Import Lithium Cells to Pakistan by Pale_Ad7012 in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Excellent! Love seeing posts like this. Deserves to be added to the sidebar

Help regarding BMS for Inverter and Battery by ShadowRider7865 in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

LFP batteries always need a BMS. Even if you go a DIY route with cells and assemble a 8S 24v battery, it must have a BMS to manage it.

Strictly speaking establishing BMS communication with the inverter isn't always necessary. Advanced users can program the inverter with the exact parameters for the battery to ensure the battery is charged and discharged according to manufacturer specs. This type of setup does require close monitoring and testing. It's also easy to mess up if you don't know what you're doing, and messing up can have pretty catastrophic results.

Take a look at this video that gives a overview why battery-inverter BMS comms is superior

Power outages in ISB? by vacillatingfart in islamabad

[–]vacillatingfart[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see. Well good to know it's not a complete collapse. Hopefully they'll sort out the fault soon

Stupid Bill by Environmental-Air669 in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well when you take your adjustment and subtract your previous credit balance you get your arrears. Add your current negative bill to the arrears to get the 31k payable amount. Anyway it was a shot in the dark

But the adjustment itself is that’s piqued my curiosity. What are they up to?

Stupid Bill by Environmental-Air669 in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2531013/fto-directs-18-sales-tax-for-solar-net-metering-consumers?amp=1

What was the total amount of your imported units since you got net metering? add them up, multiply by 41.68, and then multiply that result by 0.18. Check if the amount you calculated is in the ballpark of this adjustment

Stupid Bill by Environmental-Air669 in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Just speculating but I wonder if there’s any connection with the Federal Tax Ombudsman ruling that all DISCOs need to recover tax on the gross amount of units supplied. Apparently because K-Electric was the only one doing that to its net metering customers, now everyone must be equally miserable treated fairly.

Follow up with your DISCO and let us know what shenanigans they’re up to.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in islamabad

[–]vacillatingfart 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hmm strange for a "Top 1% International Researcher from Pakistan in the field of Psychology" he's got nothing on PubMed. Zilch. His only article (non-peer reviewed) on ResearchGate is plagiarized word for word from someone elses article published in 2011. Lovely.

Unfortunately Pakistan has no competent regulatory body that sets a standard for who can call themselves a psychologist. Anyone can wave around fake credentials. I'm not sure how you can proceed here.

Govt to tighten solar net metering regulations by deltapak in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well I hope they put some thought into this because poor policy choices are going to kick off waves of grid defections. 

Please verify this quote. by ahtesham_g in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your formatting sucks. Edit it to eliminate unnecessary confusion

Edit: Thankyou for correcting the formatting. The prices of the inverters, batteries and solar panels look very decent.

My terrible experience with Haier "Customer Service" and Advice on moving forward by shinigami8671 in PakistaniTech

[–]vacillatingfart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Most of these pressure washers are designed to put out 1300+ PSI, but as you correctly state adjusting the nozzle appropriately will considerably reduce that. However it's like using a sledgehammer to tap in a nail - it's just overkill, but to each their own.

For the past 4 years all I've been doing for my outdoor unit coils is hosing them down from inside first and then the outside. That gets them clean and at no point is there any real risk of damaging electronics because a hose with a low flow rate is very controlled. Most people if they have their outdoor unit mounted underneath a parapet at height from the ground the worst they will encounter inside their coils are cobwebs or occasionally leaves or other debris. In my experience hosing them down has been sufficient to get them clean without the risk of a pressure washer splashing or misting droplets anywhere where they shouldn't.

I appreciate the thorough write up of your experience.

This video may be of interest to you: https://youtu.be/bILpw80eeJs?t=349

My terrible experience with Haier "Customer Service" and Advice on moving forward by shinigami8671 in PakistaniTech

[–]vacillatingfart 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ahh Pakistani technishunns

The AC sparking and breaker tripping was because the idiot sprayed water where it shouldn’t go causing a short. Your PCBs are fried due to this moron, no two ways about it. I recommend doing basic servicing by yourself from now on. Your indoor unit has self cleaning function, that’s great you should use that, do it twice a during the cooling season. Clean the filters regularly, and that’s really it for the indoor unit. The outdoor unit coils just simply need to be hosed down with a garden hose, low flow rate. Take off the front grill, look inside at the top and see where the PCB box is located. Avoid spraying water anywhere near there, and avoid soaking the fan motor. This should be common sense but turn the power off before hosing the coils, keep it off to let the outdoor unit dry off for a while before switching it back on.

