Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

AnastieByte said:
I've received a new quote this morning and guidance is appreciated as its the most expensive but also the highest number of panels:

  • 6.22kW Solar PV System
  • 15 x 415w Eurena Panels
  • 2 x 5kWh Growatt AXE Battery
  • Growatt Inverter
  • 3 x Tygo Optimisers
  • Smart Monitoring
  • Hies Registration
  • Epvs Validation
  • MCS Certification
  • 5347 kwh per annum
£13,500 plus £50 per panel bird guard
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Reasonable. 5kw inverter?

As I’ve said a few times in this thread Tigo no longer support blind deployment of their optimisers (I’m presuming you have 3 shaded panels?) https://support.tigoenergy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4770355167635-TS4-Systems-Blind-Deployment

If you’re going to have any tigos get your installer to setup Tigo TAP and CCA at the same time so you can monitor and firmware update them.
 
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SBo said:
Reasonable. 5kw inverter?

As I’ve said a few times in this thread Tigo no longer support blind deployment of their optimisers (I’m presuming you have 3 shaded panels?) https://support.tigoenergy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4770355167635-TS4-Systems-Blind-Deployment

If you’re going to have any tigos get your installer to setup Tigo TAP and CCA at the same time so you can monitor and firmware update them.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the response. Typo on inverter!
Yes, part shaded area. Thanks for the info on Tygo and the need to discuss with installer
 
SBo said:
Reasonable. 5kw inverter?

As I’ve said a few times in this thread Tigo no longer support blind deployment of their optimisers (I’m presuming you have 3 shaded panels?) https://support.tigoenergy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4770355167635-TS4-Systems-Blind-Deployment

If you’re going to have any tigos get your installer to setup Tigo TAP and CCA at the same time so you can monitor and firmware update them.
Click to expand...
I've just been running myself around in circles with 6 panels I've fitted to my garage wall - all tested open voltage fine and then with Tigo's connected, but once in series no voltage (not connected to inverter yet).
Realised it's likely to be the Rapid shutdown happening as these are re-purposed Tigo's from my old system and likely need resetting on the portal.
 
To keep my progress with quotes up to date in order to help others this is my latest negotiated quote:
  • 15 410w Canadian Solar Panels
  • Givenergy Inverter
  • Givbattery 9.5kwh
  • Birdmesh
Total £12,000

This appears to be my strongest quote yet based upon output and storage. My main concern's so far, is that I need to check why the Inverter has a 5 year warranty when others have a 10 year warranty. And this quote has no optimizers included. But the roof definitely has some shaded areas as the sun moves round the house.
 
AnastieByte said:
To keep my progress with quotes up to date in order to help others this is my latest negotiated quote:
  • 15 410w Canadian Solar Panels
  • Givenergy Inverter
  • Givbattery 9.5kwh
  • Birdmesh
Total £12,000

This appears to be my strongest quote yet based upon output and storage. My main concern's so far, is that I need to check why the Inverter has a 5 year warranty when others have a 10 year warranty. And this quote has no optimizers included. But the roof definitely has some shaded areas as the sun moves round the house.
Click to expand...
The warranty can be upgraded for around £200 or so
 
94JDH said:
I've just been running myself around in circles with 6 panels I've fitted to my garage wall - all tested open voltage fine and then with Tigo's connected, but once in series no voltage (not connected to inverter yet).
Realised it's likely to be the Rapid shutdown happening as these are re-purposed Tigo's from my old system and likely need resetting on the portal.
Click to expand...
Haha yes!
So I wrote to Tigo and asked them to disable the automatic power cut-off function in the end, which they did do remotely - if you don't do that then anytime your Tigo TAP and CCA lose power the optimisers will cut the power. I gather that some countries require it for safety but the UK doesn't and I would want to use solar as backup in an outage. I have a switch connected to the CCA which if you push it "emergency shut down" happens and the optimisers cut power. Useful for safer servicing in the future.

I had to muck around for a while with TAP placement, trial and error and I didn't really want to buy any more TAPs, in the end it could rach all the panels from inside my loft roughly in the middle of my array (which is split across 3 roofs)
 
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McBain said:
Anyone used Eon for a solar install?
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My installer have just signed up to do EON and are now dual branded in regards their workwear.

It seems they work with reasonably large local installers and they are not in house so to speak.

That would worry me to be honest, there are enough parties involved already IMO without adding another.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
My installer have just signed up to do EON and are now dual branded in regards their workwear.

It seems they work with reasonably large local installers and they are not in house so to speak.

That would worry me to be honest, there are enough parties involved already IMO without adding another.
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Good to know thanks.
 
Ron-ski said:
If I remember correctly you have whole house backup, if so you need the second inverter to be controlled by the first inverter. Say the grid goes down, both inverters carry on generating power, the batteries fill up, the inverter throttles back, but the other inverting carries on generating power, what happens?
In my system the Victron will alter the frequency, its called frequency shifting and my SE inverter will stop producing power, and the Victron throttles back just enough to cover loads.
So you need to make sure whatever you have will do this.
Also the first inverter needs to be able to take excess power from the other inverter and charge the batteries.

Probably the easiest way is to use the same make of inverter, so long as they play nice together, including the above, and also with data collection.

You'd also need to do a G99 with the DNO for the increase in generation power.

Will the town house shade the panels in the winter months?
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Thanks Ron, yes that was all pretty much my understanding.

I have seen loads of Solax installs with multiple inverters. But no way to know if that includes house backup. They look simpler in the pictures.
I was planning to look at what the "extra boxes" do. They do a number of additional boxes that allow expansion of various parts of the system so assumed there is probably one that will cover this.

