₦airaland Forum

Hello guys,

I have an barely used SRNE HESP Series 6kw Hybrid inverter for sale. The Inverter was initially purchased for my personal use but decided I needed more power and got a 8kw Hybrid inverter instead. The inverter was purchased directly from SRNE authorized distributor on April and on April 2024. I am used it for some weeks but has since been replaced.

The inverter came with a 5 years warranty and it is build using the double enclosure design (popularized by Deye) where the fan and heat sink are on the separate enclosure allowing the main enclosure to have an IP65 for water, moisture and dust.

The inverter comes with 2 up blowing fans and as such the thermals of the inverter has been very stable all through my use ie temperature never rose above 60C. I have attached a screenshot of the thermals from my use of the inverter as pulled from my monitoring dashboard.

The specs of the inverter include the following.

6kw rated output
2 x 4500w MPPT charge controller (120v-500v)
Support for Lithium battery connection via can port
You can read more about the specs here https://www.srnesolar.com/userfiles/files/2023/09/19/SRNE_HESP%20series_EU_48V_4%EF%BD%9E6kW_230V_Solar%20Storage%20Inverter_datasheet_1.5.pdf

Going price is 900,000

Sold

.

olopan:
I want to personally say thank you to members of this forum for always trusting us at Rendezvous Solar for their project installation.

There is always a different story for everyone and working to your standard has always been what keeps us going, knowing that we meet your satisfaction.

A recent project delivered all the way south Nigeria.

Neat job.

Mini review of Lifepo4 batteries from Selina of Shenzhen Deriy https://deriy.en.alibaba.com/?spm=a2756.trade-list-buyer.0.0.446c76e9yMKAWz&tracelog=from_orderlist_company .

Order Process
The order for 16 x Eve LF280K cells was placed sometimes December 2022, they were shipped out sometimes in January and I got delivery notification in march. I had no issue getting the batteries from the shipper. I ordered extra items like non polarized breakers, extra busbars and nuts, and a battery tester the EBC A40l Smart Battery tester. All items came delivered with the battery.

Physical Condition of the batteries
Battery came in pristine conditions, they looked brand new and no physical damage can be seen. The packages was well done. I settled for the dual terminal batteries, the only issues I had with this was the terminals were wielded in a way that makes it impossible to line the batteries close together in a build without shorting them. This was not a big deal for me though.

Testing
On getting the batteries, I carried out extensive capacity test to ensure they batteries gave the rated labeled capacity. For this I used the EBC A40L smart tester.

I connected the tester to the battery and connected my laptop to the tester, The tester application allows you to set charge and discharge parameter and you can see a graph of the voltage curve of the battery in real time as it charges.

I set the tester to discharge the battery to 2.6v (voltage of a fully discharged lifepo4 cell) and then immediately charge each cell to 3.65v, it would then cut of charging once the charge amps is at 7A. I logged the capacity of the battery once it got to 3.65v (The voltage of a fully charged Lifep04 cell) in all every battery cell was at 280+Ah (some at 284, the least was 282ah) once the voltage reached 3.65v, this means that the battery were the corrected labelled capacity.

Building into a bank
I assembled the batteries into a bank 16S to ad to an existing 16S 280AH Eve battery bank. So so good. Still early days but the cells are doing well. Each bank is attached to its own JK BMS

In all, I am a happy customer, Selina was very helpful especially her employee Colin, both of them speak good english and they were very communicative during the whole process.

FEGEITOK:
Instaneous production has hit 970 watts.

I have just 2 470 Jinko Panels.

Between 7 and 8 degrees tilt.

Most of the time though I see between 400 and 700 watts production.

Mine don't stay on the roof there is a lot of room for air to flow around them.

This is close to what I get from my Canadian solar. Even with not being optimimally oriented (they face south east at about 124 degrees of azimuth as against 180 degress) and at about 21 degrees tilt (as against 5 degrees) My panel constantly do north of 80% of their name plate, that is about 4.5kw of 5.4kw PMAX. Note that I am paring them with a 100A solar charge controller which means generation is clipped at 100A when in fact the panels are designed to produced 112.6A. so in a way should be getting more from the panel if I were using a bigger solar charger or if I were to divide them between 2 controllers.

