biometrics
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Ha ha no idea what that means, will ask.
Solar, inverter, battery thread
- Thread starter Rudolph Hart
- Start date
biometrics
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Other than a few minor things I’m up and running. Unfortunately they couldn’t use the smaller north facing roof, so have 9 panels facing ENE and 6 panels facing WSW. Generally both rooves have sun all day.
biometrics
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I feel a bit like an ex domestic abuse victim (not to minimise that) that got out. Or a soldier with bomb shock or PTSD.
Weird.
Weird.
Inverter connected to DB and Eskom, solar panel installation today and tomorrow. So grid tied.
Guess I don’t need this anymore.
View attachment 35223
I still check the schedules because I need to change the SoC sometimes when we have a short time between slots. Example on Monday we had 4.5 hours from 10pm to 2.30am, then next slot was 4am to 6.30am. So not a lot of time to get the batteries charged back up and no sun shine, so relying only on Eskom to charge the batteries back up to SoC gives not a lot of room for error if you have a low minimum and the first slot takes you down to a low %. In other words, if something goes pop as it did in Hermanus a couple of weeks ago and we went 12 hours without Eskom, you want to make sure you have enough battery to get through the night. So in this case, I moved my SoC from 40 to 50% before the first slot at 10pm to give me a big margin to make sure I last until morning on battery only.
biometrics
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May I humbly enquire what SoC stands for?
Rudolph Hart
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State of charge. Basically it’s how full your batteries are.
State of Charge.
Basically it’s the percentage you want your battery to stop discharging and for your house to use Eskom instead. This is so you have battery available when loadhsedding hits.
So for example, mine is set to 40% so that when loadshedding hits and there is no solar supply (nighttime), you have at least 40% battery in reserve to get you though that period of loadshedding.
If loadshedding finishes at 2am and your battery has gone down to say 25%, the inverter will use Eskom to charge it back up to 40% and keep it at 40 by running the house on Eskom until the sun comes up and starts to charge again using the solar.
At stage 1 or 2 I kept my SoC at 30%, now it’s at 40 and last night with two long periods of loadshedding close by I set it to 50. It’s way to much overkill but I don’t mind using a couple of Eskom units to make sure I have continuous power.
Cloudy days as well mean you might only charge to 50 or 60% by evening time, so important to have the SoC set property for when loadshedding hits over night and you have enough in the battery to get through.
biometrics
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@Rudolph Hart @Spizz thanks, need to digest that
A good example for you is now. We’ve had a heavy evening use so batteries at the moment are sitting at 48% and next loadshedding is scheduled for 4am-6.30am.
So at the moment with my SoC set to 40%, my battery will stop discharging in about an hours time when they actually reach that level. Then the inverter will start to use the grid until 4am when the grid goes off and the battery gets called into action again with a charge of 40% to get me though the loadshedding which finishes at 6.30.
At 6.30, the grid and/or the sun will combine to take me back to 40% and then the sun will keep on charging me up to 100% through out the day.
In fact, with next loadshedding only at 4am and only for 2.5 hours, I’m going to drop my SoC to 30% just now so that the battery keeps going another hour or more longer so I use less units tonight as 30% will easily get me though loadshedding in the morning.
biometrics
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I'll leave mine at 30% until I get a better feel for usage.
When I wanted to take a shower earlier the water wasn't warm. I didn't enable the geyser timer, duh. So I bypassed both geyser timers and wow it used 6kW of the 8kW inverter (though it was all from solar). Since we don't use the geyser in the main house I turned that one off. Think I'm going to leave the flat geyser on 24h for now and see how much it actually uses while maintaining heat. So may have installed the timers unnecessarily but the plan was to only heat when the sun is out, will see...
When I wanted to take a shower earlier the water wasn't warm. I didn't enable the geyser timer, duh. So I bypassed both geyser timers and wow it used 6kW of the 8kW inverter (though it was all from solar). Since we don't use the geyser in the main house I turned that one off. Think I'm going to leave the flat geyser on 24h for now and see how much it actually uses while maintaining heat. So may have installed the timers unnecessarily but the plan was to only heat when the sun is out, will see...
biometrics
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Seems my inverter has been set to top up the battery to 100% either solar or Eskom. Where do I change it to use the battery when the sun is down?
Solar Advice Pty Ltd
This company wants me to choose what I need (how will I know?). So I did and it came to R100K inc installation. They want me to pay this before they come out to see the layout of my place.
Fuck that.
This company wants me to choose what I need (how will I know?). So I did and it came to R100K inc installation. They want me to pay this before they come out to see the layout of my place.
Fuck that.
Thats unfortunate. It is an excellent company and I bought some equipment from them at great prices. As in real bargains compared to other shops.
They don't even have the decency to phone me, they just sent me an email reminder to pay R100K! What a joke.
Do you also expect takealot to phone you after placing an order?
Just saying, they are an online shop, not a service provider doing the install.
They have the option to include installation (yes done by someone else). I need someone to tell me:
- what I need
- is it possible to do it in my apartment that looks neat (not a garage job)
If you are not willing to figure this out yourself, you should contact an installer first before placing an order on an online shop. You had the wrong expectations and now you rate a really decent shop badly as "a joke" to use your words.
If you want someone to tell you what you need, you should reach out to an installer first. If you wanted a referral, you could just contact solaradvice and ask for a list before placing the order. Your experience would have been completely different that way.
the timer is still useful. I schedule our geysers in the middle of the day when there is usually sun. They then run continuous for a while, but its always when there is sun and rarely use battery at all. If you let them run 24/7 you have no control over how much it pulls from battery. It will usually run for 2-5minutes if just maintaining heat, but after a shower/bath/hot-water-use it will run longer to get to the set temp.
The fact that they call themselves Solar ADVICE is false advertising then. They have supplied none.