diy solar

diy solar

Solis RAI 3K AC - no discharge, shows as operational but no contribution to household load?

I never got it working correctly, I had to use time charge / discharge in the end. It would not automatically switch between charging and discharging in self use mode. Have you tied resetting it (disconnecting DC) at a time when you expect it to discharge? That is the behaviour I found - a reset would cause the correct operation at that time but it would not switch to the opposed (charge/discharge) when needed.

I did have the temperature sensor and did not have any CAN FAIL message. The manual does say the temp sensor is optional, tough.
 
That's a shame. Reading through the posts, it seems that the software is a bit hit and miss. I did get it to work for about a minute by restarting the HMI but as soon as the CAN fail alarm came on again, it stopped. Just a thought, do you have a spare temp sensor you want to sell now you have moved to Li-Ion?

You mentioned a software upgrade, there is very little info on how to get this or carry it out, can you give me any pointers?

The other odd thing is that the CT reports about double to power thats going through to load, but thats further down the line if I ever get it working!
 
Yes I have the temp sensor and it's not in use, I can't see me using it now either. PM me.

I simply called Solis in the end (was on hold for 40min). The chap that answered was very helpful though. He said he had 3 other tickets for the same inverter and the same request for an upgrade, and he did them all that day. I recommend creating a ticket in their online system then persisting on the phone and giving them the ticket number so they have all the info to read.

My CT is also off by 200w (I have it grid side). I put it down to my 20m extension with speaker cable introducing some voltage drop have yet to change to twisted pair mic or Ethernet cable. I may be relocating instead so a shorter run is needed. I improved it slightly by checking and adjusting the AC voltage in the compensation menu - it was about 260w out before.
 
I suppose, it would have been very interesting to have tried the LA batteries after updating the inverter. I'm not sure but maybe @Umski was already on a newer firmware though and still has issues. Either way, there is no doubt that the lifepo4 is superior in every way except price!
 
@Umski i have been experimenting with my new force charge setting. What I have settled on is setting the minimum SOC to 21% and force charge to 20%. This seems to be "floating" the battery in a sense quite well - rather than blindly charging it with time of use overnight (it won't allow setting to the same % - FC is always 1% below SOC).

I have yet to wire up the contactor.
 
Hi, Going back a bit to the original question, did anyone get lead acid batteries to work OK?
I have the same issue that there is no discharge. All reading are correct, CT works OK.

One thing, it has a CAN FAIL message. when using LA batteries do you have to have the temperature sensor connector to make it work?
Yes mine worked okay. it's just that the batteries weren't really sized appropriately as I discovered - maybe if I'd done it over the summer I may have had a better experience. I think one of them has failed so the bank wasn't really holding much juice in the end, then my Pylon arrived which has been working as expected. On my firmware 11000E under Lead Acid, there is no CAN option/info - the temp sensor wasn't needed but can be used as far as I know. If I tried to use user-def, then it was expecting CAN control as it would for Lithium

There seem to be 2 variants of the RAI - the early one without the Acrel and a later one with, I found it to be finicky about the position of the Acrel and orientation (I had to ensure it was on the Line conductor incoming to the CU, rather than the neutral outgoing.) I also had to ensure all the ToU settings were set to 00.00 to ensure no weirdness under Self-Use...
 
@Umski 80% charge gave you 24Gb hrs? I'd need a 30kw battery to do that!!
Haha, not quite, what I meant was that my aim is to get through the night and for the sun to be up again charging the battery the next day - that is yet to happen as we've not had 2 consecutive days of decent sun in Nov annoyingly - it would have worked in Sept/Oct but in a way this is real test over winter - our current average from dusk to dawn just with things like the fridge/freezer lights etc and no high power appliances in the evening is around 2.2kWh which is plenty enough with my 20% DoD on a 4.8kWh pack.
 
Haha, not quite, what I meant was that my aim is to get through the night and for the sun to be up again charging the battery the next day - that is yet to happen as we've not had 2 consecutive days of decent sun in Nov annoyingly - it would have worked in Sept/Oct but in a way this is real test over winter - our current average from dusk to dawn just with things like the fridge/freezer lights etc and no high power appliances in the evening is around 2.2kWh which is plenty enough with my 20% DoD on a 4.8kWh pack.
Wow that is low. My background is 400w so I do that in the early hours alone when we are all asleep.

The main issue is that the oven and hob go on for dinner, and if the hybrid car hasn't already used it, they will.

Don't get me wrong, it's great that we are using everything that was produced. But it would be nice to slow the discharge and see it last longer!

