Balcony solar PV

[Tay]

Glad to read that you are getting it done,great result! There is a software on/off.button rather than physical one.. congrats!

Literally just found it as I was reading this...the unit was sitting on a solid Red lamp.. Seems if its on already and you power on the device you have to reset the 'virtual' switch to make it do stuff. Or perhaps a software anomaly.

Annoyingly the OS X instance of the IOS app isnt great...seems to do kinda whatever it wants but the native IOS app does work...almost no pwr from the grid now and everything seems good. Unit is floating around the 29.5 deg C mark with 2x295w supplying the PV.

So far so good, took a few on and off's but seems to be good now...







edit: Temp of the unit has crept up to 32.1 Degs C - Interestingly the 'Power_Adj' feature doesnt seem to make a blind bit of difference.
edit1: Grid power use starting to increase as PV drops, also didnt see any temps go above 34.5DegC, I suspect if you were pumping the full 1200w's in.out of this devices you would most certainly need active cooling. The most I had was around the 350w mark and saw temps approaching 35DegC. If the conversion rates on the device are to believed then the efficiency is in the low 90%'s which is pretty good I guess.

[Joeboy]

If memory serves I had 1 400W panel hooked up outputting 350W or so on the WMC 1600W. Temp displayed was 62 deg or similar. If I was mounted indoors defo airholes in front casing and underpowered. I've read online that this can do the trick for longevity.

Did you get a better peak output today?

[Tay]

If memory serves I had 1 400W panel hooked up outputting 350W or so on the WMC 1600W. Temp displayed was 62 deg or similar. If I was mounted indoors defo airholes in front casing and underpowered. I've read online that this can do the trick for longevity.

Did you get a better peak output today?

So so, I expected more but it was getting on in the day, 350 is the most I saw from the 295's combined.. I was getting 450 on the Bluetti earlier so waited until that was at 100% battery before testing this MicroInverter

[Tay]

If memory serves I had 1 400W panel hooked up outputting 350W or so on the WMC 1600W. Temp displayed was 62 deg or similar. If I was mounted indoors defo airholes in front casing and underpowered. I've read online that this can do the trick for longevity.

Did you get a better peak output today?

The air temp was around 23 today so perhaps that helped the cooling. I was only using 2 of the 4 inputs, my portable test panels just dont output enough to trigger the unit . I saw no more than 350 PV today on the unit and temps were around the 34.5 ish level. Obviously, still 2 more MC4 inputs.

I would defo use active cooling if I were to use this long term with 4 panels, for no other reason that I hate to see electronics gear get hot. Cheap gear doesnt need any help blowing up so anything I can do to keep it cool is fine by me.

Mine is suggesting 4 x 375w, so I was way under spec with my 2 x 295w's and I'm ok with that.



It still feels a little fly by night ish, but clearly it works and previous charts have shown that.

The lack of a AC cable on something that clearly needs an AC cable seems a bit daft, you get the link cable but thats no use to man nor beast, a quick chopping of the cable + junction box joining to a more reasonable cable and UK plug did the job but I dont see many folks having the patience to do that.

What I will say is that its a forgone conclusion that we'll have panels on whatever dodgy roof we have Defo South facing and West facing before the year is out. Whilst the battery system and inverter have been fun to play with the rough and ready nature is growing tiresome and I just want something that is a tad more static and less cowboy'ish

[Tay]

Pic 1
1. My baseline with the Fridge and Freeze idling.
2. Fridge and/or Freezer motors kicking in
3. 295w panel kicking in, it spent quite a while perhaps 1-2 mins synching before I could see any discernable difference in power usage
4. This was the best it got, my house excluding my office which is now offgrid during the day - Saw roughly a 60-70w reduction of grid power, my metering is taken of the mains before the Smart Meter.
5. Wife buggered it all up turning the TV on !!!

Your TV takes 100W?!!
Plasma, CRT..?
My (not particularly new LED) TV takes about 20W.

That probably includes the sky box too, its a rather dated backlit LED.

Currently drawing 142.91w..Although it does include the Sky box, Vodafone Router, a gig switch. The latter maybe using 10-20w between them. So, yeah 90-100w. somewhat annoying when my entire office (Mac Studio + assorted storage, Synology NAS 5 bay, firewall, unRAID server, 24 port gig switch and a 7TB backup drive attached to the NAS) uses <220w

[Joeboy]

Mail in from China to say mosfets & fuses are on their way for wmc 1600. Just got to work.out what a mosfet is, how to test it and can I still solder......

[Bugtownboy]

Mosfets - bit like a roundtuit, Joe. It’s the bits you’re left with so it mosfet here.


Sorry


Seriously - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET

[Joeboy]

Mosfets - bit like a roundtuit, Joe. It’s the bits you’re left with so it mosfet here.


Sorry


Seriously - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET

BOOM BOOM!

[Joeboy]

That's us back from Italy. Checked No1's meter counts and they are 07218 & 50399.
This means we used a total of 3kWh grid power across the 4 days or 0.75kWh per day to run his fridge & freezer. That's down from a combined average of 1.34kWh's at previous check. No decimal points on the meters so can't refine it anymore for accuracy and let's face it, the data sets not exactly deep! I'm happy as down is down and it can only play out to his advantage.

Got the app up and running so I can see the magnificence. Very happy!


Looked further into the region lock and it is indeed the case. This below from Hoymiles own DIY account creation video.



If anyone else wants to try this unit out they'd have to either try through a VPN and hope the software isn't stacked to check for VPN and knock it back or ask for the German supplier to register on the app with a name and password of your choice in Germany then send it.

I'm understandably not going to mess about trialing VPN's now I am up and running but i'd say the request to German supplier for name & password would be the best avenue.

I'm away to prep the wall with a couple of hangers for getting panel two up on the wall tomorrow morning. it is shaded by the porch at the moment and the difference in a little shading is quite apparent.

A couple from the software & weather.

[nowty]

It gives you power info on each input ?, thats neat.