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No problem 👍

Hi, check the text comment at 51 seconds in the video where I mention that in real world conditions, 13 panels would normally be possible per string. If you have 14 panels on a string then with 550V max input voltage with PW3 on each MPPT, you are almost certain to have start-up problems on colder mornings from over voltage. e.g. a typical 440W panel has a Voc of just under 40V, so 14 x 40V = 560V and when allowing for increased voltage on cold mornings, it's likely to get to about 600V. Obviously will depend on the exact electrical characteristics of your panels but I'd say you have 1 panel too many per string. Here's a link to a handy calculator... gold-coast-solar-power-solutions.com.au/posts/solar-panel-maximum-voltage-calculator/

Should also have added that your installer may not have done 2 x strings of 14, they may have in fact used the PW3 high input current capability to parallel two strings together, so 14 panels, can with a very simple join at the roof be made into 2 parallel strings of 7. If they have done that then you should be able to see it in the reporting app as current for that MPPT will be something like 24A instead of 12A.

Try this... www.sigenergy.com/en/products/gateway

My bad. You already made videos on both of these 😅

I'm envious. We are still waiting for our electricity retailer Synergy to sign off on the 5kW 1ph model for ESM (shutdowns). I would love to see some pics of your install if you wish to email them to andrew@solar4ever.com.au ?

@@solar4ever843 will send photos Thursday

Unfortunately Western Power don't allow that. If you have single phase you can only install a 5kW solar inverter; you can't install a 10kW or 2 x 5kW and throttle it to 5kW. I made a suggestion in my reply to @justice1902 about how we can go about asking for this rule to be changed. If you upgrade your house to three phase power at a typical cost of $3,000 then you can have 15kW of inverter capacity and up to 30kW of panels with some inverters.

@@solar4ever843 Does that mean in Perth we're not allowed to install two or more PW3s today (single phase), until the DC expansion packs come out to ensure only a single 5kW inverter in the solution?

Correct. The battery expansion packs don't include an inverter so when they come out you can expand storage to 27kWh. However, word of warning...if you hope to charge a 27kWh battery from a 5kW solar install, with no help from the grid, then even with big oversizing (e.g. 10kW+) of panels, you will likely have many Winter days when that isn't remotely possible.

@@solar4ever843 Ok thanks. Yes understood, have done my calendar month modelling throughout the seasons. Planning circa 12-13kW of panels (smaller now as only have 3 MPPTs to play with on difficult roof) so in June will do circa 25kWh of production (average) which won't both fill up 27kWh of batteries and power the home during the day. As such I'll draw cheap TOU plan from the grid during 9am-3pm to ensure batteries are filled to max all year round at 3pm. 27kWh will cover me for full 3pm-9am time window through the year (thereabouts). On the right track? Any point waiting for expansion packs to do the full install (cheaper labour?) or best use this years STCs and add expansion pack next year?

Sounds right to me. My crystal ball isn't working, so can't predict expansion pack time frame, cost etc. Basic rule of thumb though is that anything solar that requires an extra call out is $300 for the call out/first hour. After that it drops down to about $200 per hour + materials.

You will need to check with your solar companies there, but I believe all of Australia except WA allows 10kW per phase.

My personal opinion is that it is unlikely. I don't think Tesla will make a 3 phase version because it wouldn't be used in their home market. However, I would be delighted to be wrong.

It's not the solar panels that are restricted in WA, it's the inverter capacity. Tesla PW3 has a 5kW and 10kW model (and possibly an 11kW model but I don't think that will be allowed anywhere in Australia). In WA we will only be allowed the 5kW version. However you can connect up to 20kW of panels to that 5kW inverter if you wish although it would be largely pointless to connect much more than 10kW.

Yes it is a lot, but most of that cost is the 13.5kWh battery. There are plenty of other products with smaller, expandable modular batteries that would come in at a lower price than Tesla Powerwall 3. Their 'one size fits all battery' is in my opinion, it's least attractive feature.