Can definitely see me needing a 2nd and even 3rd battery in the summer. Expensive game. I'm looking at other ways I can waste the excess, like electric preheating of water (for taps, or into the gas boiler).
 
Wow that is low. My background is 400w so I do that in the early hours alone when we are all asleep.

The main issue is that the oven and hob go on for dinner, and if the hybrid car hasn't already used it, they will.

Don't get me wrong, it's great that we are using everything that was produced. But it would be nice to slow the discharge and see it last longer!

Can definitely see me needing a 2nd and even 3rd battery in the summer. Expensive game. I'm looking at other ways I can waste the excess, like electric preheating of water (for taps, or into the gas boiler).
Yes it's a tricky balance, on the one hand I'm thinking more kWh would be good (in my mind just for the principle) and last 2-3 days but that comes at a high cost compared to the number of times it's used (or even available if no sun) and payback, however I already have excess going into my DHW so any days of PV above 3.8-4kWh and the battery is charged then the contribution to the HW saves on gas which can easily absorb 10-12kWh, so worst case is in the summer where the longer days mean less battery discharge and less kWh into the HW. If and when I go down the EV route that will all change significantly - I'd love to add more PV but the bureaucracy (have to get planning due to being within the boundary of a listed building) outweighs the practicalities for the moment. Though on the plus side I'm signed up to Ripple's Kirk Hill which is due to go online next year so that will save a few £££ on the bill and offset my CO2 when it's not sunny!
 
I wonder if that equates to the same thing? Is that taken from Information>General Info>SoftVer ?
That was what the Solis chap told me.

On the inverter menu you mentioned it says 130010 so seems to be!
 
How do you divert excess to DHW?
It's the Open Energy Monitor EmonTx using what's known as the PLL diverter (code from 2012 by a very smart chap named Martin) - the TX does all the sampling using a CT on the meter tail (household power) and one for Solar, I added an extra CT for the battery. The code works on the principle of an 'energy bucket' whereby as long as the import meter doesn't see a net change of 1Wh in either direction it won't notice (greater in my case as I have an old spinning type) so when the bucket is 'full' based on energy export (rather than power) it then triggers a triac circuit for the immersion (this was an additional piece of homebrew electronics which is the triac driver and triac itself on a chunky heatsink) - it can do this at 50Hz as the triac turns off at a zero crossing of the AC waveform - when I was trying to stop it draining my battery when I had the LAs, I had to fudge in some conditions using the readings from the battery otherwise the code was 'seeing' export and the Solis happily kept supplying more and more power so they were fighting each other! I think I have that sorted though it's a bit crude - it kills the diverter if it sees a battery discharge plus some other conditions like the diversion power being more than the solar. Fortunately it also means it has prioritised in way I want which is battery charge first then DHW as it just picks up the excess :) When the daily PV gets to over 7-8kWh I should have a continuosly topped up HW tank as usually 4-5kWh is enough to keep it ticking over until the next day :)

https://learn.openenergymonitor.org/pv-diversion/pll/pll

We went over 24hrs on solar+battery the other day from a full charge, I am yet to get a running 2 day charge/discharge/charge cycle but I think the 4.8kWh Pylon was the right starting point - as you say using something like the oven smashes the SoC but we use it maybe once or twice a week so it's a win if it's up to 100% - I'm already toying with the idea of a US2000 or 3000 but the price point per kWh means I may as well jump and get another 5000 but that's then another £2k so we'll see!
 
It's the Open Energy Monitor EmonTx using what's known as the PLL diverter (code from 2012 by a very smart chap named Martin) - the TX does all the sampling using a CT on the meter tail (household power) and one for Solar, I added an extra CT for the battery. The code works on the principle of an 'energy bucket' whereby as long as the import meter doesn't see a net change of 1Wh in either direction it won't notice (greater in my case as I have an old spinning type) so when the bucket is 'full' based on energy export (rather than power) it then triggers a triac circuit for the immersion (this was an additional piece of homebrew electronics which is the triac driver and triac itself on a chunky heatsink) - it can do this at 50Hz as the triac turns off at a zero crossing of the AC waveform - when I was trying to stop it draining my battery when I had the LAs, I had to fudge in some conditions using the readings from the battery otherwise the code was 'seeing' export and the Solis happily kept supplying more and more power so they were fighting each other! I think I have that sorted though it's a bit crude - it kills the diverter if it sees a battery discharge plus some other conditions like the diversion power being more than the solar. Fortunately it also means it has prioritised in way I want which is battery charge first then DHW as it just picks up the excess :) When the daily PV gets to over 7-8kWh I should have a continuosly topped up HW tank as usually 4-5kWh is enough to keep it ticking over until the next day :)