For the OP I suggest get can squeeze more from the panel if he can put them on rails and have them tilted a bit to achieve close to 18 degrees tilt. This would require the work of an experience installer. They would need to fabricate an L foot for him. I did same with my system

Juror:
Are you implying that longer storage period / idle state doesn't affect AGM ?

Not as much as it does tubular or flooded acid batteries. AGM has a very low self discharge I think about 5% a month, can't remember the actual number. You can look it up.

ask4bk:
Wow. I see there are many things involved in this.

Do tubular batteries truly get you more years more than AGM batteries?

If I've the means I heard I could go lithium install and forget about it for 10-15 yrs, especially if I'm using it like I use these batteries today. True?

Tubular Battteries share the same age as AGM, it all depends on how you use them. I tend not to recommend tubular for home or solar use, if you can afford go for AGM. you can charge them faster and discharge them at a higher discharge rate, all this makes them ideal for home and solar application. Tubular have too many point of failures, for one the tubular we get here in Nigeria have electrolyte of douthful quality since the electrolyte are usually mixed and filled here in Nigeria, you can not be sure of the gravity of the mix ratio and the quality of water used.

Then they is the issue of long time idle state, over 3 months in a ship from India and another 2 to 3 months in the shop waiting to be sold. All this means when you get a tubular it is already suffering from partial state of discharge and have issues with sulphation. AGM is less susceptible to above listed problems. The problem with AGM is cost. Good AGM batteries cost close to Lithium.

ask4bk:
1. It's not the tubular (those tall ones that they add acid) , so I guess it the AGM. Is tubular better and lasts longer? I think I've heard something like that.

2. Don't know the charging specifications. It's charged by a felicity solar charger with solar panels only. It controls the charging voltage/ahms. So I don't know if it gives it something beyond it's specifications.

3. We live practically in a desert só the heat is beyond too much in every room no matter what you do. The ventilation (windows) only let's in hot air like every other room and place in the desert.

4. I don't the brand to be able to tell you. The installer came in from sokoto sha.

I'm sorry I don't have enough details to give you now about it. It's because I'm in Abuja now but will return to my bush next week.

Do you think I can get 5-7 years out of it?

I think your usage is fine. How long the battery would last though depends on many factors. The type and quality of the battery is one.

Heat plays a big role especially with lead acid batteries. I do suspect the reason many of our batteries die faster is because of the average ambient temperature. Batteries are designed to operate at 27C which is AC cooled room temperature in Nigeria. Anything above that an the battery start to degrade faster.

How you charge those batteries is also very important. If you want your battery to last, check to ensure they are being charged according to spec. Felicity (last time I used one in 2017) has some flexible charging param which you want to look into and ensure it aligns with battery charge specs which is usually in the label.

I am not a big fan of large parallel banks especially when it is lead acid. It is extremely hard and expensive to wire a parallel battery to ensure every battery in the bank are equaly changed and discharged.

Most times some batteries gets more charge / discharge more than others in the bank creating imbalances which eventually take down the whole bank. The imbalances is from some batteries dying from over charging while others die from being under charged.

If you want to do parallel proper, you need 6 busbar, 3 for the negative side of the battery and 3 for the positive side.

Each of the 2 batteries in series then connect to the busbar using equal length cable. This would consumption a lot of money considering a 35mm² flexible cables is now over 3k per meter. You might spend close to 70k.

In all you should get close to 3 years from them or more so fingers crossed.

earthrealm:
also curious to hear the difference in performance between the yingli and canadian...and the reason for the switch.

Based on recorded data which can be viewed here http://energy.openculture.org.ng:8080/dashboard/view?id=48

The Yingli performed quite well they usually operate at about 70% -75% of PMAX. Occasionally they can get as high as 83%.

During the harmattan the Yingli output usually drop to 60-65%

The Canadian solar performed much better. They operated at about 80-84% of PMAX and sometimes you get them operating into 90% I suspect that the charge controller might be a bottle neck for the Canadian solar. I paired them with a 100A solar charger which means their output is clipped to 100A if my battery bank is 48v. They also drive the controller to it's max capacity which was why I added external fans to reduce clipping and heat related derating from the controller.

