Daily pv production

championc

idc wrote: »

Thats not strictly true, there are conditions where east/west will work on single string see
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/an-eastwest-spit-of-solar-panels-on-a-single-string-can-work-well/
https://www.energymatters.com.au/images/news/2013/east-west-solar-paper.pdf


Another alternative is optimisers. A new installer/supplier organised a presentation by Tigo which i attended and that was a common use of their optimisers. But to be honest at 40-50 euros per panel it seems like a lot. they have some impressive monitoring capabilities also which can even pin point faulty panels in your string but again i think was like an extra 200 euro not sure if any home buyer would pay for it.

I said SHOULDN'T

And if anyone wants to look back at my previous posts, I have previously suggested the use of micro-inverters as even a preferable solution over optimizers.

But you would want to have a very shallow roof angle to run East and West on the same string. DrPhil knows all about the effects of shadow on half a panel on his whole shed string. The sun can be beaming on one side but the minute the sun misses the other side, bye bye current

slave1

For the first time I maxed the inverter at just over 6kW, had the Leaf charging and immersion both at max, happy days.
15minutes later and hailstones and down to 0.6kW, LOL good ole Ireland

DrPhilG

I had a power trip overnight (I think the washing machine is acting the whack) and although I turned it back on, it seemed to give the Solar system a bit of a fit. Everything was back on but it was showing a current of 0.1a for each string.

I was able to reset it around 12 by flicking the main fuse off and back on.

Aside from the annoyance of losing probably 3kWh in that down time, I do need to figure out how and why it happened so it doesn't happen again.

Going to come in at around 28kWh for the day too, which means I'd probably have broken 30kWh otherwise.

Also exported 5.4kWh which is a pain, but got 6kWh into the car when I got home at 4:20pm.

mp3guy

DrPhilG wrote: »

I had a power trip overnight (I think the washing machine is acting the whack) and although I turned it back on, it seemed to give the Solar system a bit of a fit. Everything was back on but it was showing a current of 0.1a for each string.

I was able to reset it around 12 by flicking the main fuse off and back on.

Aside from the annoyance of losing probably 3kWh in that down time, I do need to figure out how and why it happened so it doesn't happen again.

Going to come in at around 28kWh for the day too, which means I'd probably have broken 30kWh otherwise.

Also exported 5.4kWh which is a pain, but got 6kWh into the car when I got home at 4:20pm.

There's no end to your electrical hiccups at home, you'd want to get that checked out, full fault test. Maybe nothing, maybe something sinister.

DrPhilG

mp3guy wrote: »

There's no end to your electrical hiccups at home, you'd want to get that checked out, full fault test. Maybe nothing, maybe something sinister.

I wouldn't say no end, it's the same fault that I've had for a while intermittently. Something trips and it knocks off the ELCB.

I've spoken to my local spark though, he's due out for a look soon. Will also speak to my installer to see if he can shed any light on why the Solis didn't work properly after the trip.

championc

DrPhilG wrote: »

I wouldn't say no end, it's the same fault that I've had for a while intermittently. Something trips and it knocks off the ELCB.

I've spoken to my local spark though, he's due out for a look soon. Will also speak to my installer to see if he can shed any light on why the Solis didn't work properly after the trip.

So is your Solis downstream of the ELCB or independent of the ELCB ?

DrPhilG

Mental, yesterday we generated nearly 30kWh on a scorcher.

Today...




Not sure why the last pic loaded sideways... Anyway heavy snow.

graememk

DrPhilG wrote: »

Mental, yesterday we generated nearly 30kWh on a scorcher.

Today...

Not sure why the last pic loaded sideways... Anyway heavy snow.

Just a light dusting!, it will be melted before you know it.

Had a fairly hard frost up here, but nearly gone now.

DrPhilG

championc wrote: »

So is your Solis downstream of the ELCB or independent of the ELCB ?

Hmm, not sure. With the ELCB off this morning I finally got up into the attic for a nosey. This is what I found.

The inverter is on, but is giving an RS485 fail.
[img][/img]

DrPhilG

championc wrote: »

So is your Solis downstream of the ELCB or independent of the ELCB ?

