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Hello, new to the forum and to home storage batteries. Have had PVs since 2012. However there appears to be no easily understood advice about operating home storage battery systems. Are there any simple to understand publications or instruction data, in plain English, that explains much of the terminology used…….no idea where to start!
thanks in anticipation.
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Hi
If you can tell what make and model you have installed it will help.
I don’t know if you have access to any data from the system via an app but that is often the most useful thing.
I have a LuxPower system and can see how the solar, batteries and grid interact to power our demand. (Image below).
In fact, most systems are generally set up to look after themselves but if you want to modify the operation, you need to know how to change the settings. If you look at my graph, you can see that I am currently topping up my batteries early in the morning to cope with breakfast before and solar kicks in.
Anyway, feel free to ask more. I know lots of others here are more knowledgeable than I am.
There’s also other threads on this too.
The best general overview I found was here https://www.cse.org.uk/advice/renewable-energy/battery-storage
but it’s not complete as to varying use
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Thank you very much for your response.
We had SolaX batteries and inverter retro fitted to our solar array, in April this year. The system has been working well since installation, and as you say looks after itself in the main. We have the app which shows the state of charge of the batteries but I'm mystified by much of the other terminology provided and what it is actually telling us. Unfortunately the company who installed the system, although they did a good job, are a smallish family business who have been in huge demand fitting systems owing to the rising financial cost of energy supply, and do not have the time to respond to many of the questions we have, hence the need to find information elsewhere.
With winter now approaching, and with the threat of power cuts looming, apparently, we need to understand more about how to control the system manually. For example, we have a mini-treatment plant for sewage on site which runs 24/7 having a compressor operating the aeration of the tank. This uses energy overnight and obviously depletes the batteries until Solar kicks in the following day. During the six months the system has been installed, given the long hot summer we have had, this hasn't been an issue, but with the shorter days we now have we need to begin looking at a different charging regime, possibly using, if possible, a split tariff for cheaper overnight power to top up the batteries, etc. Knowing how to change the charging criteria for this would be a good place to begin, but even understanding what the app is telling us would be a useful place to start.
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I don’t know how the SolaX system operates unfortunately so it’s a little difficult but on my own system, along with the graphics on use (after the event of course) there are setting options which allow different charging characteristics and forced charge time periods.
I get to mine via a menu item (see ‘Set’) below
And then can adjust charging and other elements BUT be careful as a wrong setting can have unintended consequences. If there’s anyone with a similar system, that might be your best option
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Thanks again for your help. Our system has nothing like this unfortunately although my wife seems to think that access might be gained to something similar with an access code. Trying to ascertain how to obtain the code.
Thank you for sending the video which I had seen previously but isn't of much help as their system has been updated since this was produced and it's not now the same.
I'm struggling to understand the following terms as they appear on the app as I’ve no idea what they actually mean in the context of what I’m looking at on a daily basis:
Yield
PV Power (W)
AC Power (on grid)(W)
Load Power ((W)
Grid Power (W)
EPS Power (off grid(VA)
Battery Power
Battery SOC (%) - that's the easy one -battery state of charge.
In terms of the daily graph readout I'm unsure what “self use” and "consumed” refers to. In some respects this could be the same thing!
Sorry if this is simple to you.
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…
Yield - output achieved from panels (efficiency)
PV Power (W) - latest output from the panels
AC Power (on grid)(W) -
Load Power ((W) - power used by the property
Grid Power (W) - power input (or exported) to/from the grid (external power)
EPS Power (off grid(VA) - Emergency Power Supply (when there’s a power cut)
Battery Power - power used from battery
Battery SOC (%) - that's the easy one -battery state of charge.
In terms of the daily graph readout I'm unsure what “self use” and "consumed” refers to. In some respects this could be the same thing!
Can you post a picture of this to double check.
Self use is probably energy use from that produced from the panels
Consumed will refer to power taken from the grid
Sorry if this is simple to you. No problem
Also take a look at https://www.solaxpower.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/SolaX-Cloud-User-Guide.pdf
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Another video tutorial
Note the default log in details provided for the system too
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Hi, apologies it's been a few days to come back.
Thank you for providing explanations to the terminology I posted. First, we have no data on yield because our battery system was retro fitted to our panels so the battery app does not measure anything in respect of what the panels generate. Same applies to PV power - no data. It's always been frustrating that we are unable to know exactly what percentage of the power we generate from our PVs goes off to the grid and how much is used by the property.
My big issue is with the terms “self use” and “consumed” . My simple logic says that “consumed” refers to the total amount of energy used by the house on any particular day, pulled in from the grid and the batteries. However, the bar chart in the app divides this into green representing “self use”, ie in my definition, power used from the batteries, and orange, energy used from the grid, but that is defined as “consumed”. This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Afraid I don't know how to post a picture of this.
Regards,
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So it looks like green represents the power used from your PV panels/batteries, yellow is the feed back to the grid and orange the power taken from the grid.
They also indicate a bar chart guide which gives similar info
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Yes, thanks, we have the green and orange but no yellow as our system doesn't show what has been exported, nor are the colours explained as simply as yours.
As most of this kit comes from China, the technical and operations manuals leave a lot to be desired in terms of explaining how to use it or interpret the results. Far too much jargon for the ordinary consumer to figure out what is going on and what it all means. E.g. it appears that the firmware for the inverter needs updating from time to time. How and when that is meant to occur is anyone’s guess, as is the instructions on how to do this. Reference is made to a U drive, presumably this means USB, but again is unclear, or where to go to find the upgrades. These systems are not cheap yet the UK suppliers don't seem to want to spend any time re-drafting the manuals into plain language.
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