Lux ac battery controller

chamelion

Bit of an odd question but anyone know the efficiency curve of these things? 

Situation: I'm on octopus go faster tariff, charging batts up full during off peak. For discharge during peak, am I better off trickling power (say, 300w through the day to deplete by the cheap period again) or take the full load of house and quickly drain. Price / import wise works out the same but the profile of my battery output varies. 

martynv

Hi, I am new to this and I have just had a system installed to my existing solar panels. I want to know if this is what you would expect from your "Input & output power" as that is what I have been told by the installer. It just seems strange to me?

chamelion

martynv said:

Hi, I am new to this and I have just had a system installed to my existing solar panels. I want to know if this is what you would expect from your "Input & output power" as that is what I have been told by the installer. It just seems strange to me?

you seem to have a reasonably sized device that is turning off an off constantly using about 800-1000w? the rest seems normal - can see your solar production in green which looks reasonable. 

EVandPV

chamelion said:

martynv said:

Hi, I am new to this and I have just had a system installed to my existing solar panels. I want to know if this is what you would expect from your "Input & output power" as that is what I have been told by the installer. It just seems strange to me?

you seem to have a reasonably sized device that is turning off an off constantly using about 800-1000w? the rest seems normal - can see your solar production in green which looks reasonable. 

Probably the fridge/freezer.
I'm wondering what's using 4kw every couple of hours though ??

chamelion

EVandPV said:

chamelion said:

martynv said:

Hi, I am new to this and I have just had a system installed to my existing solar panels. I want to know if this is what you would expect from your "Input & output power" as that is what I have been told by the installer. It just seems strange to me?

you seem to have a reasonably sized device that is turning off an off constantly using about 800-1000w? the rest seems normal - can see your solar production in green which looks reasonable. 

Probably the fridge/freezer.
I'm wondering what's using 4kw every couple of hours though ??

\Seems quite high for fridge/freezer? unless it's an older school one?

martynv

Yes, but why is it turning off and on constantly to give me the spikes of 4k and the lower square sawtooth of 1k. Since the batteries were installed the batteries they have gone down to 10% and hardly charged since. I know the sun hasn't been shining much. What should be done to solve this problem as it seems to be happening day and night?
For info I have 14 panels and 2 batteries.

chamelion

martynv said:

Yes, but why is it turning off and on constantly to give me the spikes of 4k and the lower square sawtooth of 1k. Since the batteries were installed the batteries they have gone down to 10% and hardly charged since. I know the sun hasn't been shining much. What should be done to solve this problem as it seems to be happening day and night?
For info I have 14 panels and 2 batteries.

any chance you have an energy monitor? a plug you can use to monitor energy of something plugged in? You can use that to look at any heavy duty device around the house and see what's going on. fridge freezer would be big culprits especially if they're older. can't honestly think of what other home device would give such regular on/offs. 

Battery  at 10 isn't surprising - you're not providing enough solar. you can see your green graph (solar gen) is less than house consumption, so ultimately it's all going into house consumption rather than to the battery. You won't see those batteries charge up until longer sunnier days when your generation exceeds your house usage. 

EVandPV

During the night, our base load is around 100w or so. The fridge and freezer kick in every half hour causing a jump in consumption to around 200w. So we see a similar 'sawtooth' effect on our graph.
But if you can't account for the 1kw and 4kw peaks, I'd get the installer back in.
As Chamelion says, your not going to see much pv charging at the moment, assuming your weather's as bad as ours currently.
Last week, we had a day of full sun which charged our 7.2kwh batteries by 40%.
You can of course also charge from the grid. Which can save you money if your leccy is on a time of use tariff.

Solarchaser

martynv said:

Hi, I am new to this and I have just had a system installed to my existing solar panels. I want to know if this is what you would expect from your "Input & output power" as that is what I have been told by the installer. It just seems strange to me?

If you have kids, id say they have left the fridge door open.
If not, there is something seriously wrong with your fridge/freezer. You should never be cycling that much, it will be killing the compressor.

This is assuming you have a huge old fridge.

Do you have an electric immersion water heater? Only thing I can think would account for the 4kw spikes 

I have a 3 year old American style, and a 15 year old normal one both running and this is my profile from today. 
Big spikes are the electric shower and then a combination of washing machine and dryer etc then dinner with oven and hobs on


The app is a couple of minutes behind the display, id advise watching the display while getting someone in the house to trip individual switches in your consumer unit until you see 1kw draw dissappear. 

Oh just a thought, you don't have electric underfloor heating do you? That could maybe explain the spikes??

martin2020

those 4kw spikes might be the heating water pump turning on now and then especially if its one of the older style with copper water tank and header tanks in the loft.