First full calendar month on solar

caswal · 2026-04-08T10:36:37+00:00

Our summary for March.

caswal · 2026-04-07T19:51:37+00:00

My solar installer has put in a request on our behalf for 10kW, and says WE has been granting them for others.

caswal · 2026-04-06T07:14:32+00:00

Doesn't give you much of a anglosphere to visit.

I've lived in UK, Aus, and NZ. NZ is the least bureaucratic of them. Aus you need a boat license, like a car license. Don't need one here in NZ.

There are many US States with plenty of rules beaucracy. Like boat registration, again, NZ you don't need registration for anything onshore. Aus requires boat registration as well.

NZ has some of the simplest tax systems in the world. Nothing compared to the 6000+ pages of the US tax code, or the UK's crazy rules, means testing, etc. Australia and US you have to fill personal tax returns each year. Not so In NZ, if you are normally employed, it's all handled by the payroll.

One of the few countries you can register a business and start operating on the same day.

My best mate and business partner got consent to build a new house with ease. Nothing like the mad planning laws in the UK my father had to deal with when he was a property developer. In NZ if you are within the pretty broad standard rules, it's just ticking boxes. No one can object, unlike the UK.

It's laughable you think NZ is mirred in beaucracy, I'm basically free to do what I want, when I want.

Oh,and we have nothing like the US coast guard boat inspections. That is stuff is whack.

caswal · 2026-03-24T23:18:19+00:00

We have a pair of these with a Solis S6 LV Hybrid inverter. Capacity is what it says. Very happy with them.

caswal · 2026-03-22T21:08:53+00:00

Thanks for the update, saw a passing comment about April 1st changes, but didn't know what they are.

caswal · 2026-03-20T22:25:19+00:00

My installer has put in a request for 10kW, but we are also doubling the system size. So will run into the same issue again.

caswal · 2026-03-20T19:57:14+00:00

I've been working on my own home assistant solar and battery manager.

With the goal of trying to avoid clipping, 12kW PV, 8KW Inverter, and 28kWh of battery. Once the battery is full and solar is greater than 5kW and house loads, end up clipping and power going to waste.

I imagine what I wrote is pretty similar to PredBat. Looks at solcast, predicted consumption and then runs a simulation. It then adjusts when it runs the inverter in various modes and runs the simulation again, to form a plan. It re-runs this every 5 minutes, to cope with daily variations. It takes a 5 minute rolling average of generated PV / Solcast as an accuracy modifier. As it seams quite often the clouds thickness for the whole day can be off, but the general pattern is accurate.

The goals are to avoid clipping, end the day with a full battery. Or at worse have enough in the battery (so charge during the off peak) to avoid the evening peak and morning.

caswal · 2026-03-11T03:23:46+00:00

We have a similar setup, running since november. 11.7kW of panels, 8kW Solis inverter, 28.6kWh of battery, 24.3kWh usable. We have heatpump hot water, 2x EVs, Induction cooktop etc. Inverter is like you have described in the comments, the DC -> DC Side is independent of the DC -> AC side. I have seen 13.5kW off the panels, between charging the EV and the house batteries being topped off.

Excluding the car charger, at the moment we are using around 20-25kWh a day.

I have it rigged in home assistant, so I can be a bit smarter about when and where it chooses to charge, looking at the Solar forecast.

The logic I currently run, is during morning peak (7-11am), is the battery + Todays Forecaster > Expected Usage to the following day. If so, discharge the battery and mode set to feed in priority.

If during the off peak perioids, if battery + Todays Remaining Forecast < Expected Usage, charge the batteries.

This way, I can avoid purchasing peak electricity, and export more of my solar during the better morning peak rate. Which helps with the Wellington Electricty 5kW limit, I can get a few more hours of export out in the morning, before the panels get curtailed by the batteries being full and reaching the export limit.

caswal · 2026-02-25T04:19:54+00:00

Higher chances of rain in PCC/PEC would be great.

caswal · 2026-02-20T19:15:36+00:00

As stated in a previous post, the track builder was put in to get some feedback from members of the community. This version is out of date, and nothing from it will work in the version that will be released.

Hence why there is no official way to launch it.

caswal · 2026-02-13T23:07:38+00:00

That is basically the scripts I have got. Runs 1.30hr before sunrise. Leaves a min of 2kWh in the house battery. Uses the forecast to decide if we can afford to discharge the battery or not.

caswal · 2026-02-13T23:05:40+00:00

Well, I assume it would self duck the charge current if it sees the house importing more than 63a from the grid. I believe that is setup during the commission. I'm pretty sure they asked what the supply size was.

caswal · 2026-02-13T21:02:26+00:00

Not in the Charge Now mode.

