Recent content by cm119

When mine came he pulled the meter then checked to make sure the house side of the meter was not energized (to confirm the system wasn't backfeeding while 'grid down'), then put the meter back in and that was it. He didn't care at all that I was using PV and batteries in zero-export mode.

I was scrolling down just to make this comment. I ran on limited to load/no sell mode for 5 months waiting for PG&E, and with the default I think 20w or 40w zero export limiter, I saw maybe a handful of little spikes to the grid. I would think setting to 200+ watts would make it even less...

I just got PTO a couple weeks ago, so most this data is with low throughput doing only self consumption. Now that I’m selling back maybe it will change some?

I just got PTO a couple weeks ago, before that I had the sol ark setup with ‘load first’, so it would start inverting power to load as soon as the sun came up, and only started charging after pv exceeded load. Since getting PTO I’ve set it back to ‘battery first’, and the battery gets 100%of the...

Yikes, I’ll have to look more into that. 30w/battery, so 90w for me, 24 hours a day, for 30 days, 64kW/month just for the batteries to run themselves?

I have Foretress eFlex batteries on a 15K, and notice that the charge/discharge efficiency seems to be pretty bad according to the data. I do have some cooling fans coming directly off the battery bus so that is part of the issue, but it can’t be using that much power. It looks like my...

It works fine using the CAN port, most the details are in the link below. This references Fortress batteries, but the Sol-Ark/Solar Assistant info is the same. So if you are not already using the CAN port you can use this, if you ARE using the CAN port for your batteries you just have to make...

Related for anyone wondering, because I just messed with this recently. I have lithium batteries, so there is no ‘need’ for the battery temp probe to be hooked up, but I wanted to use it anyway to monitor battery compartment temp vs BMS temp. Well I found out that when you are closed loop, and...

This is my thinking also. If you have net metering and no TOU, no reason to use the batteries at all unless the grid is down. Any ‘savings’ by discharging the battery are negated by having to use PV to recharge is the next day anyway, so your ‘net’ is the same. BUT you lost efficiency due to...

I think your TOU times need to be fixed, the manual says they need to be in time order, so from midnight (at the top) to midnight (at the bottom). It looks like you have a 7am setting at the very bottom? Other than that I think your settings should do what you are asking, is there something...

There have been a couple updates to the PVPro platform recently (you can see the release notes on the website), last one was 5/23. I was having a couple strange issues with my new install, and had to reseat the Wi-Fi dongle once to get correct data again. Opened a ticket with sol-ark, they said...

I'm on my first day running my house behind a 15K, and have a couple questions. First, prior to today, the SA was connected to solar, batteries, and grid (via a main panel that breaks out a grid connection to the SA, and one to my bypass transfer switch). So all the SA saw was the grid...

Is there any specific code I can reference here? I.e. can conductors at the end of a wire be cut/modified? Do all four poles of a quad ganged breaker need to be filled? Can wire gauge be used that is not specified by the breaker manufacturer? I would assume these are all no-nos, but would like...

Funny story. The electrician doing the panel upgrade had no idea what he was in for, the solar guys didn’t explain this setup to him before he arrived on the job. They didn’t have a very good plan either, so I could tell they were scrambling trying to get the work done and power turned back on...

Main panel was replaced as part of the project. They re-used the old breakers, including that very old one. The rest of the breakers aren’t that old, just this one.