In all the Canadian has better heat tolerance and better performance during harmattan. It should be added though that in my case. My Canadian solar is the Hiku7 which uses some of the latest PERC technology in solar cells. The Yingli was based on Polycrystaline black cells. When compared their specs sheet. The Canadian has 21% efficiency against the 17% from Yingli.

Heat coefficient is also better for the Canadian 0.34 vs 0.5 this means Canadian performs better under hot weather.

tobennae:
May I ask how big your home is in terms of power usage?
Especially from a layman's perspective - family home of 2/3/4 rooms or office; AC's, pumps, freezer etc.
Also what do you mean by cloud edge event? Google didnt help much with that.
From your images, your batteries are 14kwh? Where did you source them and brand name?

Home is an average 3bed room but tell you what, it doesn't matter. What matters is how you use energy. People tend to use house size for reference on energy usage but truth be told a 1 bed room apartment might use more electricity than a 3 bed.

For my house I made sure to make it energy efficient. Walls are white of bright and windows are large so lots of natural lights during the day, electrical light only comes on at night and they are all 5w, fence lights are all solar outdoor lights with motion sensor. Fan are all DC ceiling fans with light ver 70% efficiency compared to AC motor fan.

The battery are LifePo4 from eve and were bought from Amy Wan directly from china and shipped to Nigeria. They are automotive grade cells. I have a second bank I am currently building which are more solar grade I got them from Selina Li also directly shipped in from China.

Around Q4 last year. I upgraded my solar panels from 9x 335 Yingli panels to 9x 600w Canadian Hiku7 solar panels. Bought panel from techland.

Here is a short performance review.

Installation. The panels are roof mounted with a 21 degree tilt. They face South East at 123 degree Azimuth.

The panels are paired with a 100A / 150v Victron smart solar charge controller. Total capacity is 5.4kw.
9 panels are connected in a 3SP3 arrangements. There is a 10mm2 shielded and UL listed cable between PV and charge controller. Cable length is about 10 meters.

Overall the system performance has been really good. I get an average of 4.5kw output which represents over 80% of panel PMAX.

One thing the panel is really good at is how it handles heat. It has a heat co efficiency of 0.34% and this shows in the performance. Yesterday ambient temperature (as pulled from my personal weather station) was as high as 43C, yet the panel was able to produce (consistently) north of 4400w.

During cloud edge events the panel has produced close to 110% of output which is 5.8kw of 5.4kw PMAX.

I attached 2 centrifugal fans to the Victron solar charge controller to help handle heat since I am using the controller close to it's limits.

Elcapitan0:
Hello guys. Please i have an issuei need your expertiseon. My friend have a 5kva 48v felicity hybrid inverter with 8 400w panel. The problem he is encountering is that most times, the panels does not fully charge on a well sunny day as the maximum he ever got was 800w showing with not too serious usage . He is of the opinion adding more panels which I told him to hold on for now. On the spec sheet of his inverter, i saw max solar voltage to be 145V and i saw an 'off grid' hybrid 5kva felicity inverter with 500V max solar voltage.
(Don't know if they are different). Please guys what can be done?
The last pics was the off geid inverter i saw

Very difficult to diagnose solar generation issues without significant information about the system, notes of things can go wrong. Here are the information you should provide.

* What type of battery are they connected to. e.g Tubular or AGM, if possible provide the name or picture.

How are the panels connected, e.g 2 In series (4 in series would damage the inverter solar charger because it would be more than the maximum PV input of the inverter which is at 145v.

* What is the make of the panel, do you have the panel specification sheet (usually the label at the back) where did he get the panels from.

*
What is the distance between the roof (assuming the panels are installed on the roof) and the inverter e.g if the house is an "upstairs" is the inverter installed on the ground floor? this helps to gauge distance. And if possible what type of wiring was done between inverter and solar panel. If you don't know a picture might help.

My preliminary assessment based on what you provided and some assumptions of mine.

