Solar PV Hints, Tips & Troubleshooting

It's stupidly simple. The connectors are different, one male and one female. The male of the first panel connects to the female of the second, and so on.

On the inverter are also a male and female connectors. You would need a male to female extension cable from where the inverter is to the first panel of the string, and from the last panel back to the inverter.

Yes, it's that simple. The plugs click together, nice and firmly. There is an MC4 tool to disconnect connections.

Even to make your own extension cable is easy. Plenty of videos on YouTube. The connectors are always called MC4's

So you can see why I asked if you played with Lego. No wonder these lads do a whole roof in a day.

And there is nothing anywhere to say that you cannot do all of this. RECi stuff is all about the AC side, not the DC side.

Careful though Phil on the max voltage. Normally it's about 600v and 13 panels will have you knocking in and about that.

Have a look tomorrow, or even at todays telemetry and see what your voltages maxed out at.

Bear in mind though that on cold days, the voltage will most likely be higher.

Nice one - although it's temperature dependant too, so a cold sunny day in the middle of Feb/Mar could have you knocking about 600v. That's not to say don't do it, just be mindful of it.

The tiles were indeed the most difficult part for me as a DIYer. But it's straight forward. Tiles are all lose and interlocking. You need to raise up the tiles above and to the side of a tile, allowing you to push it up under the one above it, fix the bracket to the roof timber (I have a trussed roof), then pull the roof tile back down into place.

@DrPhilG you should maybe just add another small 3kW size inverter connected to panels on a simple wooden frame out in a field ? Or build a metal frame with unistrut.

This is today's DC voltage output so far...

Do you mean the discharge or the import/export bounce?

The discharge is a feature now on newer versions. I saw on the Solis group someone with 3A0030 had it, so I guess yours is just before that came in? A1 was apparently a special version to reduce the discharging as it was too severe.

On the import/export jumping around overnight, this is a separate issue. They changed some parameters but it doesn't appear to have made a difference. It swings between 2-300W import & export all night.

The key I think is in the use of the words "Generation" and "Consumption". Basically generation graph is where your solar panel energy went, some of that went into the battery, but of course you probably also charged the battery from the grid? That wouldn't be included there, but it would be included in the "Consumption"

Guessing a little.

This video shows how. https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=solis+hybrid+inverter+-+self+use+with+time+charging&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_s38HY8L9I-OThbIP2eipsAU22

When I check as per that video, Optimal Income was set to Stop, so grid charging was off?

hmmmm.....wondering if FIT prices will follow suit and rise by 35%?! - LOL

They've now updated my inverter again to the latest version 3D0032. Said that's all they can do. Will see how it goes...