Hmm, not sure. With the ELCB off this morning I finally got up into the attic for a nosey. This is what I found.

The inverter is on, but is giving an RS485 fail.



And the monitors etc below are dead.

graememk

DrPhilG wrote: »

Hmm, not sure. With the ELCB off this morning I finally got up into the attic for a nosey. This is what I found.

The inverter is on, but is giving an RS485 fail.



And the monitors etc below are dead.

The solis hybrid inverter has a monitor/control box that the cts connect to and then there is a rs485 link back to the inverter.

The power for that must be hanging off the elcb/ring/etc

Is the light on the fire switch off too?

championc

DrPhilG wrote: »

Hmm, not sure. With the ELCB off this morning I finally got up into the attic for a nosey. This is what I found.

The inverter is on, but is giving an RS485 fail.



And the monitors etc below are dead.

At this point, your Inverter is powered by your batteries. It clearly says No Grid on the top status line.

So your Inverter is downstream of your ELCB which is completely wrong. It should be on it's own RCBO off the main fuse, before the ELCB

DrPhilG

championc wrote: »

So your Inverter is downstream of your ELCB which is completely wrong. It should be on it's own RCBO off the main fuse, before the ELCB

Thanks. I'll get back to the installer and see what he says.

tails_naf

slave1 wrote: »

600l hot water! Why would you need that much?

300L for underfloor heating, so that's still useful, but in a few weeks it won't be needed, we never have heating on from mid-April till September. the other tank is for all our hot water. That stays hot 24-7 and is fed by solar hot water heating (added with the house build 10 years ago) - so now the PV diverts into that also. Long story short, we don't need this level of power to divert - but it's go no where else to go...

Boscoirl

Yesterday was my first full day with my PV system (4kw)

Generated 13.5kWh took 3kWh from the grid.

The Eddi topped up the water and battery was at 75-80%

Need to get the remote monitoring of the inverter working and probably evaluate my Harvi and Hub set up. Probably have my CTs in the wrong spot.

graememk

On track to break 40 kwh today.. out in the fields today, car not at home.. 14.5 kwh exported so far..

mp3guy

graememk wrote: »

On track to break 40 kwh today.. out in the fields today, car not at home.. 14.5 kwh exported so far..

Set an export limit on your inverter, problem solved

graememk

mp3guy wrote: »

Set an export limit on your inverter, problem solved

or just buy a second car :P charge one, drive one!

My output on the 8kwp array is getting clipped now at the top by the 6kw inverter, As expected. the extra panels was for the not so good days.

Will be interesting to see what happens on the warmer days as there is still a cold wind cooling the panels.

Immersion is currently broken, have a new one on the bench, should be put in on saturday. Might setup something to remotely turn on the immersion (need to get a decent contactor, it would fry a smartplug!)


41.1 kwh, and 17 exported.

mp3guy

50kWh today, 18.5kWh exported! Because I charged my new batteries full last night to make sure they were balanced.

irishchris

41.1 kWh produced but sadly 26.7 exported. Installing hybrid and battery this week so should soak some of it up going forward

championc

irishchris wrote: »

41.1 kWh produced but sadly 26.7 exported. Installing hybrid and battery this week so should soak some of it up going forward

Would you not be better going with a separate AC Storage Inverter (Sofar ME3000) with the battery connected to it ?

E30M3

championc wrote: »

Would you not be better going with a separate AC Storage Inverter (Sofar ME3000) with the battery connected to it ?

Couple of questions on this that might add to the General bank of knowledge.

With the Sofar ME3000 when installing does this need a dedicated spur from the Consumer unit with nothing else on it or can it share a circuit?

Has anyone with a Hybrid inverter and batteries off it also installed a Sofar Inverter on the AC side with Life04 batteries and had battery capacity on the DC and the AC side or is this crazy talk?