I am assuming the Panels are connected 2 in series. If this is the case, the total voltage of the panel assuming VMP is 35v might not be sufficient to charge a 48v battery system when you factor in losses. A 48v battery (assuming tubular) needs at least 57.6v to properly charge. This means the solar panel of 70v would struggle to charge such a battery system when you calculate wiring and heat related losses, in fact they won't much much room for MPPT to happen and this might account for the low charge you are seeing.

If my assumptions are correct and assuming the right wire size is used, then you friend would be best served switching to a 3 in series panel configuration. This would make 2 extra panels redundant. He can stick to using 6 panels in a 3S2P (3 in series, 2 parallel) configuration or buy an extra 400w panel and set them to a 3S3S 3 in series, 3 parallel configuration.

Trippledots:
The only advantage i can think of maybe some energy efficiency since it is using DC directly, with no multi conversions DC-AC-DC or what have you. But if you are well sized on solar I dont think that should be much of an issue.

This is not really an advantage because DC voltage is not one or constant, if I have a 48v battery system and the inverter freezer is 12v input, I would still need a dc to dc converter to tap into the battery. This only works if your battery system has same voltage as your dc freezer, often times this is never the case.

osayuwamwen:
Installer, sofar it serve me all through the night from 4pm till presently, use TV for some hours with all my surrounding lights ON and a DC fan ON all tru the night, just 1bar out from a full battery bar it's already charging this morning and my refrigerator, TV and DC fan is on the battery voltage is at 12.2v but I was advised not to use the battery below 50%, how do I know when the battery bar is at 50% as the battery is not reading in percentage

I think you are over using your battery sir, 1 12v 200AH battery can store up to 2.5kW Hours of electricity (assuming the battery is actually 200Ah which often times is never the case) 50% of this is 1.2kwh. Now although people advise you discharge your battery to 1.2kwh, this is not the most important thing to watch out for. What is most important is your solar panel capacity. Lead acid batteries like Tubular don't like to be left in a partial state of charge for long, They work best when they are fully charged every day. What this means is, your battery usage should align more with how much solar you can generate on a daily, the amount of solar should be able to fully charge your battery and also power house loads in the afternoon.

If your solar panel can only produce 1kwh a day, your battery discharge should be be made to reflect his. If not you would have either of 2 things, forced to over discharge your battery and or be unable to fully charge what you used up the day before leaving your battery in a partial state of charge and gradually killing it.

My advise, remove the freezer, fridge and anything but essential loads like a few light bulbs and fan. I would also advise you take out the outdoor lights and instead use solar outdoor lights. They are cheaper and ensure less load on your system.

Your system is ok as is and allows for a future upgrade path, for now focus on bring balance to the system to ensure you get return on your investment (aka your battery lasts for at least 2 years before replacement) I would also advise you consider DC ceiling fans and if your ceiling is too low, DC standing fans (if you don't already have them)

Lastly, take some time to do a proper system audit of all the loads you have in the house and which are connected to the system. This should give you an indication how much you are pulling from the system. You can buy a watt meter, I think it is less than 10k.

My pedigree is using 2 tubular battery to power a 2 BR house for 2 years completely offgrid with a 1.8kw solar setup, I know a thing or 2 about how to conserve and manager small systems.

cretin:
so, my flooded battery has 2 problems.

1. the electrolyte depletes very fast...within 6weeks, i top up with distilled water and charge at 14.7v and 13.8v float

2. in a battery of 6 cells, maybe 4 or 5 cells will have low electrolyte after 6weeks, while one or 2 cells will have half full electrolyte.

3.i have 4 batteries in series with solar supporting it and grid. by 9pm, the battery voltage drops to 50v and remains there almost tru the night or hovers between 50v and 49.7v. but when the electrolyte is low, the voltage remains btw 50.5v and 51.5v . so i believe the higher concentration makes the battery voltage sag to be minimal. the batteries are 2.5yrs old. and just get warm to touch during charging...luminous battery.

has anyone experienced this and what can i do to turn things around?

Please take time to share where the battery is installed. Particularly the ambient temperature around the battery. So basically, when your use up electrolyte at such rate, it means you are over charging your battery - the reserve is when toping up electrolyte takes a long time (like 2 to 3 months) means battery is being under charged.

