budgetsolarinstall
New Member
I am facing the situation of a very long wait between my inspection and the install of a net meter and subsequent wait till I get permission to grid sell.
In the meantime, I wanted to configure the sol ark 15k preventing grid sell so I can use some solar. This is in Southern NH with Eversource. PV is currently off and will remain off for sure until the town inspection.
I talked to Sol Ark support for quite a bit. Even with all the configuration, it is not possible to fully prevent export to the grid in all conditions.
The safest option seems to be to limit power to load, thereby generating only enough power for the critical load and battery charge.
Even in this mode, if something switches off suddenly that power has to go somewhere and could go to the battery and the house, and if it is still excess will go to the grid.
Disconnecting the grid to prevent grid export could cause over current fault.
Any suggestions as to how I can configure the system so it would not export to the grid?
Right now, the critical loads are kitchen + fridge, two office rooms with networking equipment and computers. Not really a lot of load - would be less than 1kwh for sure. One laptop, one workstation - that’s about it. The only things which could fluctuate are maybe the kitchen appliances and the living room AV which is not really used in the day time.
I plan to keep the battery at 40% discharge so excess power has somewhere to go, if that happens. But note that the charge settings are set to like 40/50 A to get the 10 year warranty on the KiloVault HAB 7.5. So, it may not be able to absorb that much. Also, hoping the remaining home can absorb some of the load.
The current meter supports time of use - had that changed last year. But I called and verified that this one does not support solar production and would need to be replaced. They did tell me not to send power to the grid before the meter replacement.
Any experience of any home owners in this situation would be super useful. Do I really have to keep it shut down?
I even asked sol ark about disconnecting the grid - but they said excess power in that cause when battery is 100% would cause over current fault and not good for the inverter.
Give me your comments, thoughts, feedback.
So far, I think I will just have to keep everything shut down for a month or more until it is all done.
Attached is the usage for yesterday which is typical for a working day, working hours are between 8:30 am - 6:00 pm at the most.
In the meantime, I wanted to configure the sol ark 15k preventing grid sell so I can use some solar. This is in Southern NH with Eversource. PV is currently off and will remain off for sure until the town inspection.
I talked to Sol Ark support for quite a bit. Even with all the configuration, it is not possible to fully prevent export to the grid in all conditions.
The safest option seems to be to limit power to load, thereby generating only enough power for the critical load and battery charge.
Even in this mode, if something switches off suddenly that power has to go somewhere and could go to the battery and the house, and if it is still excess will go to the grid.
Disconnecting the grid to prevent grid export could cause over current fault.
Any suggestions as to how I can configure the system so it would not export to the grid?
Right now, the critical loads are kitchen + fridge, two office rooms with networking equipment and computers. Not really a lot of load - would be less than 1kwh for sure. One laptop, one workstation - that’s about it. The only things which could fluctuate are maybe the kitchen appliances and the living room AV which is not really used in the day time.
I plan to keep the battery at 40% discharge so excess power has somewhere to go, if that happens. But note that the charge settings are set to like 40/50 A to get the 10 year warranty on the KiloVault HAB 7.5. So, it may not be able to absorb that much. Also, hoping the remaining home can absorb some of the load.
The current meter supports time of use - had that changed last year. But I called and verified that this one does not support solar production and would need to be replaced. They did tell me not to send power to the grid before the meter replacement.
Any experience of any home owners in this situation would be super useful. Do I really have to keep it shut down?
I even asked sol ark about disconnecting the grid - but they said excess power in that cause when battery is 100% would cause over current fault and not good for the inverter.
Give me your comments, thoughts, feedback.
So far, I think I will just have to keep everything shut down for a month or more until it is all done.
Attached is the usage for yesterday which is typical for a working day, working hours are between 8:30 am - 6:00 pm at the most.
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