioned changing the same. So what I did was at 12:30 when the batteries were charged and base load around 500w; I turned on the setting and this is what I saw as I had also turned off the geyser via eWeLink.

893743ec5114659b660287784c06e5f4.jpg



Which is very different from how it looks when things are running fine

9db10caf8f2fa5e851333347f6fca157.jpg


Gut feel is he installed the CT cable incorrectly.
Thoughts ?

R300 element and running the heating the geyser after 1pm works fine for me since it would just use excess solar. Thanks for those that raised this.
 
Pho3nix said:
So I’d like to comment on every post on the thread but I’ll jump on this one. I have a Deye inverter :)

I chatted to the installer yesterday about my request and he mentioned changing the same. So what I did was at 12:30 when the batteries were charged and base load around 500w; I turned on the setting and this is what I saw as I had also turned off the geyser via eWeLink.

893743ec5114659b660287784c06e5f4.jpg



Which is very different from how it looks when things are running fine

9db10caf8f2fa5e851333347f6fca157.jpg


Gut feel is he installed the CT cable incorrectly.
Thoughts ?

R300 element and running the heating the geyser after 1pm works fine for me since it would just use excess solar. Thanks for those that raised this.
Click to expand...
Quite possible that the CT is just the wrong way round. Easy to fix - where it connects to the inverter, just swop the two wires around and see if its values seem more realistic. Pic below is for a 12 kW, three phase, but the principle will be the same for the 8 kW, and I think the connector block sit in a similar place.

The CTs can be a pain to install correctly and I've seen many installers just skip them, resulting in a sub-optimal installation, rather than to educate themselves and figure it out. It doesn't help that e.g. Sunsynk's user manual and training videos contradict each other in terms of how to install them. At least, they did a few years ago when I checked.
1761408796792.png
 
Tacet said:
Quite possible that the CT is just the wrong way round. Easy to fix - where it connects to the inverter, just swop the two wires around and see if its values seem more realistic. Pic below is for a 12 kW, three phase, but the principle will be the same for the 8 kW, and I think the connector block sit in a similar place.

The CTs can be a pain to install correctly and I've seen many installers just skip them, resulting in a sub-optimal installation, rather than to educate themselves and figure it out. It doesn't help that e.g. Sunsynk's user manual and training videos contradict each other in terms of how to install them. At least, they did a few years ago when I checked.
View attachment 1858328
Click to expand...
I'll give this a try when I am feeling a bit more confident :D
Do I need to turn the inverter off and the house off when I make the switch?
 
Lupus said:
That should be fine then, just monitor it. Geysers can stay hot for a long time.
Click to expand...

Not if they aren’t running and they’ve been used in between.

By 9:30 it will be ice cold after wife and kids used it and it filled with cold water.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Not if they aren’t running and they’ve been used in between.

By 9:30 it will be ice cold after wife and kids used it and it filled with cold water.
Click to expand...
Not if it was filled with hot water from the second geyser.
 
Pho3nix said:
Looking to use surplus energy from the sun to heat the geyser, not remove the grid from charging it completely
Click to expand...
Wait until you're paying R1.5k for the grid and only use 10 kWh. That works out to R150/kWh.
 
Pho3nix said:
I'll give this a try when I am feeling a bit more confident :D
Do I need to turn the inverter off and the house off when I make the switch?
Click to expand...

Sorry, wasn't online for a few days.

It can be done without turning anything off, BUT, there are risks. If you turn the CTs around in the main DB itself, then your main risk is the fact that you're working in a live environment - it can be done safely if you know what you're doing and you remain cautious, but it is not recommended.

If you swop the cables on the terminal block on the inverter side around, your risk of shock is less (not zero, as you're still exposed to the inverter's AC terminals), but then you have a bit more risk of a spark when you remove/insert the wires into the terminal.

If I was to write a work procedure for company use to do this, I'd specify that they need to switch off everything. If I were to do this at home, I'd isolate the AC input to the inverter (let the inverter power the essentials), switch off mains, measure the voltage on the main breaker, and if 0 V (as expected) do the switch.

When working in your main DB, remember that switching off the mains only kills the output side of the breaker. Unless you switch off the breaker in the council box outside, you still have live cables in your DB (those coming from the council going to the main breaker).
 
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