Just thinking if this arrangement could be used to supplement an existing install rather than have to remove the batter(ies) originally on the Hybrid inverter?

championc

It certainly makes sense to have an ME3000 on it's own breaker. You could have PV generating 3kW but then drawing an additional 3kW from the ME3000

The ME3000 is a worthy option because of the way you can ultimately control whether you charge or discharge the batteries unlike the lack of control with a Hybrid battery. So I might choose to charge the car from the minute I'm generating in excess of 1.4kW, even if the batteries were only 20% full

DrPhilG

26.3kWh today, exported 4.2kWh.

Average for the month so far is just over 20.

DrPhilG

PS at 10:30pm, still 57% left on the battery.

garo

And that's before you get yourself a bigger battery.


25.3kWh today. 10.6 went into the car.

irishchris

championc wrote: »

Would you not be better going with a separate AC Storage Inverter (Sofar ME3000) with the battery connected to it ?

Had looked at the sofar AC inverter alright but ended up going with Solis hybrid both for the battery charging and having two mppt connections which now allows me to split my ten panel ground mount into two halves as for two hours in morning the first panel is completely shaded and makes production minimal and then in evening the far two panels get shaded even though the rest are in full sun. Hooked it up today but battery disconnect held up so can't add that until weekend.
On a side note if anyone needs a less than two month old Solis 3kw inverter pm me as have one ready for sale :-)

Boscoirl

Have exported 7kWh this week as I was in work and couldn’t make use of it. Battery was full tank fully heated(not 100% sure it was but eddi was reporting max temp reached. That’s a different issue I may come back to at a later stage) have been checking my meter each day and I wasn’t as high as I though it would be

Just doing an experiment now. And my meter is going back wards

slave1

Boscoirl wrote: »

Have exported 7kWh this week as I was in work and couldn’t make use of it. Battery was full tank fully heated(not 100% sure it was but eddi was reporting max temp reached. That’s a different issue I may come back to at a later stage) have been checking my meter each day and I wasn’t as high as I though it would be

Just doing an experiment now. And my meter is going back wards

You Jammy Whammy, that's an old old meter, you have in effect net metering FIT so it would be a cold day in hell before I'd let the ESB into my house to replace that.
You are very very lucky....don't ever go near a Smart Meter

Re EDDI, if the temp stat on your immersion elements have reached max then the element will cut off, element 1 (usually the top one) will shut off and the EDDI will move onto element 2 (usually the bottom one).
When both temp stats are saying max temp then the EDDI will do so also so no excess PV will be diverted.
You're only other way around this is to pop the cap off your elements and turn the dial up on the temp stats, this will mean hotter water and therefore more use of your PV to heat up (what I've done, easy peasy)

Today I've done washing machine X2, dishwasher and element 2 nearing max temp soon so I plugged in the car, 4.6kW coming in off the PV with 19.3kWh generated so far today (1.3kWh exported)

Boscoirl

slave1 wrote: »

You Jammy Whammy, that's an old old meter, you have in effect net metering FIT so it would be a cold day in hell before I'd let the ESB into my house to replace that.
You are very very lucky....don't ever go near a Smart Meter

I know! its gone back almost 4kWh since i posted.
my issue now though, i had planned to move to an EV this year at some stage, cant get a night meter now, wouldnt be the end of the world as i would be planning to do 90% of my charging at work. but I would have to get the tails upgraded to install a Charger, can that be done without changing the meter?

slave1 wrote: »

Re EDDI, if the temp stat on your immersion elements have reached max then the element will cut off, element 1 (usually the top one) will shut off and the EDDI will move onto element 2 (usually the bottom one).
When both temp stats are saying max temp then the EDDI will do so also so no excess PV will be diverted.
You're only other way around this is to pop the cap off your elements and turn the dial up on the temp stats, this will mean hotter water and therefore more use of your PV to heat up (what I've done, easy peasy)

only one of the elements is connected to the EDDI, and I am 95% sure its the long one, as i was there when he connected it and he tested the resistance on each. maybe i need to have both connected, will remove the cap later and check the dial, but prior to this with the old immersion timer seemed to get it hotter. will check the cabling.

slave1 wrote: »

Today I've done washing machine X2, dishwasher and element 2 nearing max temp soon so I plugged in the car, 4.6kW coming in off the PV with 19.3kWh generated so far today (1.3kWh exported)

We ran out of washing yesterday