I suggest we all write to... nigel.wilmot@westernpower.com.au Principal Engineer, Distribution Grid Strategy and Planning, Grid Transformation Politely suggesting that the 5kW phase limit be scrapped and replaced with 10kW as per the rest of the country. We would, of course, be happy to export limit our larger installations to whatever protects the grid from voltage rise. Zero export is fine with me, seeing as we won't be paid a cent anyway under Synergy's DEBs feed in tariff >5kW rule.

I made a suggestion in my reply to @justice1902. Worth a try.

@@solar4ever843 too be honest though to carry 10kw id prolly need to rewire can our wires safely carry 40+ amps?

Yes, the inverter would need to be wired up as 63A if you were allowed 10kW. We do that cable upgrade to 63A for 5kW 1ph inverters that have backup built-in if the client wants to be able to charge their battery from the grid...e.g. Sungrow SH5.0RS. Cost is distance related because of the hefty AC cable needed, but typically about $700.

@@solar4ever843 is 5kw limitation for the pw3 a software limited, ie same pw3 unit as the 10kw? May be possible to unlock later if the limit is changed.

Great question. I am very interested to see how Tesla have gone to the CEC for approval. If they have applied for a 10kW model only, with software crippling to 5kW then Western Power won't allow it to be installed on their network. However, if Tesla apply for it as factory crippled to 5kW with no possibility to uncripple it by users/installers, only by Tesla if there's a rule change, then Western Power will allow that.

Most panels these days output a max of 14-15A under optimum solar conditions and the TP3 can take up to 26A per MPPT, so if people are ok with losing a bit of power (clipping off) only when solar conditions are great, then each MPPT can take 2 x strings in parallel, so 6 strings in total.

Single phase 5kW is now CEC and Western Power approved, but not Synergy approved for EMS (Emergency Solar Management) yet. That will likely take a few months whilst Synergy work with Sigenergy to prove they can shut down the inverter. Therefore, until it's working there will be no DEBs feed in payment and the inverter will be export limited to 1.5kW...in other words treated exactly the same as >5kW inverters in WA.

@@solar4ever843 Seriously considering going totally off grid with diesel generator plugged in.

In that case, yes, Sigenergy with their enhanced Homemax Gateway box which takes a generator input (and more) is the better choice for you.

iStore has an OEM agreement with Huawei for Australia and New Zealand so selected Huawei products are sold under the iStore brand. Prices are similar I imagine.

No problem

Pricing is pretty competitive with the usual suspects...Sungrow, iStore/Huawei etc Parallel batteries, which iStore have as well, really is the best way to go. Cell balancing is important and it's so much harder to do it with series connected batteries. There's been plenty of training provided by Sigenergy plus installer accreditation courses so it bodes well. Their support is local not overseas but of course, not sure how good it will be or whether it will fully cover our 3 hours time difference from the East coast of Australia. We shall have to wait and see.

Backup has its own breaker. Usually we use the neutral position of a three way manual changeover switch for this. Backup supply from inverter/battery to one side, from grid to another side, and middle is neutral.

I‘ve got the same problem. I‘m guessing Solar.SOS is only for Businesses :-/ All I want is to activate the Modbus … which is „hidden“ behind the Technician account. Gonna have to ask the PV company that did the installation I guess, or does anyone know another trick?

I'm thinking of trying a password cracker like hydra. Might take forever tho

@@gregorycatellani2182 you are right... I wanted to set up digital outputs to connect the smart grid inputs of my heat pump. I asked my installer for the password. It is my right as customer to use the product I bought completely

Yes. however you have to consider whether a larger battery like 20kWh will get enough charge from a 5kW single phase solar install, especially over the winter months. Of course, with Time of Use tariffs like Midday Saver from Synergy you can supplement solar charging with off-peak grid battery charging.