I am not playing fully yet however since my batteries again look to be an issue. I am convinced its an issue, maybe something messed up in firmware or just poor QC and quality in general.
I am convinced the "others don't have you issues" is really "others just assume they work as advertised"

Going to dump the batteries, probably tonight, and do a full charge from grid from 10% SOC.

I had another thought. We have only been focussing on the battery charging aspect, ie the charge taken in from 10% to 100% SOC. Thats impossible to perfectly demonstrate since I have some house baseload, and the SOLAX monitoring is 5 minute intervals and seems to be spot values as opposed to average values.

So I am going to do a full charge. But realised if I isolate the solar, I can do a full discharge as well. IE I can allow the batteries only to power the house. With no PV then the total yield will display what the batteries delivered to the house.
Need to find a day with good late afternoon solar prediction. So I can run the batteries down from 100% during the day, but have a chance of topping some decent amounts back up from PV after that has been completed.

I realised I missed a trick. I get on pretty well with the spark who keeps coming round. I should have asked him if he will do some solar himself, I suspect he would from conversation.
Darn it.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Thanks Ron, yes that was all pretty much my understanding.

I have seen loads of Solax installs with multiple inverters. But no way to know if that includes house backup. They look simpler in the pictures.
I was planning to look at what the "extra boxes" do. They do a number of additional boxes that allow expansion of various parts of the system so assumed there is probably one that will cover this.

I am not playing fully yet however since my batteries again look to be an issue. I am convinced its an issue, maybe something messed up in firmware or just poor QC and quality in general.
I am convinced the "others don't have you issues" is really "others just assume they work as advertised"

Going to dump the batteries, probably tonight, and do a full charge from grid from 10% SOC.

I had another thought. We have only been focussing on the battery charging aspect, ie the charge taken in from 10% to 100% SOC. Thats impossible to perfectly demonstrate since I have some house baseload, and the SOLAX monitoring is 5 minute intervals and seems to be spot values as opposed to average values.

So I am going to do a full charge. But realised if I isolate the solar, I can do a full discharge as well. IE I can allow the batteries only to power the house. With no PV then the total yield will display what the batteries delivered to the house.
Need to find a day with good late afternoon solar prediction. So I can run the batteries down from 100% during the day, but have a chance of topping some decent amounts back up from PV after that has been completed.

I realised I missed a trick. I get on pretty well with the spark who keeps coming round. I should have asked him if he will do some solar himself, I suspect he would from conversation.
Darn it.
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Must dig around my logs again, but I am reasonably sure that what our Inverter logs show as "Daily ..." are tallies. I've got these:
  1. Daily Charging Energy(kWh)
  2. Daily Consumption(kWh)
  3. Daily Discharging Energy(kWh)
  4. Daily Energy Purchased(kWh)
  5. Daily Grid Feed-in(kWh)
  6. Daily PV-1 Power Generation(kWh)
  7. Daily PV-2 Power Generation(kWh)
  8. Daily PV-3 Power Generation(kWh)
  9. Daily PV-4 Power Generation(kwh)
  10. Daily PV-5 Power Generation(kwh)
  11. Daily PV-6 Power Generation(kwh)
  12. Daily Production (Active)(kWh)
I will see, but I suspect that seeing whether - for example - Daily Energy Purchased(kWh) agrees with Octopus should be easy enough.

Obviously, your inverter may do things differently.
 
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Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
I had another thought. We have only been focussing on the battery charging aspect, ie the charge taken in from 10% to 100% SOC. Thats impossible to perfectly demonstrate since I have some house baseload, and the SOLAX monitoring is 5 minute intervals and seems to be spot values as opposed to average values.
Click to expand...

You know if you switch to the local mode on the app and flip to the data dat in grid you get the total consumed grid power (for the life of the inverter) at the point of refresh. The data then is live and not limited by the 5 min delay rubbish :) You can query that via rest as well but the decoding is a bit of a pain!
 
KompuKare said:
Must dig around my logs again, but I am reasonably sure that what our Inverter logs show as "Daily ..." are tallies. I've got these:
  1. Daily Charging Energy(kWh)
  2. Daily Consumption(kWh)
  3. Daily Discharging Energy(kWh)
  4. Daily Energy Purchased(kWh)
  5. Daily Grid Feed-in(kWh)
  6. Daily PV-1 Power Generation(kWh)
  7. Daily PV-2 Power Generation(kWh)
  8. Daily PV-3 Power Generation(kWh)
  9. Daily PV-4 Power Generation(kwh)
  10. Daily PV-5 Power Generation(kwh)
  11. Daily PV-6 Power Generation(kwh)
  12. Daily Production (Active)(kWh)
I will see, but I suspect that seeing whether - for example - Daily Energy Purchased(kWh) agrees with Octopus should be easy enough.

Obviously, your inverter may do things differently.
Click to expand...

Problem with most Solax based stuff is its based on yield. Where yield is assumed to be generated by solar.
It doesnt include the negative impact from grid charging. Rather annoying.
So if I add 5kwh to my batteries and then discharge the daily yield will be 5, rather than -5 +5 = 0

Hence why if I wanted to see true battery to house, I would need to isolate PV so it doesn't generate anything.
Draining batteries from 100% SOC to 10% minimum and seeing the yield would give me a good idea of real world usable again, rather than theoretical.
The only time I had truly shocking PV was a few days after install, when I got something like 0.3kwh PV, and total yield of something like 8.7kwh. Which was when I went huh!? Useable storage is supposed to be 11kwh!

Thurs looks iffy right now. I probably need to head into work for the morning, which would work, since batteries would last until early/mid afternoon.
I could then take a load of screen shots of the yield etc and then switch the PV back on with a hope of grabbing enough to get me close to my charging period.
The afternoon whilst not great looking, is maybe ok later on. I have west facing PV so the timings works.
 
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