Solar PV Hints, Tips & Troubleshooting

Took the plunge and placed the order with ****** Today.

14 panels, inverter and diverter fir running the immersion, not going with the battery for now

26 week lead time is the only stinger, so a long wait.

Anyone know a BER person/company they have used recently to get there solar systems inspected for seai grant?

Pm if you can please , thanks 😊

would you mind pm of who you went with. I have a good few quotes but not sure who to go with .

You'll still generate enough at times in every month to put into the battery so make the most of it.

Have you a night rate tarriff?

If so you can charge the battery at night, use during the day. Would be the equivalent of around 2 kWh free every day. Over say a 100-150 days of winter, that'd soon add up

Interesting, I get what you're saying there. I don't think it will work on my meter as it's one of the smart ones with an IR rather than LED port. Should be possible on the acrel. Other idea would be one of those LED readers and an IR one also. They don't seem the cheapest though.

It worked on the smart meter. Might be a while before I can compare though. Taking it easy due to back issues so don't think I'll be climbing into the attic. I'll see what solis say today but I have a feeling I may have to get the installer back.

The inverter size will tell you the maximum amount that an inverter can process. So a 4Kw will only "draw down" 4kw, even though you might have 5Kw in panels. However, for most of the time, your panels will never be giving you the max output they are rated for.

For example if you have 4Kwp in panels, you might be getting 2Kw in actual power. Increasing the number of panels (assuming same size panels and same orientation on your roof) to 5Kwp will mean that your inverter will now output 2.5Kw....as you increased your panels by 25% the inverter power will go up by 25% and you are still under 4Kw

Usually though there are some limits to how far you can "over subscribe" an inverter. 33% is typically about it, some people say 50%, and in addition to that, there are also some string voltage considerations that you need to be careful of on the inputs. Normally that is 600v, so if your existing panels are generating close to that, you won't be able to add more.

I suspect that the incoming grid voltage being so high means that it's taking that for the house instead of the PV generation. PV gen needs to be slightly higher voltage than the grid in order for the house load to be covered.

Careful there lads. ESB threshold is 230v +/- 10%, meaning that they can supply electricity from 207v - 253v and be withing limits. If they are sending you electricity over that, that would be something to get onto ESB about.

The issue is if they are sending say 260v and you then come along and your inverter pumps out 262-264 or whatever it ups it by, the equipment in your house now (and potentially your neighbours) could be consuming that out of spec electricity. Most electronic usually have some threshold, but it could burn out things.

So while upping your voltage on the inverter solves your problem of the alarm, you could be creating a bigger problem for yourself (and neighbors when you export)

I'd suggest that there's another setting downstream in the inverter you need to change in conjunction. What you've done there is allow higher voltage in, but I don't see anywhere that you've changed the output voltage configuration. My inverter (before we had to turn it off) was preset to the IE regs so I guess the output voltage is preset and to operate at a different incoming voltage you'd need to also change some settings in the regulations settings.

I've decided simply to not play with it yet - although it's tempting - as I've already got the installer coming back on wednesday and that's what I'm paying him to do

Thanks, yea, exactly. The 269V is the Alarm voltage, set in the IE settings in Solis. What I'm trying to see if anyone knows, is if there is any other setting that can be set...

I don't think an installer is going to do anything for this issue. I'd expect their line to be that they set the IE regs setting. If anything goes outside that then that's your/ESB problem (but not them)

I can't comment on where 269V came from. Jonathan is usually very clued in, but it's out of spec for ESB. It's been 230v +/- 10% for decades.

Voltage Issues (esbnetworks.ie)

I understand that the inverter will go there to 269V, and it will solve your alarm issue and get your system working......but it's very much outside normal operations. I don't say this to give out or anything, actually only to potentially save you some grief if you blow a telly or something. I'd be Jonny-on-the-spot with getting onto ESB about that.

(To be fair it's unlikely that you'd cause damage, but if your pushing voltages in the high 260's things aren't expecting that....and you could run afoul)

I was onto Solis earlier again about my import and export issues overnight. They've now put me back to A10032 firmware. The guy I spoke with actually wrote that one and said it has a few features and tweaks that the main one doesn't. He said he's trying to get HQ to adopt some of them into the general release. One of the features is an offset adjustment. They can set it on an import or export bias to balance it. In my case it was exporting a lot so he put an adjustment in place. I'll see how that goes and may get them to change it slightly.