Solar PV Hints, Tips & Troubleshooting

daughy

championc wrote: »

You cannot control the battery attached to a hybrid inverter, because battery power cannot be measured on the DC cables. CT Clamps are for the AC cables only.

That's why a number of us here have specifically installed separate Storage Inverters (to essentially have a Powerwall

Does the ac backup on the hybrid solis not feed ac power to the main board? My understanding of this setup is, the Eddie ct clamp is connected to the main grid, the second ct is connected to the solar live main ac, then the third ct clamp is connected to the battery ac main live to the board, the dc conversion happens from the inverter and outputs to the ac backup which connects to the main board in your house.
Did that video on YouTube help at all gomamochi1? Did your supply grid settings on your eddie already have avoid battery drain enabled already?

daughy

I understand the confusion champion, I should have said the ct clamp connected to the live ac battery in my original post

championc

daughy wrote: »

Does the ac backup on the hybrid solis not feed ac power to the main board? My understanding of this setup is, the Eddie ct clamp is connected to the main grid, the second ct is connected to the solar live main ac, then the third ct clamp is connected to the battery ac main live to the board, the dc conversion happens from the inverter and outputs to the ac backup which connects to the main board in your house.
Did that video on YouTube help at all gomamochi1? Did your supply grid settings on your eddie already have avoid battery drain enabled already?

The AC cable from the Solar PV is the same AC cable which carries AC power derived from the batteries.

An Eddi actually only needs one CT clamp - the one on the Grid cable. The Eddi reads the excess and then ensures that it itself uses that same amount of power, meaning that excess is reduced to zero

A CT clamp on solar is purely for informational purposes when it comes to the Eddi. It's used for the Zappi

daughy

championc wrote: »

The AC cable from the Solar PV is the same AC cable which carries AC power derived from the batteries.

An Eddi actually only needs one CT clamp - the one on the Grid cable. The Eddi reads the excess and then ensures that it itself uses that same amount of power, meaning that excess is reduced to zero

A CT clamp on solar is purely for informational purposes when it comes to the Eddi. It's used for the Zappi

That's good to know champion, I was under the assumption the ac backup supplied the power to the main board from the batteries.
Sorry for going off topic.
So you basically need two ct clamps on the grid live if you have an eddie, and separate batteries?

championc

daughy wrote: »

That's good to know champion, I was under the assumption the ac backup supplied the power to the main board from the batteries.
Sorry for going off topic.
So you basically need two ct clamps on the grid live if you have an eddie, and separate batteries?

Eh ?

AC backup DOES supply power to your main board. However, this is over the same AC cable as your Solar PV which is sent out of the Hybrid Inverter (as opposed to PV power going into the batteries.

And you have two ct clamps on the main grid feed - one for use by your Inverter, and the second used by MyEnergi

daughy

championc wrote: »

Eh ?

AC backup DOES supply power to your main board. However, this is over the same AC cable as your Solar PV which is sent out of the Hybrid Inverter (as opposed to PV power going into the batteries.

And you have two ct clamps on the main grid feed - one for use by your Inverter, and the second used by MyEnergi

Im confused a little, my hybrid solis has, + and - ac grid, it also has + and - ac backup, it also has the dc + and - for the batteries, the hybrid has 2 inputs for the solar, 2 strings,
My dc from the solar is converted to ac and leaves the ac grid from the inverter, travels to the main board in the house.
The ac backup has nothing attached to it, are you saying that if one day I bought batteries, I have no need to use the ac backup ? The existing ac grid cable uses the battery to power the house?
Sorry for asking but I was confused about the ac backup on the solis hybrid, and the manual is a piece of sh-t

graememk

daughy wrote: »

Im confused a little, my hybrid solis has, + and - ac grid, it also has + and - ac backup, it also has the dc + and - for the batteries, the hybrid has 2 inputs for the solar, 2 strings,
My dc from the solar is converted to ac and leaves the ac grid from the inverter, travels to the main board in the house.
The ac backup has nothing attached to it, are you saying that if one day I bought batteries, I have no need to use the ac backup ? The existing ac grid cable uses the battery to power the house?
Sorry for asking but I was confused about the ac backup on the solis hybrid, and the manual is a piece of sh-t

Yeah the ac backup is to supply emergency power, if the grid goes down.

Normally just wired into a socket for simplicity, but can be wired into a sub board with a switchover for a couple of circuits. Like what would be done with a generator.

championc

AC grid powers the house, with that power coming from Solar, Battery or Both simultaneously. The system will deliver, as best it can, your house load at that moment in time.

AC Backup is EXACTLY what it says on the tin. If grid mains fails, it can deliver power as backup. So some people could ask an installer to install some emergency sockets off that connection

_dof_

daughy wrote: »

This should help i hope with the avoid battery drain

https://youtu.be/c33XAp06ba0

That will only help is you have an AC coupled battery, like a Tesla Powerwall. Typically, the battery with a solar PV system is DC coupled, so the above doesn't work, since there's no AC cable to the battery to put a CT clamp around.

