W@P's Solar System

Will tune him we need to spend some time looking for the culprit.
 
W@P said:
So i connected my efergy engage electricity monitoring meter thingy to my ex-brother in-law's new house db.
They moved in at the end of June so almost have a months worth of data.

But fok. He is pulling some serious juice. And we can't figure out what it is. The pool pump is not permanently on. The underfloor heating is off. Not using aircons atm. One heater in one room. I have a feeling there are 2 or 3 geysers in the house, we know of one.

He wants to get solar installed so I said lets connect the efergy to get some data to see what we working with. And he wants something that he can do whatever he want whenever he wants.

At this stage it looks like a 16kW Sunsynk is in his future, at the least.
Geyser(s) are also not on timers yet so once that is done one can spread the usage better as we all know.

View attachment 1563232
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Have you found the cause yet? Is it possible the Efergy is not calibrated correctly or a setting is wrong? What looks like his baseload from 12 to 15 is 3kW. Even during the night it never goes lower except for the 6-9 slot. Geysers are not on that long.

Also, normal 230V connection with a 60A main breaker, gives you 13.8 kW max load for the house. That graph is going over 15 kW. So they might have an 80A breaker in? Either way this looks like way too much usage for a house. What is the electricity bill or prepaid amount like?
 
furpile said:
Have you found the cause yet? Is it possible the Efergy is not calibrated correctly or a setting is wrong? What looks like his baseload from 12 to 15 is 3kW. Even during the night it never goes lower except for the 6-9 slot. Geysers are not on that long.

Also, normal 230V connection with a 60A main breaker, gives you 13.8 kW max load for the house. That graph is going over 15 kW. So they might have an 80A breaker in? Either way this looks like way too much usage for a house. What is the electricity bill or prepaid amount like?
Click to expand...
No, not yet. His total consumption was 2400kWh for July.
An average of 78kWh per day, most of it at night time.

He is a bit stubborn and is not keen on changing habits. So he just wants to throw money at the problem.
If we can just set a bit of time to one side and go through the whole house to find what is using so much electricity we can at least sort that issue out.

So far we have specced the following components:
3 x 8kW Sunsynk inverters. To allow for some headroom. Might only need 2.
36 X 550w panels, thinking 6 panels per MPPt? Any suggestions on this?
30kWh of battery storage. 3 x 10kWh batteries to start with.

He does not want to adapt or change his approach to the way they are using electricity. If he decides he feels like running the heat pump with the pool pump and wtf ever at the same time, night or day he wants to do it. No compromises. So he needs a system that can cater to that. Lmfao

The problem is there is no roof space for the panels. The initial idea was to build a big carport and mount the panels on there but that idea has also evolved into demolishing the current garage that is not attached to the house and building a new bigger 4-car garage that has an entrance to the house to mount the panels on.

Gonna be a kak expensive exercise this one.
 
W@P said:
No, not yet. His total consumption was 2400kWh for July.
An average of 78kWh per day, most of it at night time.

He is a bit stubborn and is not keen on changing habits. So he just wants to throw money at the problem.
If we can just set a bit of time to one side and go through the whole house to find what is using so much electricity we can at least sort that issue out.

So far we have specced the following components:
3 x 8kW Sunsynk inverters. To allow for some headroom. Might only need 2.
36 X 550w panels, thinking 6 panels per MPPt? Any suggestions on this?
30kWh of battery storage. 3 x 10kWh batteries to start with.

He does not want to adapt or change his approach to the way they are using electricity. If he decides he feels like running the heat pump with the pool pump and wtf ever at the same time, night or day he wants to do it. No compromises. So he needs a system that can cater to that. Lmfao

The problem is there is no roof space for the panels. The initial idea was to build a big carport and mount the panels on there but that idea has also evolved into demolishing the current garage that is not attached to the house and building a new bigger 4-car garage that has an entrance to the house to mount the panels on.

Gonna be a kak expensive exercise this one.
Click to expand...
He will save R100k’s if the guzzlers are identified.
 
W@P said:
No, not yet. His total consumption was 2400kWh for July.
An average of 78kWh per day, most of it at night time.

He is a bit stubborn and is not keen on changing habits. So he just wants to throw money at the problem.
If we can just set a bit of time to one side and go through the whole house to find what is using so much electricity we can at least sort that issue out.

So far we have specced the following components:
3 x 8kW Sunsynk inverters. To allow for some headroom. Might only need 2.
36 X 550w panels, thinking 6 panels per MPPt? Any suggestions on this?
30kWh of battery storage. 3 x 10kWh batteries to start with.

He does not want to adapt or change his approach to the way they are using electricity. If he decides he feels like running the heat pump with the pool pump and wtf ever at the same time, night or day he wants to do it. No compromises. So he needs a system that can cater to that. Lmfao

The problem is there is no roof space for the panels. The initial idea was to build a big carport and mount the panels on there but that idea has also evolved into demolishing the current garage that is not attached to the house and building a new bigger 4-car garage that has an entrance to the house to mount the panels on.