@solar4ever843 that was my thought but I don't think there is any way around it in WA with 5kw inverter limit, why can't bigger inverter with export turned off be used

Yes, had an issue with the hosting company server but they fixed it, so all good now. Thanks

Glad you enjoyed it

Safety issues...? None whatsoever. Without the backup box the inverter will simply shut down under the usual 'anti-islanding' requirements. This will protect electrical workers and I can confirm that the Huawei inverters definitely do this, as do every other inverter I've ever worked with here in Australia. With the Huawei backup box installed, it 'islands' so that the selected backup circuits are provided with battery/solar power during the grid outage via a separate cable to the 'backup main switch' while the usual AC supply to/from the main switch is disconnected.

@solar4ever843 yeah that make sense and what I expected. speaking to the company that are due to do the install the state body seem to be excessively cautious. It doesn't seem to have been borne out by incidents but I haven't seen it myself. Hears hoping it gets sorted.

Just to clarify you are getting 3 x 3.68 L1 (not M1) single phase inverters, each with a 5kWh battery and backup box along with 9 x 505W panels? Strange way to do it instead of 1 x 10kW three phase inverter, 1 x 15kWh battery and so the only reason I can think of is the importance of backup to you. 3 x backup boxes 1 per phase with a 5kW potential for backup on each instead of the paltry 3.3kW on a single phase with the larger inverter. The 5kWh battery can only output max 2.5kW , so you will be getting 2.5kW (10A) from each box, per phase. Not enough to power an entire house but certainly ample for essential loads like lights, outlets, garage door etc. If you increased each battery to 10kWh then you would get 5kW (20A) power from each battery which would certainly be better, but of course, it would not backup anything in your home running on three phase. There is a new single phase backup box coming from Huawei called Smartguard. I have no experience with it yet but I don't think it will get around the battery output limit of 2.5kW that you will have.

Q2 is racing towards us without any signs of SolarEdge's DC charger's imminent arrival.

Very much old school, which I hugely appreciated, Sungrow had a substantial printed book of inverter datasheets as a give away. It included the, as yet to be released or CEC Approved, new 3 phase hybrid line-up. There was also talk of another larger battery that would work alongside the existing SBR.

Hi, thanks. Always good to hear things from the perspective of engineers. I'm sure people will appreciate your insight into the potential for inverter damage if they connect inappropriate loads (like motors) to the backup circuits. We always recommend lights and standard GPOs only with no heavy draw appliances connected.

Hi. If you Google "Solar4Ever Huawei Review" and go halfway down that webpage you'll see the Huawei B1 backup box open with the components inside. This is a little bit of a 'weird' box though as it is 3 phase going in from the inverter and out to the loads/boards whilst the grid is operating but when the grid fails this backup box only supports the backup circuits on a single phase. There are two wires connecting the backup box to the inverter for comms. (Connections are shown on a linked PDF document near the end of the review page described above).

That’s excellent information thanks very much. What I was trying to figure was, do you need communication between back up box in order to use capacity from battery if grid goes down. From what I gather it is just to control a simple relay. I have a trip board which I can switch off individual loads so I don’t need a backup box to prevent overload of Inverter. Do you think this set up would work? for some reason when I tried this first changing settings to off grid mode. The inverter stayed on but didn’t switch to outfeed any power from remaining battery.?

If there's only one battery, it is plugged into the 'Master' inverter and receives it's charge from the panels connected to the Master inverter. However, if the Slave has surplus power, the Master can use that surplus power to charge the battery. How it does that can be a little baffling to some people, but here goes... The surplus power from the Slave is detected by the consumption meter connected to the Master. This power is measured as it flows to the electricity meter. The Master simultaneously draws an equal amount of power from the grid to charge the battery. The electricity 'net' meter cancels out the export of the Slave and the import of the Master. In actual fact it is a bit more complex that that because this can still work even if the system is export limited so that in theory there would be no 'surplus' from the Slave as the Master can 'allow' the Slave to produce more power than the 'export limit' simply so it can do this power exchange. By the way, the practice of 'exchanging power with the grid' as described above is actually very mundane. Three phase inverters, with or without a battery, are doing it all the time.