If you've a DC coupled battery, it's trickier to avoid draining the battery, since the Eddi/Zappi can't tell if current flow is coming from solar or the battery.

For Eco or Eco+ modes, you can set an export margin in the advanced menu, and they recommend setting that to 50W or 100W. That means the system will try to keep 50/100W exporting. The idea is that there'll only be a surplus (and therefore an export to the grid) if the current is coming from solar PV and not from the battery.

_dof_

championc wrote: »

Do you have two separate CT Clamps reading your Grid , with both of them on the same cable from the meter to your main board ?

You SHOULD have two CT Clamps on that cable. However, your readings appear to say different.

???

You only need one CT clamp on the live of the grid cable, unless you've 3 phase, then you'd need 3, but 3 phase is very rare in Ireland for domestic installations.

EDIT: Ah, I see you're referring to the myenergi CT clamp and a different one for the inverter itself. Strange that the inverter would use a CT clamp and not a directly wired meter.

daughy

_dof_ wrote: »

That will only help is you have an AC coupled battery, like a Tesla Powerwall. Typically, the battery with a solar PV system is DC coupled, so the above doesn't work, since there's no AC cable to the battery to put a CT clamp around.

If you've a DC coupled battery, it's trickier to avoid draining the battery, since the Eddi/Zappi can't tell if current flow is coming from solar or the battery.

For Eco or Eco+ modes, you can set an export margin in the advanced menu, and they recommend setting that to 50W or 100W. That means the system will try to keep 50/100W exporting. The idea is that there'll only be a surplus (and therefore an export to the grid) if the current is coming from solar PV and not from the battery.

I understand what your saying, in my case I have a CT clamp around the ac live solar flow to my main board, then it's connected to the harvi,
I also have the Eddie CT clamp around ac live grid, if in the future I get batteries I would have another CT clamp around the ac live grid connected to the harvi, and set as battery only.... would that eliminate battery drain as the harvi and hub can differentiate at that time whether it's actually solar power as il have the CT clamp on the ac solar live set in the Eddie as solar production only?
Just an idea, I haven't set up my Eddie as of yet as I need to install a new hot water tank, the one I have is corroding at the joints. Second hand home arrrghh.

championc

_dof_ wrote: »

???

You only need one CT clamp on the live of the grid cable, unless you've 3 phase, then you'd need 3, but 3 phase is very rare in Ireland for domestic installations.

EDIT: Ah, I see you're referring to the myenergi CT clamp and a different one for the inverter itself. Strange that the inverter would use a CT clamp and not a directly wired meter.

I was explaining the setup that @gomamochi1 should be seeing. His Screenshot 1 is not just showing PV generation, but consumption and grid import & export. This is achieved by having a CT clamp on the grid cable. If the MyEnergi setup is to do the same thing, it ALSO needs it's own CT clamp on the SAME cable.

daughy

championc wrote: »

Eh ?

AC backup DOES supply power to your main board. However, this is over the same AC cable as your Solar PV which is sent out of the Hybrid Inverter (as opposed to PV power going into the batteries.

And you have two ct clamps on the main grid feed - one for use by your Inverter, and the second used by MyEnergi

Unfortunately I don't have the inverter CT clamp connected to my main grid, the inverter came with an import export meter with a CT clamp but I didn't install it, that's why I just connected a CT clamp to my live solar, and a CT clamp to my live grid, both connected to the myenergi harvi.

championc

daughy wrote: »

I understand what your saying, in my case I have a CT clamp around the ac live solar flow to my main board, then it's connected to the harvi,
I also have the Eddie CT clamp around ac live grid, if in the future I get batteries I would have another CT clamp around the ac live grid connected to the harvi, and set as battery only.... would that eliminate battery drain as the harvi and hub can differentiate at that time whether it's actually solar power as il have the CT clamp on the ac solar live set in the Eddie as solar production only?
Just an idea, I haven't set up my Eddie as of yet as I need to install a new hot water tank, the one I have is corroding at the joints. Second hand home arrrghh.

I think you're still a bit off in your understanding of MyEnergi products setup. The only use for a Harvi is to bring CT clamp readings wirelessly (via radio) from a location to a Zappi or Eddi, where it was impossible or impractical to run a wired connection.

In my case, my inverters are in my shed at the end of the garden. My Eddi is in the attic and my Zappi is right at the front of the house.

Finally, you have a hybrid inverter. You cannot monitor anything to do with battery power on Hybrid's. CT clamps are for AC cables only.

So with a Hybrid inverter, the MyEnergi app will only have a PV icon but will obviously show power coming from "PV" after sunset, which is obviously coming from the batteries. And if you were to charge the batteries from the grid, it would give the appearance of power being sent to the PV.