Gonna be a kak expensive exercise this one.
Click to expand...
Something is wrong at that house, that is an insane amount of electricity to use every single day. In January it was insanely hot here and the most I was able to use was 80 kWh in one day by running all the aircons the whole day to survive. Generated almost 50 kWh solar that day which was also the most ever. Point is if they are not running anything strange they shouldn't be using so much electricity. Start by turning off 1 breaker at a time at the DB and see what the usage does.
 
furpile said:
Something is wrong at that house, that is an insane amount of electricity to use every single day. In January it was insanely hot here and the most I was able to use was 80 kWh in one day by running all the aircons the whole day to survive. Generated almost 50 kWh solar that day which was also the most ever. Point is if they are not running anything strange they shouldn't be using so much electricity. Start by turning off 1 breaker at a time at the DB and see what the usage does.
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Yes, definitely something wrong. Will try and find some time to check everything out.
 
We have been without power since yesterday afternoon. My batteries died at 4 this morning. Currently at 98%.
Will most likely die again at 4 in the morning. Muni is struggling their arses off to find the fault.

Jackhammering concrete at the garage around the corner to find the cable that has a fault. They left now and will only continue again tomorrow.

I was checking the prices for another Hubble AM-2 this morning. Best I could find was R26k delivered. Decisions decisions.
 
W@P said:
We have been without power since yesterday afternoon. My batteries died at 4 this morning. Currently at 98%.
Will most likely die again at 4 in the morning. Muni is struggling their arses off to find the fault.

Jackhammering concrete at the garage around the corner to find the cable that has a fault. They left now and will only continue again tomorrow.

I was checking the prices for another Hubble AM-2 this morning. Best I could find was R26k delivered. Decisions decisions.
Click to expand...
and a genny for those cloudy days.
 
W@P said:
No, not yet. His total consumption was 2400kWh for July.
An average of 78kWh per day, most of it at night time.

He is a bit stubborn and is not keen on changing habits. So he just wants to throw money at the problem.
If we can just set a bit of time to one side and go through the whole house to find what is using so much electricity we can at least sort that issue out.

So far we have specced the following components:
3 x 8kW Sunsynk inverters. To allow for some headroom. Might only need 2.
36 X 550w panels, thinking 6 panels per MPPt? Any suggestions on this?
30kWh of battery storage. 3 x 10kWh batteries to start with.

He does not want to adapt or change his approach to the way they are using electricity. If he decides he feels like running the heat pump with the pool pump and wtf ever at the same time, night or day he wants to do it. No compromises. So he needs a system that can cater to that. Lmfao

The problem is there is no roof space for the panels. The initial idea was to build a big carport and mount the panels on there but that idea has also evolved into demolishing the current garage that is not attached to the house and building a new bigger 4-car garage that has an entrance to the house to mount the panels on.

Gonna be a kak expensive exercise this one.
Click to expand...
If he has the means, then that's cool. Is he doing it all on a single phase?
 
Yesterday was a good day. My geysers are also tuning nicely with the new thermostats. They caused me to use a lot of eskom this winter with the thermostats busy failing.

I remember last winter I did not need to top them up in the mornings. This winter they were too cold and had to top up.

1700810802691.png
 
Eish. Not sure what is going on here. I have noticed the SOC falling instantly for a few days now.
See graphs. Orange line.

1703400599526.png
1703400654048.png
1703400685652.png
The above graphs are from Solarman.
When I look at the batteries SOC on the RIOT it looks fine. See below.
1703400794841.png

Fsck I hope it's not a another Hubble fsckup.
I am not home. So there are minimum loads.
Guess I will have to take a better look when I am home.
 
So my guy cleans my panels, gutters, and roof every month. Bird shiit and nests etc. He normally just used to spray the panels down and a few strokes with an extendable squeegee and that's it. I found this cleaner on TA.

Now he sprays down the panels then sprays a bit of this cleaner diluted with water in a spray bottle on the panels. Then the squeegee. Then rinse them well with water again. I climbed up to have a look and it does clean propper.

Came back down to find I was producing an extra 6kWh from the clean panels. Impressed.


No, I joke. No fscking clue if it helps but I like to have my roof and panels clean.

Anyway.

1705478712967.png
 
W@P said:
So my guy cleans my panels, gutters, and roof every month. Bird shiit and nests etc. He normally just used to spray the panels down and a few strokes with an extendable squeegee and that's it. I found this cleaner on TA.

Now he sprays down the panels then sprays a bit of this cleaner diluted with water in a spray bottle on the panels. Then the squeegee. Then rinse them well with water again. I climbed up to have a look and it does clean propper.

Came back down to find I was producing an extra 6kWh from the clean panels. Impressed.


No, I joke. No fscking clue if it helps but I like to have my roof and panels clean.

Anyway.

View attachment 1647317
Click to expand...
Yeah it's definitely that, and not the rain... :p
 
Can't remember if it's from a thread or a Youtube video I saw, but someone did the math and it was around a 4% increase between "dirty" and clean panels. Small sample size though.
 
W@P said:
My system has been installed and started running today.

View attachment 1218366
I have the following.

1 x 8kw Sunsynk Inverter
16 x 420w Canadian Solar Panels
2 x CBI Astutes (For geyser timers)
Riot Cloudlink
Edit: Added another Hubble Am-2
TOTAL COST: R171,385.80

View attachment 1218370

View attachment 1218372

View attachment 1218374
View attachment 1330388

I still have my generator connection if needed with a change-over switch. We decided to leave the gen change-over instead of connecting it to the gen input on the inverter.

Let the data logging begin.:cool::p
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Ok, sorry for the hi-jack, but what system would you go for, and installed by whom, if you had to do so today?

Not asking for a friend :). I'm thinking of a R180k budget.
 
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