The inverter will shut down. The backup box is primarily a safety device to protect line workers from being electrocuted. It's first job is to respond to the inverter detecting the frequency and voltage changes of a grid outage and shut down the normal solar supply to the house/switchboard/grid. The official term for this is 'anti-islanding'. In the video I show the solar AC cable coming from the inverter going into and then out of the backup box instead of it running directly from the inverter to the switchboard. This is so it can perform the shut-down. After it has done that shut-down, it then channels battery/solar power to the secondary backup cable that runs to the backup main switch and from there to power any loads on the backup circuits only. Without a backup box there is no safety device to protect line workers, so the inverter has to shut down. Having said that, there are inverters that can send power to an RCD protected 10A GPO usually installed by the inverter, during a blackout without any backup box. Fronius GEN24 inverters have this (called PV Point) and some of the earlier SMA inverters had this feature too. It simply means that the 'anti-islanding' hardware/firmware is built into the inverter to power whatever is plugged into that single outlet.

I'm sorry but this sounds like you need to get in touch with your supplier or the manufacturer help desk.

That depends on the inverter. Some three phase inverters provide backup across all three phases whereas others deliver backup only on one phase. Personally, for small 3 phase inverters (e.g. 5kW/6kW) I think backup delivered to one phase only makes a lot of sense, but for larger 10/15/25kW inverters full three phase backup is better. It's all to do with how three phase inverters evenly split their power output across the phases.

Yes, very common. The primary reason is to check if the system is working correctly. I have about 1,000 x Huawei, Fronius, Sungrow, Growatt, Goodwe etc systems that I can monitor but mostly I am responding to alarms that notify me when there's a problem. We can also upload firmware upgrades remotely. Recently I had a customer who had one of his strings of panels go down. The panels were all fitted with optimisers so I remotely re-booted the optimisers, and the system worked fine. So it's a lot more the accessing client data, and anyway...it's just solar data, probably the least interesting thing imaginable as it is so entirely predictable.

'Total Consumption' means exactly that. The sum of consumed power whether it comes from the grid, from the battery, the PV. Battery discharge is again, just that. If the battery is setup to discharge to loads and to the grid this line will simply show the sum of all discharge. "PV is charging battery"...why should there be a flow on to the grid? Depending on how the installation has been configured, it might say... Charge the battery with any available PV as a priority and then any surplus goes to loads in the house and grid or vice versa.

I'd be talking to the electrical distributor about meeting their legal obligations to provide power at the correct voltage. In Western Australia its 240V +/- 6% so no lower than 225.6V, but under AS3000:2018 it's 230V +10% or -6%, so 216V minimum, either way, 180V is far too low.

@@solar4ever843 in my eastern europe country they dont give a * about meeting their legal obligation, so it's up to us to get around them :). I've got similar voltage fluctuations, going from under 160V to over 255V for years. The only solution i got is to use voltage relays to protect my house from getting busted appliances. Now im speaking about the huawei m1 inverter + luna2000 batteries i have. They DO NOT work offgrid without a backup solution. Im owning a backupbox b1 from huawei and it's got a "minor" problem, in that it works as SINGLE phase only offgrid. So if power is out, inverter goes offgrid, all nice, but the backupbox will only provide 1 single phase of upto 3 kW even if you got a 8/10/12 kW 3 phase inverter. What i did is basically use synced 3p voltage relays to cut power to the backupbox and hence go offline while the grid power is outside the inverter supported range of 200-250V. Sadly, due to design of the box that only gives you single phase limited output i run into to a lot of issues like not being able to turn the all air conditioning on at 40 Celsius in the summer. Huawei is dead silent about their 3 phase backup solutions.

The inverter consumption meter, or smart meter. See this... solar4ever.com.au/Inverter_Smart_Meters.php