https://learn.openenergymonitor.org/pv-diversion/pll/pll

We went over 24hrs on solar+battery the other day from a full charge, I am yet to get a running 2 day charge/discharge/charge cycle but I think the 4.8kWh Pylon was the right starting point - as you say using something like the oven smashes the SoC but we use it maybe once or twice a week so it's a win if it's up to 100% - I'm already toying with the idea of a US2000 or 3000 but the price point per kWh means I may as well jump and get another 5000 but that's then another £2k so we'll see!
I am also regretting not getting a larger battery. 2x5kw will cost about £5-600 more than a single 10kw :-( I calculated that on average I had 4kw excess over the summer so 5kw should have been ideal. But it can't possibly be with hitting 70% in this weather!

I was looking at using an export switched trianco Aztec 2kw inline electric boiler. We have a gas combi, no tank, makes it a bit harder. Alternatively, adding a quettle tap in the kitchen and electric heated shower (covering the main two hot water uses).
 
There are also commercial products for diverting to a hot water tank (not that you have one), such as iBoost. But you'll need to do the calculations as to whether it is economical as gas heating of water is much cheaper than electicity, so the savings aren't a simple calculation of how many kWh of electricity you divert.

As for electric showers, I thought they used 7+ kW? If so, that's probably much more than your inverter / or panels can delivery and def more than one Pylontech battery can supply.
 
I am also regretting not getting a larger battery. 2x5kw will cost about £5-600 more than a single 10kw :-( I calculated that on average I had 4kw excess over the summer so 5kw should have been ideal. But it can't possibly be with hitting 70% in this weather!

I was looking at using an export switched trianco Aztec 2kw inline electric boiler. We have a gas combi, no tank, makes it a bit harder. Alternatively, adding a quettle tap in the kitchen and electric heated shower (covering the main two hot water uses).
Yeah bit limited with a combi, having a tank essentially acts as a local buffer for the excess though it's 1-1 for heating and you can't get it back as electrical energy when you need it hence my battery first, then water preference. I know it's frowned upon in some circles that nice clean electrical power is being dumped into heating water (but I export very little as a result being on the old FiT), ideally having a heat pump water heater would be good but again that's £££ - does your combi allow pre-heat of the incoming supply? If you had space then plumbing in a small unvented cylinder could be an option to soak up some excess via an immersion? Again though it depends on the payback and what your gas usage for pure DHW is over the summer...my aim in a way is to reduce gas usage as a whole which has worked, though ironically at the moment I am using more as the battery is soaking up any excess, however it means that I am importing less of the grid mix - will need to see how that pans out over the next year...
 
Yeah bit limited with a combi, having a tank essentially acts as a local buffer for the excess though it's 1-1 for heating and you can't get it back as electrical energy when you need it hence my battery first, then water preference. I know it's frowned upon in some circles that nice clean electrical power is being dumped into heating water (but I export very little as a result being on the old FiT), ideally having a heat pump water heater would be good but again that's £££ - does your combi allow pre-heat of the incoming supply? If you had space then plumbing in a small unvented cylinder could be an option to soak up some excess via an immersion? Again though it depends on the payback and what your gas usage for pure DHW is over the summer...my aim in a way is to reduce gas usage as a whole which has worked, though ironically at the moment I am using more as the battery is soaking up any excess, however it means that I am importing less of the grid mix - will need to see how that pans out over the next year...
Yes I can pre-heat to 62, there are designs in the manual even for using with a heat pump in this exact way. That Aztec boiler at 2kw seems ideal, apparently it will heat the output to higher than that and is a reasonable wattage to be covered by solar and/or battery.

More research required! Perhaps another battery is the simplest option... but that is £1600 and the Aztec is £400. Or maybe both :)
 
Well, the last couple of bright days has been brilliant (aside from the cold and using tonnes of gas for heating!) - the battery has been up to 100% and then maintained the household use until the following morning dropping to around 30% before the sun kicks in again :) So no mains electric for 48hrs+ now - as a bonus once the battery was at 100%, the diverter managed to push almost 4kWh into the DHW (after another small tweak to the diverter code as the inverter does something odd when the battery is fully charged so it was showing a small discharge) so no need to gas fired DHW today - this will get better once the days get longer so I think I have a pretty good balance of storage - the only downside to a small bank is that I noticed that by the morning, due to the cold I think (battery is in the garage), the maximum discharge current was down from 80A to 40A on the BMS info so the inverter output was reduced i.e. no kettle without grid power - once the battery was charged up and ambient temp went up it was happy again - hoping once the ambient goes back to 'normal' this won't be an issue, but without going into the Cloud app to see what's available, it's not knowing how much power is available :(
 
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