Crossy

Citi/UOB and AmEx credit card.

I got the AmEx card back in 2012, at the time they didn't need a WP, no idea if it's now a requirement.

Yup ^^^.

It took me a few minutes to actually find it, but it does seem to work.

Click on the 3 dots to the left of your username top right (not the ones far right of the chat window).

Select "Skype Dial Pad" from the drop down. It only appears if you have active credit or a live subscription.

Easy peasy, the destructions that came with the email are carp!

Why not set up the mountings for 10 panels but install 9?

Then if you are confident you can just slide in another panel in future.

I'm sure we would be OK with 11 panel strings of our lower Voc panels, But there's nowhere to put them anyway. 

This is the voltage of one of the long strings on startup in the morning.

You can see the MPPT trying to start as the voltage rises but with no power available, max voltage is about 424V then it actually manages to start making power and pulls the voltage down to 260-270V which is the max-power point at this time.

It's this time of day where the greatest risk to the MPPT maximum input voltage occurs. This is a major issue for those in the "cooler" parts of the world as Voc rises by about 0.4% per degree C below 25C (where it is specified). Even in Thailand a chilly, 15C, morning would raise Voc by 4%.

As an aid to prediction how about solcast?

You'll still need some form of real-time power monitoring to control your loads mind.

34 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

What is the highest Voc voltage on any of your strings?

Do you keep the Vmp right under the 425 max?

Panels are 340W, Voc = 46.3V, Vmp = 38.7V

Longest strings (2) are 10 panels so Voc = 463V, inverter spec. is 500V max. In reality they never get anywhere near that even on a "cool" morning.

Vmp of these strings is 387V, the MPPT range is 150-425 (max power is 300-425), but once again they tend to run well below that.

Snapshot just now, nowhere near max power generation this late in the day, trees and house get in the way 😞 

So, we have a total of 28.8kWp spread over the three areas.

I've still got 2 x 540W and 1 x 340W panels spare.

Where to get them in ...

12 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

Lightning 🌩 strike directly to any of your equipment or nearby and the EMP cause the havoc?

Did the fault happen Sunday and you just noticed it Monday?

Having this kind of "Spanish" moment is what I fear the most of being an independent power generator. 

At least with the grid, you know it is someone else's headache to fix it.

Strike was a tree about 30m from the arrays. This is the closest strike we've had since 2012 when we took a direct hit to the house!

We noticed the RS-485 issue straight away, but the upset MPPTs only made themselves felt on Monday coz it went dark on Sunday.

Keeping a grid connection for backup is cheap insurance.

Yeah, the PC lives 🙂 

Numbers for April.

Of course the bloody thing has started itching now I've shared it.

Doc on Friday I think.

1 minute ago, KhunLA said:

Oh yea, clean under that nail 

Yeah, I spotted that after I'd posted. Been doing "oily" stuff today 

OK, this chap is in the most inaccessible spot on the human body.

It feels massive but when photographed ...

Finger for scale, anything to worry about??

Yeah, the RS-485 to the packs has a long, currently unprotected, lead to a PC.

I'll put money on that being the ingress point for the nasties as it was that RS-485 dongle that died 😞 

RS-485 surge arrestor on order 🙂 

Carrying on from the flash-n-bang on Sunday.

Fear!!!

Monday came around and it was obvious something was awry.

The Master inverter was banging along at 4kW or so, but all three Slaves were doing very odd things with their MPPTs. They seemed to be constantly re-scanning, the impact on production was massive.

I checked the wiring and voltages, and verified that the surge-arrestors hadn't triggered (took them out).

A power cycle of the slaves and then the whole system yielded zero improvement.

Terror!!!!

Suddenly! All output went off!! The inverters were all running but were displaying "OFF".

Looking at Solar Assistant showed that the Remote Switch option was set to OFF.

Tried to change the state without success, other parameters changed but not that one!

I'm facing a bricked system!!

I actually put the Deye dongles back on and tried to turn the inverters on via Deye Cloud. No joy.

In desperation I did a factory reset on the Master and got the beast to come to life in stand-alone mode.

Happy. At least we were able to carry local load.

Then.

Turned on comms to the slaves, 30 seconds later, "clunk", the master goes to OFF.

OK back to stand-alone.

Factory reset the slaves and set their RS485 addresses.

Relief!!!!!

Set the master to parallel and held my breath.

It didn't go off.

Turned on the load breakers and everthing started working much to my relief.

I had a very relieved beer!!

Of course, Brain of Britain here hadn't made a backup of the system settings, so I'm still messing around getting it right again, and making a backup!

Evidently something got corrupted in the slaves but exactly what I have no idea.

Pretty certain that's non-structural, your builder should advise the best filler, it will be cosmetic only.

It will be fine until the next quake

We just had a major (but short) storm, heavy rain and very strong wind (there was apparently hail just up the road).

Nothing solar or car port moved!!

However.

I was sitting at my computer when a tree about 20m away got hit!! Flipping great bang! Scared the willies out of me! I needed a beer

The inverters flipped to grid and reset but no damage and everything came back online after a minute or so.

Meanwhile, my step-son who had been on the carport roof when the rain started decided that he wasn't going back up there today. I can't imagine why

EDIT Turns out we fried one of the RS485 to USB dongles that connect to the Pi. Had a spare in the bits box 🙂 

20 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

My 2 cents.  Just because you don't have vermin today doesn't mean you never will.  For $175 USD, (6K Baht) I'd pull that trigger.  And not worry about that rustling sound in the attic later.

 

Edit:  That's after checking the ampacity in conduit and being sure that's not going to cause an unintended consequence.  If you need to upsize the wire, that may blow the budget.  Sadly, all my ampacity charts are based on the NFPA published NEC and AWG wire.  (Yank stuff)  Not metric.  I'm sure someone here has an mm2 chart.

https://www.doncastercables.com/technical-help/

Is the light directly connected to the switch?

if so, maybe move the light wire to the other side of the switch?

Time to start sketching out the circuit.

One problem is that you are unlikely to find anything DIY fixable in there.

Since the easy fix (the switch) is OK, I might be tempted just to add another switch to turn off the light and have done with it.

15 hours ago, carlyai said:

Switch seems to be OK, so now to pull out the guts in the tube and have a look at the battery and controller. Unfortunately I have to unsolder and remove all the plugs etc to remove it all from the other end. Pain.

Take lots of photos before dismembering anything!!

1 minute ago, Gottfrid said:

You´re not alone! It´s a wonderful, wonderful life.......

Definitely, although I do miss the chilled pool that our condo in KL had, the locals hated it, too cold!