You may want to adjust down your charge voltage. Something people should understand is, for lead acid batteries, your charge voltage is actually relate to battery temperature, the higher the temperature of a battery, the lower the charge voltage should be. The reference charge voltage on the battery spec sheet is meant for a 27C temperature, so unless your battery is installed in an AC room, If you are in Nigeria you need to adjust your battery charge voltage to compensate for temperature increase above 27C. This is called temperature compensated charging and some solar chargers have this functionality and thus have a temperature sensor probe that you attach to the battery. This allows them to adjust charge voltage automatically based on battery temperature.

On the issue of voltage sag, this is a characteristics of Flooded Acid Battery. It is a fundamental flaw of the battery chemistry and it is one of the ways where an AGM does better. The voltage sag under load shouldn't worry you too much as long as it remains constant. It just means you are unable put heavy load on the battery which again is part of the flaws of Flooded Acid battery.

haarfeez:
Experts in the house, what's your take on solar freezers are they reliable and durable for business please

Not worth it when you factor the high cost, including the cost and challenges of maintenance (getting a repair shop for support etc) all of which drive up the total cost of ownership. The energy difference is not that significant from a conversational Freezer. When you take out the starting current, Freezers are actually energy efficient for what they do, especially the chest freezers. Their ability to withhold cold air allows them to keep things cool for a long time.

You are better up buying a conventional freezer (or even the inverter freezer which Thermocool now sells) and then size up your inverter accordingly.

samnaija:
If you can collect your air-conditioning water without any debris and dirt. You have distilled water. You can also run the water through a filter.
I know someone that uses well water for their tubular, I won't recommend it. The person also uses a tds to ensure the water is ok.

I use the ac water for my tubular, stopped buying distilled water a long time ago . Get a tds also.

seconded, even games store when they were operational, they had a batch of distilled water that were adulterated, I had this pointed out to them before they had to withdraw the product.

Most of the tubular battery dealers ship their batteries into Nigeria dry and then mix and fill up the electrolyte in Nigeria, most of them get their distilled water from AC. Just get the water from an AC hose and use a clean cotton, I always use new singlet for this. I use it to filter the water and you are good to go.

Recently got some Lithium cells from Selina of the Shenzhen Deriy New Energy Technology. I decided to order with it the EBC Zetech battery tester which is capacable of charging and discharging lithium cells at 40A. The tester can be configured to do a charge and discharge cycle on the lithium cell and log the information to a PC.

My test param were

Discharge the batteries by 40A to 2.5v
Once the battery is at 2.5v, Charge the battery with 40A all the way to 3.65v and stop charging when current tappers off to 2A.
The total charge current in Amp Hours is recorded all through the charge process and this (thanks to charge efficiency of lithium cells) would give an indication on the capacity of the battery.

The result from 3 batteries have been impressive so far (See attached)

The battery below was able to receive 282AH at 3.65v (even though the charge current is yet to taper to 2A) All 3 batteries tested have hovered around 282+ Ah. I intend to run this for all 16 batteries and share the result. I am just posting this here in case anyone else ordered from Deriy, consider this as an initial review. I would be updating this thread once my findings are completed.

Hello house,

Please can anyone using Felicity Solar hybrid inverter please share their experience? I am particularly interested in how well the built-in solar charge controller performs.

Recently carried out an ugrade of my solar array. Swapped out Yingli 335w x 9 for 9 Canadian Solar Hiku7 600w panels.

So far no have been very impressed with the performance. Even with the poor visibility and relatively poor solar yield season. This panels are pulling (consistently) over 83% of their rated capacity.
That's over 4.4kw of 5.4kw total PV capacity.



This with solar irradiance at just over 500 watt per meter² and ambience temperature of 37c (as reported by my personal weather station which has an irradiance sensor)

samir101ng:
Can you explain a bit more on this heat tolerance issue and why that was a deciding factor for you ? Is it that major of a differentiator when choosing between those range of panels (JA Solar, Jinko, Trina) ?

It's part of the specs of every solar panel from a reliable source. It is called heat coefficient. It basically tells how much power of a PV is lost due to heat.