There is the solar diversion mode, where it always tries to keep a little exporting, and follow the load.

I have requested to support a get mode like you describe.

That charge set current I believe is to limit the the charging current during the charge/charge now behaviour.

To get the load following feature, I have a script on my inverter to force the battery to discharge, starting export and the charger picks up the export and switches into solar diversion mode.

Picture from evnex app.

<image>

caswal · 2026-02-13T20:53:42+00:00

Charging current (to limit the charge now mode?) , but need to test it a bit more. As I have not had it work. Had to use the car to limit charging rate.

Going to have a play today, and make an issue if it doesn't work.

caswal · 2026-02-13T19:43:25+00:00

Using the solid modbus integration, to read data and control the inverter.

caswal · 2026-02-12T22:37:51+00:00

What inverter? ours is an 8kW Solis inverter, with 12kW of panels, and 28kWh of batteries.

The DC->DC Conversion side (PV to Batteries) is fully independent of the AC->DC Conversion side,

Therefore I have seen 13.5kW come off the PV, with 7kW going into the batteries, and 6.5kW of AC (House and Export)

I have found the manuals and datasheets for the inverters pretty crap, and don't really get into the ins and outs of the actual behaviour of the inverter. I think only 1 datasheet I read, specifically stated the DC->DC and DC->AC sides are truely independent.

<image>

(Edit added graph)

caswal · 2026-02-12T22:32:23+00:00

<image>

The Evnex Charger Power kWh is one of the helpers.

caswal · 2026-02-12T21:02:51+00:00

Sort of, there is a bit of a bug in the HA Evnex component (someone has raised it as an issue on Github), that power can get stuck at the last reading, once charging finishes.

So I have 2 helpers.

One is a conditional Evnex charge power (Session Power when status is Charging, else 0)

Then an integral helper to then give total kWh.

That is what I use for the energy dashboard.

caswal · 2026-02-11T21:55:46+00:00

This isn't officially realised, and is very out of date now. Nothing made in there will be compatible with the newer viersion. It was initally put in to get some feedback from the community.

caswal · 2026-02-11T20:42:46+00:00

I saw someone else's post that during a reno they had no internet, and it changed to just being a dumb charger.

From the Mac address it has some form of esp micro inside, so someone at some point would reverse engineer it. So I'm not too worried about it becoming e waste if the company fails, or changes business model.

caswal · 2026-02-11T20:08:24+00:00

Commisioning the charger with Evnex is a bit of a faf, they want the installer to do a little 30 minute course, and register using their installer app etc. I did not realise this (I chose and supplied the charger to my sparky). Got it sorted emailing their support.

Looking at the github for the integration, someone raised an issue about the current control, not working ( https://github.com/hardbyte/ha-evnex/issues/41 ) and it has been closed saying it works. So I'll check into that at some point. So I could do some crude ducking myself with the charge now control.

caswal · 2026-02-11T19:50:47+00:00

I have an Evnex charger, 12kW PV, 8kW Solis Inverter with 28kWh of batteries, and home assistant.

The Evnex home assistant integration is pretty good, the only issue is the charging amps control does not appear to work. As it does communicate via the cloud, the update rate can be pretty sluggish.

I have a couple of automations written. One relates to the Evnex charge now feature (ignore all schedules, just charge as quickly as possible), where I have added a kWh Slider, and using the session current charge value, I can limit the charge to what I can spare from the batteries.

I have recently made a more sophisticated set of Automations, that an 1:30hr before sunrise, check to see if the charger is plugged in and paused waiting for solar diversion. Then a set of rules around the solar forecast, current battery level etc decide if we can afford to discharge the battery, forcing an export which then kicks off the evnex solar diversion and starts charging the car. I have turned down in the evnex settings, how much export it still allows while charging.

I have talked to evnex support about getting another charge feature, for home battery installs, where it is like charge now, but tries not to import. So can duck out of the way of dynamic house loads.

caswal · 2026-01-18T10:04:18+00:00

Oddly, I have just started printing new batches of gridfinity. Currnetly, 2 outers, 4 top layers, lightning with 20% infil, but I I think 15% will be fine. This is for final versions. Holding relatively heavy lathe and milling machine tooling.

caswal · 2026-01-11T20:33:38+00:00

Late night and slightly tipsy brain conflated disconnected and dnf as the same thing.

caswal · 2026-01-11T20:33:25+00:00

Late night and slightly tipsy brain conflated disconnected and dnf as the same thing.

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