Technical Support

Hi,

We are in the UK. We have a new system with 13x360W solar panels and a 3.6kW sunsynk inverter and 2x5kW Sunsynk batteries. We have had lots of problems with the initial set up (the CT clamp was round the wrong way despite everyone saying it was not). That is now all corrected and it is running sort of OK but I think our settings are not right.

We want to run the house on solar during the day, filling the battery up from the excess and when that is full we have an iBoost that should switch on to heat the water (currently we are not using this as it seems to switch on randomly overnight saying it is being powered by solar) and once all this is done, we want the excess electricity from the solar panels to start to be sold back to the grid.

We have economy 7 energy so in the winter we will want to buy cheaper energy at night to top up the battery but we seem to be making more than enough energy to fill the batteries currently so this is not needed yet.

However, this morning, before the sun came up our battery began topping up from the mains (and also our iboost randomly turned on). Our battery already had 35% charge but it charged from the grid constantly between 5:30am and 9:00am despite me thinking the settings were such that we should not pull from the grid to charge the battery in the day time. I have also seen several times over the last few evenings when the battery is quite full but we seem to be pulling energy from the grid rather than using the stored energy in the batteries, even though the consumption is pretty low so should not demand more than the battery can provide.

Our current system mode settings are:

- Zero Export work mode (not sure about what this means but our installer says it fits the pattern of use I describe above - can anyone explain??)

- Solar export is enabled

- Use timer

- Max Sell Power: 3600

- Energy Pattern - Priority Battery (again no idea if this is what we need here or whether we need priority load instead - if anyone can point me to a clear explanation for this I would be grateful)

- Grid Trickle Feed: 20

- Grid Charge (only Time 1 is selected all other times are off)

- Time 1 is: 2:30

- Power: 3600

- Battery SOC1 - 20

- Time 2 is: 6:00

- Power: 3600

- Battery SOC1 - 20

- Time 3 is: 9:00

- Power: 3600

- Battery SOC1 - 20

- Time 4 is: 13:00

- Power: 3600

- Battery SOC1 - 20

- Time 5 is: 17:00

- Power: 3600

- Battery SOC1 - 20

- Time 6 is: 21:00

- Power: 3600

- Battery SOC1 - 20

All the other times are also set to Battery Soc1 - 20 but grid charge is not selected for these time frames.

I thought the battery should only charge from mains on these settings between 2:30am and 6:00am, but this does not appear to be the case.

Can anyone advise whether these settings seem right for the use pattern I describe and whether they can suggest any reason why the inverter might be filling a battery showing SOC1 as 35% from the mains at 5:00am or why in the evening we might, at times be drawing 70 - 200watts from mains, rather than using the battery, even when there is plenty of charge in the battery (60+%)??

Our inverter is in the loft so we have been adjusting the settings using the logger app on the PC or android app (even though that has been down today and if I currently try to change any settings in the app I get a message saying command send failure).

Any support, or just directions towards clear instructions or advice for novices, would be really gratefully received.

Best Wishes,

Emma & Yoshi