Panels output at rated at 25° temperature which is rarely obtainable on the field / roof. Hence PV makers include a data that tells how much power is lost for ever degree above 25° the panel is used at.

My former Yingli panel had a temp coefficient of 0.42%

This meant 0.42% of the rated power is lost for every degree above 25C.

The Canadian solar has a coefficient of 0.34%. It was the lowest of all the PV I reviewed. (Jinko, JA, Longi) but the difference was very small. All where within the 0.3% range. CS was just the lowest.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
The Axpert family e.g Felicity, Zinox, Gennex, Sorotec, Phocos, Steca and all their grey market and rebrand ilk have some sort of solar then battery then utility priority built into them.

These also come with decent MPPTs built in.

The problem with the el cheapos is not a lack of features but rather scrimping on protections and critical ratings, poor isolation of the electronics and internals, flaky/buggy behavior, and a lack of robustness to deliver the promised performance long term.

I used the Axpert MKS for close to 5 years now without any issues. When I was connected to the grid, I set it to Solar Utility Battery mode which allowed me to use solar when it is available, grid when solar is not available or sufficient and battery when Both solar and grid are not available. I also disabled Charging from the grid. The result was that I only ever used the grid at night.. between the time of 7 pm - 8 am daily or when it is too cloudy for solar. This greatly reduced my Nepa bill because my estate then was on premium power and electricity although always available, came at a very steep cost. The arrangement above helped to reduce the electricity bill.

Axpert (In my case Ipowerplus) does not have the fine grain feature of a Victron especially its ability to share between solar, grid, and even generator and it is no where near as robust. Yet it is a good and cheaper alternative for those who are price sensitive. Axpert is well used and tested (all over the world, especially in OECD countries like South Africa, Australia and Europe) and offers great performance for the money. Heck, you can buy 2 ipowerplus and keep one in cold storage and the price won't still be close to half the price of a Victron of similar capacity.

It all depends on your pocket and how you want to have things optimized.

FEGEITOK:
In other words, whether I go Canadian or Trina.

I can't go wrong!

Thanks.

Nope. They are essentially using the same technology and have similar efficiency. The difference between them is pretty much negligible heck Techland sell all of Longi, Canadian Solar, JA and Jingo at the same exact price per watt. In my case, I went with the Canadian solar when I wanted to upgrade because the specification had slightly better heat tolerance but I can assure you, you can't go wrong with either.

samir101ng:
I am guessing you are referring to JA Solar.

They are also a Tier-1 rated solar panel. Their 550W panel and above use their Deep Blue 3.0 technology.

However, i also highly recommend Trina Solar Panels. They have an authorized distributor Solarpowertal & website you can order from.

They currently stock 380W and 540W panels. I particularly like the 540W Vertex panels because they have the largest cells at 210mm compared to the competition.

Canadian solar also has the 210 mm wafer for their hiku7 series of solar panels. They are in the same class as Trina vertex panels

isangjohnson:
Insufficient pv is also a reason for not discharging up to that. People like to take out what they can comfortably put in.

This is such an understated statement that is often overlooked in system design. Your discharge should first be based on what you can comfortably put back into the battery bank before you start using SOC to measure discharge. Any off-grid setup which does not follow this basic fundamental will end up killing their battery. The size of your solar panels and their estimated daily output is what would decide how your battery would be discharged.

ceaser:
Good morning guys. Recently a standalone 4kw continuous PSW inverter crapped out while using it to pump water (1hp). I do not think the pump was responsible cos the inverter has been used for this function at least twice weekly for a whole year. It's only the AC output that failed and also the output LED digital indicator failed. Battery LED indicator still shows the voltage of the battery input. Still hope to get it repaired.

But with the lack of a suitably sized backup and short of funds, I was compelled to immediately secure a replacement but this time went hybrid for the first time. 48v 5kw felicity with parallel and batteryless fxtn. Already installed and doing fine.

However I am thinking if there are other cares with its use to make it last much longer. Does it make any sense getting a water-cooled set to further augment the cooling function of the in-built fan? Something like in the attached picture.

