disappointed of lincolnshire Sunamp - new label showing only C rated energy efficiency

[scottishjohn]

linking this with the "no new gas connections"--it is crazy not to think the electric versions will be small sellers in future

[Barney12]

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

Mine was supplied set to the "charge only when 90% discharged" state, but when I first installed it I noticed that it wasn't charging, contacted Sunamp and was told that it should be set to the "charge only when 50% discharged" setting.  I changed the setting in the controller to this, which was supposed to be the default for our unit anyway. 

 

Hi Jeremy, I'm pretty certain what you've written here is incorrect. The manual is has a number of errors in this section. The actual behaviour is 90% 'charged' or 50% 'charged'. I have an email in my inbox confirming this point it reads:

 

"LED D5* (electric element output) will turn ON when the state of charge goes below about 50% state of charge. Or below about 10% state of charge if option 1 is on"

 

(Please also note the LED numbers are incorrectly referenced in the manual I have)

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

28 minutes ago, Barney12 said:

 

Hi Jeremy, I'm pretty certain what you've written here is incorrect. The manual is has a number of errors in this section. The actual behaviour is 90% 'charged' or 50% 'charged'. I have an email in my inbox confirming this point it reads:

 

"LED D5* (electric element output) will turn ON when the state of charge goes below about 50% state of charge. Or below about 10% state of charge if option 1 is on"

 

(Please also note the LED numbers are incorrectly referenced in the manual I have)

 

 

 

 

It's correct according to the manual I have and the email I have from Sunamp themselves!

 

My manual says this:

 

 

and the email from Sunamp when I first ran into the charging problem says this:

 

Quote

Jeremy,

 

 

As standard the units are shipped with all options off so the cell will start to recharge once a 1/3 or 1/2 has been used (the cell is roughly 50% depleted).

 

 

If you switch this option on (by holding down SW1 until the LED is on) the unit will “deep discharge” (down to just 10% energy left, or 90% depleted) so will have used the majority of the stored energy before the Qontroller triggers a recharge. This allows better utilisation of the store under the conditions that you have described.

 

 

Most of our customers obviously just want to keep it topped up the majority of the time, so with this option off it will recharge more often.

 

 

Does that make sense?

 

My controller was wrongly shipped with Option 1 set to ON, which meant it had to discharge down to 90% depleted before it would accept a charge. 

 

However, for the past few months it has been set to Option 1 OFF, so that it "only" has to discharge down to 50% depleted before it starts to charge.  It definitely seems to be the case that it won't charge until it's about 50% discharged, as we can draw two showers (with some preheat) that use perhaps 4 kWh from the Sunamp, perhaps a bit less, and that's not enough to trigger it to then accept charge when the sun comes out.

[AliMcLeod]

1 hour ago, Barney12 said:

The manual is has a number of errors in this section. The actual behaviour is 90% 'charged' or 50% 'charged'. I have an email in my inbox confirming this point it reads:

 

"LED D5* (electric element output) will turn ON when the state of charge goes below about 50% state of charge. Or below about 10% state of charge if option 1 is on"

 

Isn't this (my bolding) saying what Jeremy is saying - that with Option 1 on, the unit will only charge when it falls below 10% charge (90% discharged)?

[Barney12]

50 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

It's correct according to the manual I have and the email I have from Sunamp themselves!

 

My manual says this:

 

 

and the email from Sunamp when I first ran into the charging problem says this:

 

 

My controller was wrongly shipped with Option 1 set to ON, which meant it had to discharge down to 90% depleted before it would accept a charge. 

 

However, for the past few months it has been set to Option 1 OFF, so that it "only" has to discharge down to 50% depleted before it starts to charge.  It definitely seems to be the case that it won't charge until it's about 50% discharged, as we can draw two showers (with some preheat) that use perhaps 4 kWh from the Sunamp, perhaps a bit less, and that's not enough to trigger it to then accept charge when the sun comes out.

 

OK, then maybe I'm wrong, which is not that unusual

I'm going to check with Sunamp again.

[Barney12]

Just now, AliMcLeod said:

 

Isn't this (my bolding) saying what Jeremy is saying - that with Option 1 on, the unit will only charge when it falls below 10% charge (90% discharged)?

 

Having read it again I agree. I think I'm going to have a lie down

In my defence I've had so much bloody "non-standard" behaviour from my Sunamps that I'm no longer quite clear what the hell they do!

