Hello all ,
I have just had 6.1kw of panels and 5kw of batteries fitted ,and am not getting an response from the company who fitted them,so thought i might ask on here .
they are mounted on a barn about 45 metres from the house , so , after popping that dongle in the box , i spent a happy half hour walking up and down the field trying to get a place where the wi fi of the dongle would work , and while the wi fi on the hs would also work ....no luck .
so i crammed 45 metres of cat5E cable into the duct carrying the power cable , and put a end on each ...er..end , and now i have an old bt HH 4 router slaved in the barn giving me 40 mb/s , so that was a success ,however , i still cant get the inverter to talk to anything .
the red led is flashing fast on the dongle .
i can connect to it with my phone , but it does not give a router address in the setup boxes , they're just greyed out . is it possible my i phone 6 of antiquity is too old to work ?
next question is , the battery is at 16% and the output from the panels is around 6w to 240 w, each day , highest i have seen is 450w ... is this normal , and should i be worried the batteries are going to adopt a lower capacity due to them never being fully charged till the weather gets better .
mid wales borders here.
i have 15 x 410w panels .
thanks you,
regards
robert
new setup, various questions
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Dave Foster
- Posts: 1378
- Joined: Thu Oct 13, 2022 7:21 pm
Just a quick question first on your setup, when you say router is this a wifi router? - assuming it is can you connect to the ssid it is broadcasting via your phone.
The wifi dongle needs to connect to a wifi network that has internet access so the first check would be to make sure what you are connecting to has internet access, the second thing to check is that it only has 2.4Ghz band switched on (the dongle only works on 2.4Ghz and dual band routers can upset it).
Onto your panels, it's not unusual at this time of year to have almost no solar generation, when you say 6 to 240W per day, I assume that's being read of the inverter display in which case you'll be getting that for around 6 hours so taking the mid point 100W @ 6 hours is 600Wh - still seems quite low so it will be good to get your dongle connected to the cloud so you can see more meaningful stats and a better solar output - tomorrow is forecast to be higher ~4kw for the day so it will be good to see what the inverter says then.
At the inverter panel you can see that days total PV output, by clicking on History, Inverter Yield, PV - but you need to check at the end of the day as it is reset daily (this is why having the cloud app working is useful as it remembers).
The batteries have a minsoc (minimum state of charge) setting that they cannot drop below, the inverter takes some power off them to operate during the none solar hours and so the inverter will trickle charge them when it drops to the minsoc setting - this is normally 10% but it depends what is was set to, again the app will show this for you.
If you have low tariff power (Octopus Go, Eco7 etc..) it's better to force charge them during that period at this time of year so they don't trickle charge at peak rates, again we need the app working for this, but it can be set at the inverter panel if you are keen.
The wifi dongle needs to connect to a wifi network that has internet access so the first check would be to make sure what you are connecting to has internet access, the second thing to check is that it only has 2.4Ghz band switched on (the dongle only works on 2.4Ghz and dual band routers can upset it).
Onto your panels, it's not unusual at this time of year to have almost no solar generation, when you say 6 to 240W per day, I assume that's being read of the inverter display in which case you'll be getting that for around 6 hours so taking the mid point 100W @ 6 hours is 600Wh - still seems quite low so it will be good to get your dongle connected to the cloud so you can see more meaningful stats and a better solar output - tomorrow is forecast to be higher ~4kw for the day so it will be good to see what the inverter says then.
At the inverter panel you can see that days total PV output, by clicking on History, Inverter Yield, PV - but you need to check at the end of the day as it is reset daily (this is why having the cloud app working is useful as it remembers).
The batteries have a minsoc (minimum state of charge) setting that they cannot drop below, the inverter takes some power off them to operate during the none solar hours and so the inverter will trickle charge them when it drops to the minsoc setting - this is normally 10% but it depends what is was set to, again the app will show this for you.
