Solar for Beginners [ask your questions here]

No idea :) Only live since July. And I only learned it would drop off a cliff from a boardsie here. Every day is a school day. We filled everywhere we could on the roof, so I'm glad I have it

@Skidrow, numbers wise our 1.2kWp NW has done 220kWh in 4 months. That's enough to run our house for a month (we are light on power usage). 175kWh of that was up to the end of Sept. So it helps but it's not gonna set the world on fire.

Question on the merits of locking inverter/battery behind a closed door. I have the invertor and battery in a old boiler house that's built into the side of the house. It's behind a lockable door on the side of the house. I was thinking of putting a lock on the door for security purposes but I'm also thinking what if someone needs access in an emergency?

What's best practices on it?

Thanks,

Mick

Confused... You added to insurance and wasn't any impact to premium?

ok did you mention solar in particular or just add 10k etc contents to the house?

I've a question on the grant re solar installation - is an actual BER assessment required? I had someone from my installation company call this morning to do 'safety checks' on the install. He said thats all thats needs for processing the grant paperwork? I'm not to fussed about about a BER if its not required as we not going anywhere any time soon but I was curious how the solar install might have moved us from B3 to a better number..

Cheers,

Mick

yeah im just a little confused.. my installer said the checks they did this morning is re grant payout.. but they didnt do a ber assessment.. they did some tests on the installation.. ill get onto them again.. they doing hundreds of installs so they must know what they on about

I told them I had solar and the value. Obliged to inform them of major changes that affect the policy. So if roof was damaged in a storm they could easily decline to pay as I hadn't declared an important change. Same for fire.

Cost to resolve would be covered under the insurance. But solar could be the (very unlikely) reason for a claim.

Just had our system installed on Wednesday and everything is running great. Even getting some production which was surprising given the weather and date.

I was hoping someone might be able to let me know though if the solarman app can be adjusted or changed to give a real time view of what the inverter is doing as opposed to the delayed refresh?

I know there’s an automation thread here and I’ve read loads of it but frankly most of it is over my head. Really just looking to get live info from the inverter and also perhaps find out how people download or export the data from solarman in their system. I have installed both solarman apps and can get export info from the smart version but perhaps others have a better way?

im going back to watching the panel meter turn again for another hour or two 😂

thanks

2.5kw Thursday 7 yesterday and 3 today off an 8.4kwp 50/50 east west split but today and Thursday we had no sun in the northeast. Really dull and cloudy. Can’t wait to see what it does on a decent day.

My Solis inverter seems to be seeing only one battery and not the two. Is this normal? How do you tell the inverter there is a better to talk to?

Battery is a Weco 5K3

Don’t know if this is the right thread for this but I’ll stick here and it can be moved.

I have a sofar inverter with two strings. Is it possible to see what each string is producing independently on the inverter or app?

I can on my Huawei inverter so assume it’s the same on other inverters. I use the web browser on the laptop as much easier to read than on an app on a phone. Can get ‘real-time’ (which is only every 5 mins on Huawei, but close enough) or can get historic. I can't make changes, so means I can't break anything by mistake. It's just reporting.

They may not support it from app/webpage. I've an AlphaESS inverter and their monitoring also does not graph the strings independently. I can see the values if i go to the inverter but obviously not much good as i only get a snapshot in time!