[Jeremy Harris]

Just now, Barney12 said:

 

Having read it again I agree. I think I'm going to have a lie down

In my defence I've had so much bloody "non-standard" behaviour from my Sunamps that I'm no longer quite clear what the hell they do!

 

It's not helped by both the lack of clarity as to what is actually going on within the controller, with zero feedback to owners as to the state of the thing, or the lack of information from Sunamp themselves about what they are doing to address the various issues that people are experiencing with these units. 

 

 

[Barney12]

1 minute ago, JSHarris said:

 

It's not helped by both the lack of clarity as to what is actually going on within the controller, with zero feedback to owners as to the state of the thing, or the lack of information from Sunamp themselves about what they are doing to address the various issues that people are experiencing with these units. 

 

 

 

I agree!

 

I did receive an interesting comment from Sunamp on this subject......

 

"The level of feedback is no worse than a standard hot water tank or store with immersion"

 

which thinking about it is true. Of course where that statement falls down is that you would normally have a controller to manage/control a standard set up. That controller would provide a degree of programming and feedback.

 

You could form the view that the controller is nothing more than an intermediary between a third party control system and the sunamp unit. But of course that also falls down because the controller does do an element of logic control (albeit badly!).

 

The need for the controller is logical in terms of protecting the phase change material (I.e. the soft start function) so why didn't they just stop there? The logic should simply be "turn me on if I need charge" and "do it in such a way to protect the phase change material". Then it would simply be a case of adding a third party controller to do the rest. But instead we seem to have a controller that falls between the gap?

 

Whats odd is it seems to me (and my simple brain) that this "turn it into a dumb controller" would be a very simple software fix?

 

 

 

 

 

[Onoff]

Maybe they need to make the software open source...

[AliMcLeod]

3 hours ago, Barney12 said:

I did receive an interesting comment from Sunamp on this subject......

 

"The level of feedback is no worse than a standard hot water tank or store with immersion"

 

Without knowing the full context, that sounds like a fairly arrogant response.

 

I'd be tempted to ask how does the price compare to a standard hot water tank or store with immersion.

Edited February 21, 2019 by AliMcLeod

[ProDave]

7 hours ago, JSHarris said:

The really annoying thing is that the Sunamp PV did not behave like this at all, it just worked as expected every day.

I know hindsight is a wonderful thing, but if you knew then, what you know now, would you just have stuck with the Sunamp PV?

[Jeremy Harris]

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I know hindsight is a wonderful thing, but if you knew then, what you know now, would you just have stuck with the Sunamp PV?

 

Yes. 

 

I would probably have tried to get an extra pair of Sunamp PV cells to double up the capacity, in the same way that @TerryE has.  That would definitely have been a better option, not just because it would have worked perfectly, but also because the additional Sunamp PV cells are a lot lighter than the UniQ, so would have been a lot easier to get upstairs.

[TerryE]

Our double SunAmp PV works well.  Capacity is an issue if someone runs a large bath, but this is a once in a blue-moon event:  I do have flow metering into the PVs so I could in principle add some NodeRED rules to do automatic top-up if needed, but this just hasn't been a big enough issue to go to the hassle yet.

 

I am still looking at the trade-offs for using a small buffer tank when I add the ASHP -- we could also use this for SunAmp PV preheat which would both increase the on-demand capacity and raise the overall CoP of the DHW to around maybe 1.5.

[paulmb]

Having waded through the many pages of this thread, and a related one that started on the problem of the bulging case, I was really hoping the saga would have a happy ending in the form of a SA provided solution - alas that doesn't yet appear to be the case.  So as I am looking at possibly 3 different SA use-cases for off-mains gas locations on the Isle of Skye I've tried to engage with SA about the suitability of their products, including referencing the concerns raised in this thread, and got the following, somewhat confusing response:

 

Quote

 

We have a lot of followers on build hub, many are very early adopters and as you say there have been some teething troubles most of which have been designed out now. In terms of charging the product is designed to enable it to be charged at different levels. It can be controlled to only ever charge to 50% full e.g. if you have solar PV you might never want to charge to more than 50% with solar, but to export unlimited excess to fully charge. I’m not sure what the exact issue was being discussed on the forum, so hard to comment exactly. I’ll find out what that is and how it has been addressed. We have around 1200 – 1400 installs, and very few issues, although they are standard installs and won’ have any bespoke elements

 

I’ll find out about the charging to 50% and come back to you

 

 

If I do receive any clarification, I'll be sure to add it here, but in the mean-time I have a question you guys might be able to help me with.  When using the PV->SA Uniq heat store configuration, what is the maximum reasonable distance between the PV panels and the SA heat-store?  The reason I ask is because we already have PV panels on the house, but one of the possible SA use-cases is for a small 1BR holiday unit being built at the bottom of the garden, probably 15 - 20 meters from the panels.  Would it be possible to direct the PV generated power from the panels on the house to the SA Uniq unit in the new holiday unit?