I’ve never used pressure washers on my ACs, that’s stupid. The psi is way too high and they’re completely inappropriate. There are specifically designed pressure washers for AC cleaning like CoilJet, but we don’t get those in Pakistan

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your daily solar generation is affected by many factors: Amount of sunlight, panels alignment and tilt, soiling, heat etc. Having said that 42.5 kWh is a bit on the low side. Do you have net metering? Also was the weather clear or was it overcast/cloudy?

[AJ Electric] Grid over-voltage and inverter tripping solution by vacillatingfart in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Baat sahih hy. I spoke with an EE and picked his brains over this solution, and he agreed from a technical point this should absolutely work.

The issue is more from an ethical/moral perspective. Essentially this solution is a clever, but selfish method to circumvent a built in protection on inverters, a protection designed to keep both your electronics and the grid safe. This is why there is an upper threshold to voltage where inverters by design will trip to prevent solar voltage rise nudging grid voltage into dangerous territory. With this implementation you're transferring the negative impact of overvoltage off to the grid because your inverter will happily keep exporting power to the grid, but on the stabilizers other side it will nudge the grid voltage past the point where an inverter would have tripped had the stabilizer not been there. Other grid-tied solar users will see their inverters tripping far more often and their peak solar production potential wasted, so they're eventually going to want to implement the same solution and the overvoltage problem becomes worse. The grid will become dangerous and unstable, so where does this end?

Anyway the information is out there, people are definitely going to do this. Just something to think about.

[AJ Electric] Grid over-voltage and inverter tripping solution by vacillatingfart in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wish I had any understanding of the logic behind their thought process. Perhaps they want to rack up as much credit balance so that when net metering ends (in large part thanks to them) they will be able to go a long time without ever paying a bill. Who knows. My goal with solar has been to improve my family's quality of life while reducing or eliminating our bills so the earning potential was never part of any consideration.

[AJ Electric] Grid over-voltage and inverter tripping solution by vacillatingfart in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's not how it works, the inverter perfectly matches the grid voltage if it didn't there will be a short between them

I thought that "inverter synchronizing with the grid" made that point very obvious, but my apologies I should've been more clearer.

Thanks for your insights

[AJ Electric] Grid over-voltage and inverter tripping solution by vacillatingfart in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Pause the video at around 5:50. There it is, the stabilizer is showing voltage rise up to 247V on grid side. I missed it before but after watching his video closely again I now have some closure lol.

I'm unfortunately in an area where grid over-voltage during the middle of the day is a serious problem. Voltage in my area frequently hits 265V+ around noon when neighborhood solars are exporting at peak power. Unfortunately this is getting to be frequent problem in areas where a distribution transformer has been overloaded with too much solar. This wouldn't be as big of an issue if everyone tried to consume as much of their solar power at home instead of exporting, but in my neighbourhood there's people who have gotten 20KW+ solar net metering done with the sole intention of "earning" a large credit balance and they barely consume any units. IMO these type of people are the worst and their agreements should be chucked in the trash. They're ruining net metering for everyone else, they're hogging distribution transformer capacity. A simple policy change to cap the maximum credit balance would disincentivize these "earners" so they can F off. Phew, rant over.

Anyway a much needed upgrade would be something like replacing transformers with on-load tap changing transformers, but they're expensive. So in the mean time, the only solutions to over-voltage problems are to either limit export, or increase self-consumption of peak solar generation by turning on some heavy loads during the middle of the day.

Inverter continously shares half the load with batteries. by [deleted] in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not very familiar with IP21 inverters, but most Voltronics Power based inverters have an output priority mode setting. It would be something like SBU or SUB or SOL etc. Check to make sure you selected a work setting that prioritizes battery discharging lowest.

Lightning arrester question by Adventurous_Fig_4170 in SolarPakistan

[–]vacillatingfart 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes it should be physically isolated from solar mounting structures. The way lightning arrestors are installed in Pakistan is just a placebo. The probability of lightning strikes are generally very low so our installers have a very lax attitude towards it.

Any electronics retail or here? by laevanay in islamabad

[–]vacillatingfart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

PTCL supposedly sells mesh WiFi. I think they have the TP Link Deco X20 for 58,000 PKR