New to Solar - Nicer Weather & holiday around the corner
Hi all,
Realtively new to the solar world after a 9 panel system was installed with 3.6kwh inverter and 5.12kwh battery in mid January.
System is as installed other than changing the SOC settings to allow the battery to go below 35% as thought having over a third of the battery as unusual seemed excessive. I've set a lower limit as 15% although believe I have read that the battery can safely in theory go to 0%. Battery is inside home so no worry around cold outside temperatures.
Recently I have noticed when there is good solar, the battery has capacity but the system is sending some energy to the grid rather than all to battery. My installer has recently changed a setting to allow export and priority load (which I don't understand) and it got me wondering if this is the optimum setup but also whether there is anything else I should be thinking of?
I'm on a standard tariff with no cheap overnight electricity, so no overnight charge at this stage but will look at this is future.
Happy with the system overall and even in winter the system had days that were sufficient for our needs and charging the battery for later use which we love.
Great to hear any replies and advice from a non technical person :)
Thanks all.
Concur with Steve’s thoughts on DOD.
On PV charging, when you get up to >70% SOC, the battery management system (BMS) will throttle the charge current back to around 20A, sometimes 10 A. This is to best charge the 16 cells & balance them out. As a result, excess PV will be exported.
Solar export does what it says. Priority load sends PV to house in preference to battery - must admit I don’t see much difference in behaviour to priority battery except when SOC is below its target.
Hope that helps.