As I said previously, several people on this forum have SEPARATE second inverters connected to batteries only. A Tesla Powerwall is the same thing too - a dedicated inverter connected to a battery bank.

daughy

I get you now championc. Was a bit confused about it but I understand. Tnx for the help

slave1

Just got my panels in the other day and starting to figure out my hub/harvi/zappi2 and CT clamps setup, above posts explain nicely, shame I never ran CAT cables to my consumer unit when I networked the house a few years back, never dawned on me

championc

slave1 wrote: »

Just got my panels in the other day and starting to figure out my hub/harvi/zappi2 and CT clamps setup, above posts explain nicely, shame I never ran CAT cables to my consumer unit when I networked the house a few years back, never dawned on me

Although the cost of a Harvi can be annoying, it's an excellent gizmo and very clever the way they used 868,mhz radio to communicate between devices.

I would recommend that people trim off excess cable off MyEnergi ct clamps cables. I had some strange issues, which cleared when I cut off the bundle of wrapped up cable

slave1

Yeah, I've gone for Harvi, when I get more time I may route CAT out of the attic and into my consumer unit to have the Hub closer to both the Harvi and Zappi2 but for the minute I'm just gonna see how I get on as is .. .

championc

Just another tip with MyEnergi - the Harvi can only be paired to the Master device. In my case, it struggled to to permanently send it's data to my Zappi, so I had to promote my Eddi to Master to get a solid permanent connection

_dof_

championc wrote: »

Just another tip with MyEnergi - the Harvi can only be paired to the Master device. In my case, it struggled to to permanently send it's data to my Zappi, so I had to promote my Eddi to Master to get a solid permanent connection

I've only the Zappi and Hub, no Eddi, but sometimes the hub loses the signal to the Zappi, changing from default channel 1 to channel 4 helped a lot, but stlil some dropped signals. I think it's because the Zappi is on a wall which was drylines so there's foil backed insulation behind it, so that's probably blocking some of the signal.

daughy

I'm a little paranoid after my solis hybrid has under grid voltage for some time now, if I open the ginlong portal on Google, the main page up the top left has the word inverter, then a code underneath that, then plants, and then logger.
There is an i symbol at the right of the word inverter, if I click that it opens a page that has device information, on that page it says Safety country
EN50549PO
I looked this up and its the grid standard for Poland.
I have my solis hybrid set to EN50438 IE
I did check the main circuit board for low voltage when my inverter was getting low volts and shutting down and my house is getting low volts but my appliances can handle it. Just the inverter shuts down for safety reason.
Can anyone else verify if they're getting a different grid standard on they're ginlong portal website?

daughy

This is the lowest I have seen it so far for the grid voltage.

championc

daughy wrote: »

This is the lowest I have seen it so far for the grid voltage.

Eh ? That's DC voltage

Click on history and look at AC voltage. See my screenshot attached

And in case people never realised, you can scroll the section with the coloured dots left and right - there's a massive amount of data in there

daughy

championc wrote: »

Eh ? That's DC voltage

Click on history and look at AC voltage. See my screenshot attached

And in case people never realised, you can scroll the section with the coloured dots left and right - there's a massive amount of data in there

I didn't know it had all that data. Very good.
But mine is not like yours.. Quiet the opposite.
Here is the data

_dof_

daughy wrote: »

I didn't know it had all that data. Very good.
But mine is not like yours.. Quiet the opposite.
Here is the data

You might want to look at this

daughy

daughy wrote: »

I didn't know it had all that data. Very good.
But mine is not like yours.. Quiet the opposite.
Here is the data

This is as close to the 200 volts ac I can get it at the first time I posted about it

unkel

That's brutal. Ring ESB networks.

Just guessing here, but you have a one-off house in the country somewhere?

championc

daughy wrote: »

This is as close to the 200 volts ac I can get it at the first time I posted about it

The Irish standard allows for 230v +/- 10%, so it indeed should shut down at 207v.

See section 2.2 of the Irish Regulations here - https://www.esbnetworks.ie/docs/default-source/publications/conditions-governing-connection-and-operation-of-micro-generation-policy.pdf?sfvrsn=ad5c33f0_8

If the inverter continued to work, you could be shut down by ESB Networks.

daughy

unkel wrote: »

That's brutal. Ring ESB networks.

Just guessing here, but you have a one-off house in the country somewhere?

Unfortunately it's a housing estate, its the main circuit board, I checked it with a multimeter last week and the live grid was in line with the inverter volts, very low. I don't notice any dimming of lights or any change in electronics working in the house. I would have never have known only for the inverter, i have an electrician arriving next week for a different job in the house so I'll get his opinion. Your most likely right though, the esb need to sort this out, last year they updated there lines to each house, I'm just wondering if something is not right. Just hope I don't need to install a whole new breaker board..

graememk

unkel wrote: »

That's brutal. Ring ESB networks.

Yeah that's nearly brown out territory isn't it?


The lowest I've seen mine go in the last month (from when I started recording it) is 228V ish, but that was when I was pulling nearly 10kW. The voltage around here runs a bit on the high side, currently sitting at 244V.