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Third party power/battery manager

Posted: Fri Jul 12, 2024 12:47 pm
by pet_griffin
Hi
We moved into our current home about 18 months ago and inherited a 4 kW PV system with a Solax SK-SU3700 inverter and 2 * 4.7 kWh Pylon Extra2000 batteries. The system was installed in 2015 by Solar Dawn, who went into administration 2 years later, so it is not maintained. I have tried (unsuccessfully) to register the system with Solax so have no way of monitoring it, apart from a home-grown Python script that scrapes the inverter web interface intermittently and extracts the current/daily/total power gen - AFAIK the inverter does not expose any info about the battery status etc.
We also have a myEnergi Zappi car charger and I noticed the other evening that we were drawing 3.6 kW from the grid while cooking supper. I checked the LED on the inverter and the battery was 95% full, so don’t understand why we were using power from the grid instead of power from the battery. We are a completely electric home (heating, cooking, hot water etc.) so I would like more control over power usage to try to minimise electricity charges. Are there any third party battery/power managers available for consumers that people could recommend? Or do we need to start from scratch with a “modern” battery/inverter system? Many thanks!

Re: Third party power/battery manager

Posted: Fri Jul 12, 2024 1:39 pm
by Fintray
Welcome to the forum, hopefully someone will be along to offer some advice on your system.

Re: Third party power/battery manager

Posted: Sat Jul 13, 2024 9:22 am
by AGT
If you have the Zappi, you should look at the other products they offer, as Harvey, Eddii they all integrate with each other for a solution to utilise power efficiently.

Re: Third party power/battery manager

Posted: Sat Jul 13, 2024 11:46 am
by Countrypaul
Since your system was installed in 2015, are is it a FITS system - if so changng things may cause problems maintaining the FITS eligibility.

I would agree with AGT if you are looking at a solar diverter and have a Zappi the Eddi would certainly be the first to consider.

Your batteries are likely quite old, have you read this thread as it might give you some more information: https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=704

Re: Third party power/battery manager

Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2024 9:38 am
by pet_griffin
Thanks for the various comments. Have been considering an Eddi but need to get my head around how it works. We have a three phase supply from the grid and the distribution board is a dog's dinner so need to balance the loads in our house across the various phases and fit an Eddi once we have done that. Will also take a look at the Pylontech manual