Big re-work at Nowty Towers.

[Ted]

Is that bare copper I see between the units and the grey and brown cables?

Also maybe put some grommet protection for the wires going through the metal (I presume) casing and brown/blue indicator on the grey cables.

[nowty]

You have two, I presume they are for each of the two circuit breakers (even though not adjacent to them, which would have meant rewiring everything to move-it-along-a-bit presumably?

No.

The SMA Energy Meter, on the right, measures the amount of import or export.
The Sunny Home Manager, on the left, talks to the inverter and limits generation so that the export limit is not exceeded.

Is that bare copper I see between the units and the grey and brown cables?

Nearly, the Sunny Home Manager 2.0 on the left does talk to the inverters and limits generation so that the export limit is not exceeded. But it also has an inbuilt SMA Energy Meter which measures the amount of import or export.

The SMA Energy Meter on the right is ONLY required because I have a non speedwire version inverter in the system. If I replace that old inverter with a speedwire version then that second Energy Meter will become redundant.

I can live with a bit of bare copper.

[offthegridandy]

Well done Nowty.  Now you can watch all the meters whirring round and have loadsa fun graphing it all, make you warm inside eh!!.

Andy

[pantsmachine]

I love this set up, think it's epic and you are applauded for your skill. The only think I don't like is a few cables are cut too far back and exposed conductor. Just gives me the heebies to see it. Live long and prosper Nowty.

[Pile-o-stone]

I always enjoy a good Nowty Towers thread

Thanks for the information about the Sunny Home Manager and SMA Energy Meter. I was looking to increase my solar array but the DNO said no unless I paid them to "Strengthen the grid", but the Sunny Home Manager limits export and will allow me to get around this.

Quick question - Will the Home manager only work with SMA inverters? and can you give an idea about the cost of the Home Manager? (The DNO is saying £1500 to upgrade the grid to allow me 10kW export. If the Home Manager costs apprach that, then maybe I'm just as well paying the DNO?

[kristen]

The SMA Energy Meter, on the right, measures the amount of import or export.
The Sunny Home Manager, on the left, talks to the inverter and limits generation so that the export limit is not exceeded.

Brill, thanks

Presumably I could put some multiple Widgets on different "sections" of my consumer unit?

[Philip R]

Nice work there and planning too. Looks nicely installed, not some horrible rats nest of random bits of wire. Well done!
Philip R

[todthedog]

Fabulous 

[Solarchaser]

Very impressive, must feel great to have definitely cluttered as much as you have.
Serious battery envy too.
You could actually fully charge most ev's with just your own battery store.

Shame to see the sofar gone,  I've been thinking of pushing mine on and going with 2 lux in parallel, I'm guessing you decided against this option.

I definitely want rid of the growatt, unreliable and service is abysmal.

I definitely like the idea of the energy monitor.
Can you educate me?
I have no room on the house cu, but the small cu above it that houses my solar stuff could be replaced with larger, however I dont understand how I could monitor export with it also, assuming this isn't your main cu.

And also assuming I can do the energy meter with any other sma Gibbons?

[linesrg]

Solarchaser,

I'll let nowty respond to your query as this is his thread.

It is a difficult decision to make if you have already invested in such as Growatt and Sofar equipment as going down the SMA SHM 2.0/ Energy meter option route represents additional expense some of which can be offset by selling your existing equipment.

It does leave you with an 'integrated' system though.

Regards

Richard

[nowty]

Very impressive, must feel great to have definitely cluttered as much as you have.
Serious battery envy too.
You could actually fully charge most ev's with just your own battery store.

Shame to see the sofar gone,  I've been thinking of pushing mine on and going with 2 lux in parallel, I'm guessing you decided against this option.

I definitely want rid of the growatt, unreliable and service is abysmal.

I definitely like the idea of the energy monitor.
Can you educate me?
I have no room on the house cu, but the small cu above it that houses my solar stuff could be replaced with larger, however I dont understand how I could monitor export with it also, assuming this isn't your main cu.

And also assuming I can do the energy meter with any other sma Gibbons?

The right hand double pole switch and 40A MCB in the new CU is for a future EV charger so its nicely all 16mm2 cable back to all source grid/solar PV/battery inverter connections. That would give me the option to charge an EV with battery bank but at the moment I am using a large proportion of the bank to run my heat pump and avoid gas import.


I nearly went with the parallel Lux's as it would have been cheaper but it was a risk as I did not know how well they worked, also I wanted a fully integrated system with monitoring for combined solar and battery inverters. There is also an issue with build quality, for example a Lux is only 15kg vs the Sunny Island at 63kg so its a mighty robust beast with massive overload capacity. Also with the Lux's as each would have a seperate battery bank, I dont know how well they would load share so decided to go with a system with one battery bank, abiet mine is actaully two banks in parallel.


Cannot disagree with your views on the Growatts, hence why I sold the controllers and ripped the battery modules out of them. They had their time but there is now much better stuff out there. The Sofar's cut it, but they cannot be paralleled up.


In my case the new CU is at the grid point and feeds out to the existing house CU, it also means I can electrically isolate everything from one location. The SMA Home Manager measures grid import/export directly, the second Energy meter measures Solar PV generation and the Sunny Island transmitts battery current and battery Inverter power so the Home Manager can work out the house consumption and transmit everything to the online Sunny Portal.

[Solarchaser]

You have obviously thought it out well, as always.

Serious envy here.

[nowty]

Time for a bit of battery porn.

If people recall, I had 4 growatt batteries (8 x 24v modules) configured in 8 parallel strings with every cell interconnected with fused links. I charged them up to 28v which was about 90%. Starting with balanced cells, I found hardly any voltage imbalance over a whole seasons use suggesting I did not need to connect every cell up. The worst cell was 0.1v different but most were within 0.05v or less.
As it was :



The new battery bank is now 8 growatt batteries (16 x 24v modules) but each growatt pair is now connected together in series with a string fuse to give 8 x 48v strings.



To make it easier to connect the parallel cables I have made up some bus bar extenders out of copper strip.



Full size picture of growatt bank. I decided to use much less fused cell inerconnects, even so there are no more than 2 or 3 cells in series without them.
Parallel cables have been uprated from 16mm2 to 25mm2. The intermediates through the isolator are 35mm2 and the final longer cables to the Sunny Island after the main fuses are meaty 70mm2.

[Tigger]

Where are the Moderators when you need them, Nowty is clearing posting blatant porn........

[todthedog]

Too busy lusting