Solar PV Hints, Tips & Troubleshooting

I have been recommended switching to 100mA a few times too. Will this cause lesser faults go unnoticed or will the inverter decide when it's going to trip anyway?

You cant seem to get a 100mA rcbo either

At the risk of sounding evasive, nobody can really answer that question, there are too many variables.

To expand a little, the 400W panel will indeed deliver 400 watts if the sun is shining directly on the panel. So if your panels were facing due south and sloped to the sun, you would get your 400 watts at noon. Course at 10am, when the sun is hitting on the panel at an angle, you won't get 400 watts.

Coupled to that, counter-intuitively, the hotter the panel, the less efficient it is. The 400watts is at 25C. With the sun beating down on the panel, and them invariably being black, the panel might be 60C and will perform much worse (20-30% off what it would at 25C). Ironically the most efficient days are cold sunny winter days even though the days are short. I highlighted efficient as I mean in panel efficiency, not production. Winter days are short and while summer days the panels might be less efficient, it's more than made up for by the long daylight.

Leaving a gap is often mentioned yeah. Loads of articles up there on the web, and here's one for you to read.

Effect of Temperature on Solar Panel Efficiency | Greentumble

In reality though, while the effect is there.....the main thing is to just have enough panels on the roof.

My supplier does cheap electric between 0030 and 0430. So between those hours. A few pics would be appreciated.

I configured the US2000C to be the first battery in the array but didn't have any problems adding it in. Will take a few pictures and add them in

Thanks Jonathan, inky read that last night before bedtime.

Solis running away this morning,but battery (master battery flashing red on indicator) maybe it's a batteries issue. I have contacted both solis and have installing sending someone today so fingers crossed.

Cheers

Update guys

Solis invertor could not receive battery voltage (fault within the Solis) checked both batteries after resetting them and both read approx 53 volts

Solis screen read 0.000v from batteries

New invertor in and working again.

Note for anyone replacing solis inverter- it took at least 30mins for battery cells to settle out. The solis invertor exporting for a while until it settled down..

Great response from installer - less than 12 hrs from when I text last night

Well done 👍👍

And tks for the help in the forum

Can't argue with that response.

If anything the house will sell quicker and at a higher price with panels.

I'd skip the windows completely (or put 2 small ones close to the edge) since you need 50cm clearance from side and bottom part of the roof (if going for grant)

The decision is simple, more power or more light which you can also achieve with one of those fake sky lights on the inside which can be powered for free from your extra panels 😉

Since things have gone quiet I'll ask a question. Does anyone ever see an occasional rogue kWh be imported from the grid. Every day I export 5 to 15kwh and an odd day I'll see imported 1kwh which bugs me. I have a battery and I thought it might be when I use my oven but tried it today and seems not to be the case. Happened during daylight hours so and there's no real over loading of the system. Curious to see if anyone sees similar :)

I have noticed my Solis inverter draws from the grid for a minute or so just as the batteries hit 99-100%, today the inverter showed 800 watts being imported even though the batteries were full and there was 3.5kw being generated, I checked my old meter which goes both directions and it was going forwards for that time. Luckily where my system is I can check it as it's only in the lobby beside me where the meter is. I also noticed a few other discrepancies like the base load is 150 watts but battery shows draw of nearly 100+ watts more on the inverter screen.

I also can see the fluctuations when you turn medium or heavy loads on, it's as if everything is trying to figure out what's happening and draw and push power until figured out to each other from a few seconds to maybe 20+ seconds and then settle down.

I'm at 1.3kwh imported this month and that pissed me off