[Jeremy Harris]

Welcome.

 

Sadly that seems to be the standard response from Sunamp; the "won't accept charge until 50% discharged isn't a problem" line.  I can assure them that it is, as we've run out of hot water because of this problem, and will continue to run out of hot water unless I remember to go into the services room and turn the power on and off, in order to reset the Sunamp controller and make the damned thing behave. 

 

There's no problem with running a cable 20m to the Sunamp, perhaps slightly easier to configure if you opt to run a separate cable for it, as that way you don't have to rely on using a wireless PV diverter (although a wireless PV diverter should be able to work over that distance OK), but can use a (slightly cheaper, perhaps) hard-wired one. 

[paulmb]

Thanks @JSHarris regarding the 20m PV->SA cable.

 

I need to further show my technical ignorance here, but I haven't quite understood the reason for the PV specific SA configurations.  I mean PV generates electricity that can be consumed directly by appliances in the house or exported to the grid right?  So why can't one simply use the SA heat stores that are heated using an electric element that is plugged into the house's electricity circuits which may or may not be being supplemented by locally generated electricity?

[Declan52]

29 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

Welcome.

 

Sadly that seems to be the standard response from Sunamp; the "won't accept charge until 50% discharged isn't a problem" line.  I can assure them that it is, as we've run out of hot water because of this problem, and will continue to run out of hot water unless I remember to go into the services room and turn the power on and off, in order to reset the Sunamp controller and make the damned thing behave. 

 

There's no problem with running a cable 20m to the Sunamp, perhaps slightly easier to configure if you opt to run a separate cable for it, as that way you don't have to rely on using a wireless PV diverter (although a wireless PV diverter should be able to work over that distance OK), but can use a (slightly cheaper, perhaps) hard-wired one. 

Could you not use a timer plug and set it so it turns itself off then on each day at 5am.

[Jeremy Harris]

21 minutes ago, paulmb said:

Thanks @JSHarris regarding the 20m PV->SA cable.

 

I need to further show my technical ignorance here, but I haven't quite understood the reason for the PV specific SA configurations.  I mean PV generates electricity that can be consumed directly by appliances in the house or exported to the grid right?  So why can't one simply use the SA heat stores that are heated using an electric element that is plugged into the house's electricity circuits which may or may not be being supplemented by locally generated electricity?

 

The Sunamp Uniq eHW doesn't really care where the power comes from, as it just has an electric heating element in the bottom of the heat cell.  There's nothing included in the Sunamp controller that I can see that does much in terms of optimising it for use with PV, if anything it does the opposite, in that it will happily sit all day refusing to accept charge, despite there being capacity available, as the controller is too dumb to be able to take advantage of PV generation when it's available.  The pity is that their older product, the Sunamp PV, didn't have this serious limitations, and worked very well indeed.

 

At the moment, the Sunamp UniQ eHW range are far less reliable or effective if you want to use excess PV generation to charge them, than a conventional hot water tank and immersion heater, as at least the immersion heater will allow the tank to be heated whenever it's cooled down a little bit.  The Sunamp currently has to have lost ~50% of it's stored capacity before it will accept any charge, which is a major problem if you wish to make best use of excess PV generation when it's available.

 

17 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

Could you not use a timer plug and set it so it turns itself off then on each day at 5am.

 

Yes, I could use a wired-in timer to automatically reset the Sunamp controller, and have one here that's ready to install.  I've been holding off from fitting it, really because I've been waiting to see what Sunamp come up with to fix this problem, as I'm reluctant to just modify things at this stage.  I've heard rumours that there is some improvement to the Sunamp controller in the pipeline, although so far have had no confirmation that these are true, or that Sunamp will roll any improvement to the controller out to existing customers.

 

[le-cerveau]

@JSHarris, I have been pondering your issue for a while and think I know the issue.  It is a differing of understanding between you and SunAmp.  Your system is purely electrical and designed for PV input (only), which worked well with the original SunAmp.  The UniQ systems have 3 options:

1. The UniQ e___ series designed only for electric input.
2. The UniQ  ___ series designed only for external heat source input.
3. The UniQ ___ + i__ series which takes both.

