₦airaland Forum

My 1kva unit very conveniently powers my fridge (130w) plus two cieling fans (150W) and 6*30W CFL as well at 29inch led tv. My 3kva also conveniently power my scanfrost microwave oven. I have a sneaky feeling about the inbuilt mppt too though.

kiekie1:
You are right .. I have a client who used same ipower 5kva 48v and complained a lot after working on the FETs on 3 occasions .. He concluded its not really a pure sinewave power inverter since he keeps having issue's using submersible water pump, aircon unit, microwave etc on it .. He also complained the inbuilt solar controller wasn't as efficient as external mppt unit . He simply upgraded the inverter to a transformer based pure sinewave, 60a mppt, more units of 300w solar modules as he is almost offgrid and needs some appliances running whilst mppt is absorbing-floating ...

I have two units of the ipowerplus; a 1KVA model and a 3KVA model. The 1kva model has an idle consumption of 20W. I'll test the 3kva today and give you the value.

bigrovar:
Has anyone here who uses any of the Axpert series of Inverters be it ipowerplus or Gennex been able to ascertain the idle consumption of these units?

Of course the xcent is a smaller car and gets more mileage but the Rav4 with 1az isn't bad, it's better than a camry with 2az.

GAZZUZZ:
City driving is not same as highway driving. If your aim is maximizing of profit and you are yet to decide on a vehicle to use as a taxi, a sedan with a max of a 1.8liter engine is your best bet.

Emagine how happy you would be with a hyundai I10 Xcent 1.2liter?

I have used a 2000 4wd Rav4 with the 1AZ 2.0l engine both for city and highway driving. The fuel consumption is okay. I have used 20liters from ijebu ode to Osogbo.

GAZZUZZ:
1az 2.0liter. Have u ever driven 1? Fuel economy is bad

Romeo3:
means there are between 1 - 10 cars on the queue

I hope to meet you in person someday. You are a very strategic thinker. If only Nigeria had more people like you.

A purely mechanical switch (double pole double throw) ?

DMerciful:
I have a two way switch I switch over quite fast such that whatever is on remains on

How do you switch without interruption ?

DMerciful:
I have a small inverter with self consumption of about 5w. I use this at night n for light load operations. I use my must for appreciable loads. I switch over from one inverter to the other without my electronics going off

Please share your contact details

xij38580:
Around June last year, i tried getting my renewable system up and running but with the crazy exchange rate I had to abandon it. I have the following items for sale that I've not been able to use

1)iCell 12V 1.5KVA Inverter (80k)
2)Two 200W CSUN solar panels(60k)
3)Circuit breaker (4k each)
4)Epever MPPT solar charge controller (35k)
5)Kilowatt-Hour Energy Meter (5k)

Mono panels perform marginally better than poly at higher temperatures, technology is however narrowing that performance gap between poly and mono even further.

Pure sine wave is better. Since you want to use the inverter to power a farm, I imagine that many of the loads you intend to run will have electric motors. Pure sine wave is best for running such loads.

Flooded batteries are not necessarily the best. They are rugged and last longer than gel/agm batteries but require regular maintenance and also vent harmful gases when charging. It boils down to the individual user.

Look out for the maximum pv input voltage, maximum battery charging current and battery system voltage 12/24/36/48v etc.

obiageIi:
Thanks sir. Quick questions Sir

1. Mono panels are better than poly?

2. Pure sine wave inverter is better? Please any brand name or qualities I should look out for

3. Flooded batteries are the best?

4. What should I look out for in getting a charge controller, brand names?

Pls house, assist a newbie.

[quote author=chris81964 post=54639742]The last two failures were people who turned the battery disconnect off while the inverter was inverting.

I believe the battery disconnect more or less acts like a CB to protect the battery and inverter from short circuit conditions, in fact, the installation manual for those axpert inverters specify that you install a CB between the battery and inverter. It beats me how opening the breaker/disconnect could have ruined the inverter.

Solar panels are not specifically designed to be grounded using the negative terminal, the "negative terminal grounding" was just adopted in order to have a uniform standard.

How do you regulate DOD, I see that you use a Sukam inverter which hasn't got an option to adjust low voltage settings.

bigrovar:
So yesterday I finished series of updates I have been carrying out on my system. The upgrades include an additional solar panel (250w) to my 240w+240w+220w array. Due to the VOC limitations of my controller .. I had to switch to a series parallel setup. I had to improvise not having an mc4 y connector. Made do with wire joiner which I encased in a ip65 casing to prevent it from the elements.

Test showed about 35% increase in harvest. I was pulling 621w up from 420w (Harmattan had been very hard solar iridiance in Abuja. I project to get close to 850w pick power once the hazy sky is replaced by blue clear skies.)

Anyway.. next thing I upgraded was to replace my Tracer Bn series 30A Controller with a Chinese like for like direct clone of victron energy bluesolar MPPT charger. The clone is made by a company called fangpusun. The new controller is 45A, 150v MPPT. Got it because of the abysmal tracking of the BN tracer. It sometimes take 4 Minutes to find MPP with the bn.. a huge pain on cloudy days... I got the MPPT controll display for the bluesolar Controller, the Direct to USB cable which allows connection with PC. New CC has been a joy. Interestingly I get to update it using victron Energy firmware and Victron connect. Last update , I made was to replace my crudely put together battery monitor with victron Energy BMV 700 battery monitor. Comes with a shunt and display too.

Hope to do a product review on the BMV soon. (Fantastic product.)
Below are mandatory pictures

earthrealm:
Dreamflyin no dey hear.
SOme1 has asked him his cable size and distance..he simply said its god blah blah blah.
NOw he goes off to acquire an mppt cc without eliminating all likely causes.

Dont think we shud bother trying to help u till u start showing some seriousness.
1. how many strings of panels do u have.
2. are u using a combiner box.
3. what size of cable are u using in mm or awg.
4. Whats the distance from panels to cc
5.whats the distance btw cc and batt bank.and what is ur cable size.
6. what is the make of ur panels.specifications..are they all the same make..hope u didnt mix poly n mono. 80w. 150w. 250w on same string etc

why not mono and poly in the same string or in parallel ?

chris81964:
The power save function has kind of like a ping function. It has a minimum threshold it needs to see to function. So your energy bulbs react to that ping and come on and off. You can disable it.

Thanks for the enlightenment.

haslaw:
A voltage drop of up to 2v is high and will definitely lead to loses. Could it be that the cables from the solar panels to inverter are undesired

I am pretty certain that the cable is undersized for that application, its 8AWG. I intend to run one more length of 8AWG cable in parallel with the existing one.

haslaw:
I need some clarification please.
While browsing some inverters online the other time, I came across a type of hybrid solar Inverters with inbuilt MPPT charge controller. Looking at the specifications closely, I found out that these types of inverters are cheaper to install as a single unit instead of buying additional MPPT charge controller in a solar/inverter system.
My question is, why are these types of inverters not popular among inverter installers

I use one such inverter, it has been working fine but with minor issues; There is a power saving feature which is supposed to turn the inverter off if the connected load is low or zero.whenever I enable that feature the inverter output begins to rapidly switch on and off; I have not been able to realize more than 280W from an installed capacity of 600W solae panels, there is a voltage drop of 2v between the solar panels and the inverter though so I really can't assume the fault is from the 500W inbuilt mppt charger yet.

One of the items I ordered from the US via circuitatlantic since may has not been delivered, to make matters worse, they stopped responding to my mails. I advice anyone considering doing business with them to have a rethink.