we are now virtually plugged into the sun – in more than one way! ok, maybe not entirely at this point in time. it has taken three days and three steps to get to this point: day one was about placing the panels on the roof, and feeding the cable connections into the shed.
the task on day two was to install and connect the system components inside the shed: the three solar controllers, the inverter, the battery and battery management system and the switchboard that connects it all and that also houses the unit that keeps an eye on the whole crowd.
and on day three the system was brought online, in more ways than one: online activation is the only way to actually switch the system on. a whole raft of parameters need to be set, synchronised and all components registered. the germans want to know.
as with so many internet connected devices that was not as straight-forward as one would expect. first we had to work out that two cables between the inverter and the battery were switched up, and as a result the sunny island (the big yellow lump on the left side) was unable to talk to the battery (the massive grey box on the ground). once that was sorted the data manager could be commissioned, followed by the inverters.
just when it looked like the system was really going to start sucking energy from the sun, as it was supposed to, it transpired that the innocent looking so called sunny boys had a dark side to them.
the result of an apparent disagreement between the red boys and the yellow island over some frequency setting meant the boys periodically refused to work. it took a few hours and actually re-flashing the firmware on all three to get them to think about cooperating.
following the concerted efforts of our on-site installer wizard and the remote online support (remember this is an iot system) it appeared that diplomacy had succeeded in getting the kids to stop squabbling and play nice. unfortunately (as you can see from the screen shot above) the system proceeded to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory anyway, and revert to its frequency warring ways. ‘i’m so disappointed in you kids, seriously, you’re all grounded’ – has never helped in any such situation.
more online trouble shooting tomorrow then. it’s all digital, how hard can that be? at least the totally low tech stormwater pipes connecting the roof to the tanks might get a workout tomorrow with a bit of rain forecast.
let’s see if they can get the job done without debugging.
update: turns out the problem is not with the system or the components. the issue is that with no load on the system to speak of at this point the inverters apparently can’t ramp down far enough while still avoid cutting off. so all is well, we just need to start using the energy we (can) produce. i’ve turned off two thirds of the roof and now all is well. go figure..