The UniQ eHW/eHeat/eDual is designed for permanent connection to power and will recharge when 90%/50 depleted.

The UniQ HW/Heat/Dual is designed for an external heat source (boiler/HT ASHP/…) and will signal for recharge at 50%/90% depletion.

The UniQ HW +i/HW +iPV  has both and will signal for the external heat source at 50%/90% depletion, but accept PV charge whenever it is available (what you want).

 

You have an eHW but want eHW+iPV control so that it will always accept PV charge when available but could also accept mains charge when reaching 50%/90% depeletion.

The problem being that the eHW charges/discharges in the opposite direction to the other units.

 

You could potentially wire up as an eHW+iPV with mains on the control circuit and PV on the power diverter circuit, then when the control circuit is at 50%/90% depleted the control circuit could switch a mains relay changing from PV diversion to mains power (not enough PV to charge) and charge from the mains.  Hopefully it would never reach this level of depletion.  You would probably need the UniQ_SBC_02 controllers (suspect you can’t reprogram yours different connectors) and have to plumb the units up the other way round (flow/return).

 

This problem is I suspect a lack of understanding from SunAMp on how units are being deployed, PV reinforcement the system should work perfectly, but for PV only the programming is wrong.

[Barney12]

16 minutes ago, le-cerveau said:

@JSHarris, I have been pondering your issue for a while and think I know the issue.  It is a differing of understanding between you and SunAmp.  Your system is purely electrical and designed for PV input (only), which worked well with the original SunAmp.  The UniQ systems have 3 options:

1. The UniQ e___ series designed only for electric input.
2. The UniQ  ___ series designed only for external heat source input.
3. The UniQ ___ + i__ series which takes both.

The UniQ eHW/eHeat/eDual is designed for permanent connection to power and will recharge when 90%/50 depleted.

The UniQ HW/Heat/Dual is designed for an external heat source (boiler/HT ASHP/…) and will signal for recharge at 50%/90% depletion.

The UniQ HW +i/HW +iPV  has both and will signal for the external heat source at 50%/90% depletion, but accept PV charge whenever it is available (what you want).

 

You have an eHW but want eHW+iPV control so that it will always accept PV charge when available but could also accept mains charge when reaching 50%/90% depeletion.

The problem being that the eHW charges/discharges in the opposite direction to the other units.

 

You could potentially wire up as an eHW+iPV with mains on the control circuit and PV on the power diverter circuit, then when the control circuit is at 50%/90% depleted the control circuit could switch a mains relay changing from PV diversion to mains power (not enough PV to charge) and charge from the mains.  Hopefully it would never reach this level of depletion.  You would probably need the UniQ_SBC_02 controllers (suspect you can’t reprogram yours different connectors) and have to plumb the units up the other way round (flow/return).

 

This problem is I suspect a lack of understanding from SunAMp on how units are being deployed, PV reinforcement the system should work perfectly, but for PV only the programming is wrong.

 

I'm somewhat flabbergasted by this post. In all my communications with Sunamp the "+i" option has never been mentioned. The system was specified by Sunamp with the full knowledge of my desire to maximise PV usage.

 

If what you've written is right I'm at a complete loss as to why when Sunamp replaced my entire system (2 units) at their cost they didn't change my units to "+i".

 

Can I ask where you got this information?

[Jeremy Harris]

The snag is that the iPV model will only work with small PV systems, < 2.0 kW:

 

 

Anyway, the controller I have is clearly labelled as being a "UniQ_SBC_01_PV", so there's really no valid excuse for it not reliably charging from PV, or the early morning off-peak boost charge (it fails to charge from either at times, hence the reason we've run out of hot water).

 

Note that the unit I have is specifically quoted as being "equivalent to Direct vented and unvented hot water cylinders".  It isn't, though, at least until the refusal to accept charge when there is available charge capacity issue is resolved.

 

BTW, the PV setting is just an option in the controller, and is set for my unit.

[le-cerveau]

56 minutes ago, Barney12 said:

Can I ask where you got this information?

 

From the UniQ manual posted here by somebody else.  I just read through all the options.  It appears that the system is capable of of doing what is wanted jut not configured by SunAmp in the appropriate manner.

 

SunAmp should have an eHW+iPV model that is plumbed as an e__ model but controlled as a +i__ model.  Ideally it should have 3 mains feeds, one permanent supply, one PV shunt and an economy 7/10 threshold take power from the normal supply.  Ideally it would have more sensors than the 3 at the moment (10) so you could select each of the thresholds on setup.