If you have low tariff power (Octopus Go, Eco7 etc..) it's better to force charge them during that period at this time of year so they don't trickle charge at peak rates, again we need the app working for this, but it can be set at the inverter panel if you are keen.
hi dave thank you ,
the router is a wi fi one, an old bt home hub 4.0 , it gives 40 mb/s on my phone speed check in the barn so does talk to the phone pretty well ,and it appears my cat5a lead is a good un .
i will check to see if i can connect with 2.4 and 5 , to be sure the 2.4 is available .and then turn 5 off if its on .
i have gone and got a 2nd hand i phone a se2020 , so its using the latest s/w ,, so, if that was a problem, that's been solved .
regards
robert
the router is a wi fi one, an old bt home hub 4.0 , it gives 40 mb/s on my phone speed check in the barn so does talk to the phone pretty well ,and it appears my cat5a lead is a good un .
i will check to see if i can connect with 2.4 and 5 , to be sure the 2.4 is available .and then turn 5 off if its on .
i have gone and got a 2nd hand i phone a se2020 , so its using the latest s/w ,, so, if that was a problem, that's been solved .
regards
robert
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Dave Foster
- Posts: 1378
- Joined: Thu Oct 13, 2022 7:21 pm
Ok that sounds fine, let us know how you get on 
SUCCESS !
i had no luck at all using the instructions , however , with the new phone the app went into its own setup routine and lo and behold i now have a working app .
nice ..
thank you Dave . it appears the batteries go down to 20 % , then stop being used , then at night they charge up from the grid at a rate of 0.5 kwh from 4am to 8 am . and get to around 60 % ,,,then they start feeding power in again .
regards
robert
i had no luck at all using the instructions , however , with the new phone the app went into its own setup routine and lo and behold i now have a working app .
nice ..
thank you Dave . it appears the batteries go down to 20 % , then stop being used , then at night they charge up from the grid at a rate of 0.5 kwh from 4am to 8 am . and get to around 60 % ,,,then they start feeding power in again .
regards
robert
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Dave Foster
- Posts: 1378
- Joined: Thu Oct 13, 2022 7:21 pm
ok great result, now you can see what's happening.
It sounds like your minsoc is set to 20% (that's the minimum you allow the batteries to fall to), it's not a bad idea during the colder months to keep them at that, but once the weather starts to warm (March on) you can reduce that to 10% which will give you more capacity.
So 2 things, 1) are you expecting the batteries to charge between 4 & 8 am? and secondly 0.5kw is a low charge rate so we might need to investigate that further - I don't thing you had mentioned which batteries or their capacity, if 0.5kw charges them to 60% in 4 hours i'm guessing a 5kwh battery ?
At least now you can see how much solar you are generating at peak and in total across the day, it's still early and with low elevation not a lot of solar to be had yesterday I managed 3.3kwh which is the highest so far this year but I only managed 0.4kwh total for the day on Jan 2nd.
It sounds like your minsoc is set to 20% (that's the minimum you allow the batteries to fall to), it's not a bad idea during the colder months to keep them at that, but once the weather starts to warm (March on) you can reduce that to 10% which will give you more capacity.
So 2 things, 1) are you expecting the batteries to charge between 4 & 8 am? and secondly 0.5kw is a low charge rate so we might need to investigate that further - I don't thing you had mentioned which batteries or their capacity, if 0.5kw charges them to 60% in 4 hours i'm guessing a 5kwh battery ?
At least now you can see how much solar you are generating at peak and in total across the day, it's still early and with low elevation not a lot of solar to be had yesterday I managed 3.3kwh which is the highest so far this year but I only managed 0.4kwh total for the day on Jan 2nd.
yes just below 5 kw i have been told dave , i was not aware it would be doing that charge process , but it's the way they set it i guess .
I did make 3.8 kwH today, and batteries were at 100 % when the sun sent down now theyre at 92% at 7:32 pm.
my total yield since fitting on the 15th dec is 49.5 kwH
I did make 3.8 kwH today, and batteries were at 100 % when the sun sent down now theyre at 92% at 7:32 pm.
my total yield since fitting on the 15th dec is 49.5 kwH