You should not need additional cooling for an inverter already built with active cooling. Unless you are changing the fan for something more efficient, whatever you go with would just be inefficient because cooling needs to be directed at the component that requires it to be effective.

Your previous inverter probably failed mostly due to bad design which could be in way of bad thermals or the capacitor went bad (usually the case) due to them using a substandard capacitor or a capacitor with relatively low voltage ceiling.

Forrkke:
Guys I’ve decided to sort it myself as advised.

I’ve brought the two panels down from the roof and washed them this afternoon. Turns out they are 145w each. Don’t know what the other ratings on their backs mean. Check attached images.

The problem might be from the panel orientation as suggested, so I’m trying to see if I can test them from the floor while positioning their surfaces against the sun. I’ve also bought a multimeter to do so; the only problem is I don’t know how to read meters.

I’ll give feedback on what the meter reads

What amps or voltages should I look out for to know if the panels are generating enough power?

Also attached is the cable used to connect the panels and the meter I bought

Please help me as I try this DIY method

Jefferyzz

From the panel label you posted, I would not use those panels with the charger you are using. The panels have an open circuit voltage of 24.9 this is the voltage when no load is connected. The problem is your charge controller has a max PV input voltage of 50v which means when you connect your panels in series you are already at the limit of the voltage the panel can take.. under certain condition the panels can damage the charge controller.

Regarding panel orientation, the best orientation to place a panel in Nigeria is south..you can use a phone compass app to determine where south is and install the panels on the part of the roof that faces south.

Ensure that your panels have clear and unobstructed view of the sky, no trees or structure blocking or casting shadow on the roof.

If the south side of your roof is not accessible, then from my experience east or west can work. If helps if you have a flatish roof and not one of those steep send down the rain roof.

There are lots of videos on YouTube on how to use a multi meter that would explain the basics of solar panel installation you might want to do more research or get a good installer.

Irwindickson:
Hi guys, i just noticed my tubular batteries 24v connection is not charging via solar, i have 4 405w sunpower and a 40A suoer mppt, which has been performing very well. The voltage from the panels connected in 2s2p is between 60v and 90v. The amps from the panels is 1.2A at the charge controller and battery voltage is 23.9. Inverter went off last nite and i wondered why. I found out this morning that its not charging at all.

What could be the cause of this? Any ideas pls??

You need to supply more information to get the best advise.

What is the voltage of the battery when it is charging, study the battery for some time and note down the voltage range. A charging tubular battery in bulk state of charge ( the first charging stage) should be between 25v - 27v. The absorption stage (the second charging stage) should be between 28v - 29v depending on how the charger is configured. The second stage means the battery is at 80%+ full. The last stage is when the battery is fully charged and here voltage drops down to 27v.

Your solar charger determines the charge voltage profile for your battery it is how you can also determine if your batteries are charging properly.

Experiencing the same thing. Reported to Seun on twitter. So disappointed that no words has been given, no notification. Typical Nigerian factord

isangjohnson:
Please, how good is sukam falcon+ 24v Inverter?
A friend wants to buy it.

That is a very old inverter from a company that used to be one of the biggest inverter brands from India (before they went out of business) I was actually my first ever inverter and I had nothing but good things to say about it. It is very simple so expect no bells and whistles. It however gets the job done without issues.

The things I liked about it include
* Efficiency. I had the 1.6kva inverter and it used just 24w when idle. This is relatively low for an inverter of its class
* I can charge the battery when the inverter is off, I found this feature quite neat as it allowed the inverter to charge the battery even when it is powered off, It can also pass through from the grid to inverter load when it is off.
* it has temperature-controlled charging. The inverter has a temperature probe that can be attached to a battery and used for configuring temperature-adjusted charging. A very rare feature for an inverter of that class
* The inverter has built-in "UPS" mode. This feature allows it to have very fast transfer times between grid and battery backup (not more than 10 ms). This becomes useful if you have desktop computers or other sensitive equipment behind your inverter, it ensures you don't face a restart during power transfer from the grid to inverter battery backup or vis visa.
* The inverter is generally very rugged. I used it and sold it off and the person who go it also used for for a very long time. It is a very simple inverter but is built to last.