 

SunAmp could offer the units as standard or advanced, with the advanced having more sensors and control options for a small premium.

56 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

The snag is that the iPV model will only work with small PV systems, < 2.0 kW:

Surely that is just an power limit, if you have more power the UniQ just won't accept it/you diverter channels it elsewhere.  Again a control issue.

[Jeremy Harris]

44 minutes ago, le-cerveau said:

From the UniQ manual posted here by somebody else.  I just read through all the options.  It appears that the system is capable of of doing what is wanted jut not configured by SunAmp in the appropriate manner.

 

Sadly this isn't the case.  There is no option to enable the controller (any controller) to switch on power to the electric heating element until the controller has guesstimated that the heat cell is ~50% discharged.  I've been through all the possible options and settings and had them clarified by Sunamp, and the ~50% discharged, before accepting any charge, threshold is something that's common to all electrically heated units.

 

 

44 minutes ago, le-cerveau said:

SunAmp should have an eHW+iPV model that is plumbed as an e__ model but controlled as a +i__ model.  Ideally it should have 3 mains feeds, one permanent supply, one PV shunt and an economy 7/10 threshold take power from the normal supply.  Ideally it would have more sensors than the 3 at the moment (10) so you could select each of the thresholds on setup.

 

The iPV version is a dual model, that has the ability to be heated by both hot water from a boiler, plus diverted excess PV.  In essence the control logic, as far as controlling the heating from PV is concerned, is much the same as the eHW, except that I'm not 100% sure that it has the "cold start" routine, where it pulses power on and off when heating from cold, I think it may well rely on there not being an excess of power available from any PV diversion, hence the <2 kW or <2.5 kW limit (the manual confusingly quotes two figures).  I also seem to recall that the heating element in the iPV has a lower power rating.  This is only hinted at in the manual, where they state clearly that only the eHW has a 2.8 kW heating element and that the i models have  "standby electric heating elements".

 

 

44 minutes ago, le-cerveau said:

SunAmp could offer the units as standard or advanced, with the advanced having more sensors and control options for a small premium.

Surely that is just an power limit, if you have more power the UniQ just won't accept it/you diverter channels it elsewhere.  Again a control issue.

 

I agree, they could, and should, offer enhanced controller functionality for those whose primary requirement is to heat hot water from excess PV generation.  Shame they don't, although my controller hints at this by having a clear label stating that it is a UniQ_SBC_01_PV, which strongly implies that it is a PV capable unit, and that's borne out by it having the PV option in the menu (which is set).

[newhome]

5 hours ago, paulmb said:

We have a lot of followers on build hub, many are very early adopters

 

Going back to this quote from Sunamp what makes you an ‘early adopter’ and do people understand that they are early adopters? If you go to an event, see a product on display and buy it does it give the company the right to say that there are teething issues as you are an early adopter? Are you supposed to accept this? Is being an early adopter a transparent process? 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

I fully accept that when I bought the Sunamp PV towards the end of 2015 I was definitely an "early adopter".  That unit had some minor teething troubles, but these were quickly ironed out and it performed extremely well, and I fully accepted that back in 2015 I should accept a few glitches, as the product was barely into production.  Notably, the Sunamp PV always accepted charge if power was available, and the charge loop was below the cut off temperature; there was none of this daft "wait until half the charge has been used before allowing a charge" business.  It also had very useful status lights on the side, so you could tell at a glance what state it was in (charging, waiting for charge, fully charged etc).

 

Fast forward three years and I chose to spend more money with Sunamp to "upgrade" my old Sunamp PV to their new, higher capacity, "mature", Sunamp Uniq.  "Upgrade" is entirely the wrong way to describe this unit, though, as although, in theory, it has about double the capacity of the Sunamp PV, in practice it's controller is so deeply flawed that that additional capacity can't be used a lot of the time.  What's worse, is that the way the controller introduces a long delay before allowing charge to start means that charging opportunities are regularly missed, making it unfit for purpose, if the intention is to try and charge it from excess PV generation most of the time.  In fact, it's so deeply flawed that any sort of limited time period charging, such as charging from E7, could very easily result in the unit not charging.

 

I'm not alone in having problems with these units, either.  The poor quality of the cases has been noted here, and is an ongoing problem that doesn't really seem to have been solved, even if it is mainly cosmetic (although how many people would accept a bulging hot water tank?).  There are other issues being reported too. 

 

How many people on this forum that have a Sunamp (one of the newer models, not the older Sunamp PV) are 100% happy with it, I wonder?