The limitations of the inverter include
* Slow charging and generally limited charge capabilities. the inverter can only do 15A charging and the charge voltage and time is not adjustable. It has some presets like AGM and Tubular.
* Limited surge capability. The ability to use the inverter with inductive loads is very limited. The inverter can not be able to meet the surge requirement of large appliances like freezers and water pump
* Not so good-looking. The inverter is not the most good looking especially when compared to Chinese inverters. It has no wall mount option for example.

isangjohnson:
I wish your analysis and that of others trying to provide solutions for compatible and budget friendly energy independence system could generally/widely be viewed positively.
Very few Nigerians can actually and successfully carry out solar installation projects at this time, hence the reason we kept seeing different enquiries here and there.
Premium products like Victron/others are even out of the picture for now as majority can't even afford them, let alone people that are trying to fix the entire 24v system with 600k which we know such amount could probably go for only pv.
One of my friends who survived on Gen running as PHCN isn't always available once told me that he would've loved to switch over to solar or have it as a back up but raising bulk sum is really a challenge.
I told a cousin of mine to come and carry two of my 230ah tubular batteries (which I've only used for 6 months) free but he rejected the offer because I told him that about 800k will still be needed to purchase pv, Inverter and other accessories. Lol
We can now see why an average Nigerian prefer running his small Gen for few hours everyday not minding the long run cost of buying fuel today 2k, tomorrow 1k,.....
God will help us all as we begin this fantastic year 2023 with HIM.

Thanks for stating this. Any of the old timers here would tell you how I am a big proponent of small efficient systems and I have always advocated for discussions around how to build budget systems. The problem I always see is that many people are not ready to adjust their expectation from solar with their pocket.

When I tell people I lived for 2 years off the grid with 2 Tubular Batteries and a 1.8kw of the solar array (made up of 80% using solar panels built over the course of 2 years) The key is and as always been load, putting work on making your load as efficient as possible. Even if you don't have a single panel, as long as you see yourself using solar in the future, start by progressively making your electrical appliances and usage efficient This means LED light bulbs, Efficient TV, Fridge, FAN, etc. This does not need to happen overnight. Take your time and gradually swap out the old inefficient appliances.

The problem I see is that many want a solution that works now now but does not have the money for such a system. They then end up in the hands of charlatans who scam them and get a system that becomes a money pit.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
I agree with you!

As you may know and I have said several times on this forum, I am not a fan of flooded batteries and keep wondering why all the rave about them - perhaps it is their perceived longevity and 'ruggedness'

I would take an AGM battery over flooded or Gel if I had to use lead acid and when I said a regular 12v 200Ah battery would take 40a - that is definitely AGM or Gel and not flooded.

I understand the point about not charging flooded faster than they can handle BUT I wish to call attention to a feature on most decent CCs that allow you to cap the amps the CC would put out - so you can still have your large array but limit how many amps would be used for combined charging and loads - especially easy to do if your day time loads are fairly constant but a bit harder to find a sweet spot if day time loads will vary a lot.

By way of preaching the gospel there is a feature in the Victron ecosystem called DVCC [Distributed Voltage and Current Control] - if you activate this feature you can set the 'Maximum Charge Current' specifically - so in my system I can pull 12kw easily from my solar panels and allocate only 7kw/140a at ~51v to battery charging with balance of energy going to the loads - as the loads vary, the MPPTs will optimise the solar production to service the loads but maintain a constant charge amps output to the battery.

Beautiful feature and these and many more features can be modified programmatically pretty easily too in the Victron ecosystem.

All the more reason why people should port to Victron or systems that offer these value added functions - the Deye inverters have this feature but a bit more rudimentary and not as flexible.

Thus endeth my sermon, and may the Good Lord bless the hearers of His word and prosper both them and it! Amen

Hey God, you are just putting more and more pressure on me to go full Victron. Keep giving me reasons to complete the migration—hopefully this year sha.

Just have one question about Multiplus. One thing which has held ME back is the heat duration. e.g A 5kw Inverter produces 3.7kw if the temperature is at 40c and about 3000w if internal temp is at 60c. How much have your experienced this in practise and do you consider this a hold back feature for those in tropical environment like Nigeria.