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You want to rotate the cables to evenly spread the wear on the copper

I've gone well past "sensible" at this point and have plenty of power and want for nothing. I don't even know what I'd do with more power, but sort of like finding ways to add more HP to a car, I still feel the need to hot rod my house further. Is this normal, or are these signs of a problematic...

This is my area of expertise. Without eg4 explaining their security practices, we don't know. IMO it's better to detach from the cloud and monitor/manage locally, but I realize this isn't everyone's skill set. Btw I would say the same about any cloud based control plane, especially in this...

Go into the settings and set dump-to-ground-rod to true. The electricity will spill out into the ground rod just make sure it's deep cause otherwise it'll make the ground kinda static prone for a while. Obviously make sure you're not touching the ground rod or kinking the wire when you do it

What do you expect? Internal sales forecasts and accounting? I mean c'mon

I think it would be as it's a current carrying conductor and needs to be in the same conduit/raceway as the hots

He said this was happening before PV even entered the story

I'm running off a critical loads subpanel with a 70a backfeed breaker. During periods of time with no solar or battery support, it means all those critical loads are limited to the 70a feed from the main panel, which could be a problem (especially if you want to charge the battery from the...

Cool. Thanks. Easier to help other people when the closure gets documented

I'd update the firmware all the way to 1717. As a general principle, I know there's an 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' mentality but especially during the teething phases of a new product, companies like luxpower and eg4 are finding and fixing lots of issues. Worth upgrading.

I use home assistant as well. It's ideal for me. If you're not a data nerd and not paranoid about privacy or security then the eg4 monitoring portal is great. If the eg4 site went down, and you needed to make changes, you'd have to go press buttons like a pilgrim to change settings

Yep, same. I bumped up the PV start voltage and tada Note: This was a problem before FAB-1717 for me

I had a similar question earlier. I am not an electrician but I believe you'd either need to wire the load side of the 18kpv to a 125a fused disconnect or 125a breaker with appropriate wire and then step down to something rated for 125a to the critical loads panel.

It's adjustable on the 18kpv

Maybe bus limitations somewhere - 250 amps is a lot of juice

Yep this feels like a CT ratio thing now

the BMS is supposed to consume far less than that even under full load according to the manual

That's what I said, it applies to all cloud control planes

Yeah none of this feels normal. Sorry, it's probably soured you on the product which for many of us has been a good experience. If Signature Solar could send you an advanced replacement unit, swapping it wouldn't be that hard. Kind of annoying but a 1 for 1 swap of the inverter isn't the worst...

IMO, ditch solar assistant and run HA directly to your equipment

I feel you but hang in there

If the grid is down, though, then the subpanel critical load breaker being 70a would be well above the threshold to overcurrent protect the inverter output anyway. And this is also true in a 'whole home backup' scenario that permits the 200a downstream load.. without grid support the inverter...

I installed it. I'm still here

3/0 copper hots/neutrals with 4 or 6awg ground. No harm in going bigger. Arguably you don't need to go larger than your service entrance wires, but ignoring those sorts of caveats that may or may not pass the muster of your AHJ, 3/0 copper will definitely work for 200a.

Can you share, to the level of precision you're comfortable with, how much money / profit we're talking about? Is it like $200 a month or something trivial?

Yeah, so what's with that? lol

I'm reluctant to be the first mover here but I do like optimized EPS transfer logic

Have you ever had an incidents? you know, someone drops a wrench on a battery, something explodes, etc?

one of them my be reversed? the CT offset is in the "0-100 watts" range

No, no

Why even ground it? The electricity will find a way on its own

So far I'm not seeing anything close to 91% efficiency - after 260kwh in, at a similar SOC from this starting point, i'm getting like 210kwh out. That's closer to 80% efficient. I asked @EG4_Jarrett about this and I am wondering if the battery heaters are just running all the time because the...

Dead short across the terminals

Well, just continuing to monitor, my lifetime charge/discharge efficiency is right around 85% at this point. Not bad. Not amazing. Kind of what you'd expect, I suppose. The few days where it dipped lower than that - I can't really explain still. Maybe ac charging is less efficient? Maybe the...

Ok well, for mechanical fastening I think 5 chase nipples with locknuts are going to be stronger than 4 m4 fasteners or whatever. But still no idea how to ground the box itself. Maybe I'll just drill and scuff up the paint and bolt in a grounding lug?

Don't know if it does.

edit: removed

If the LOAD wiring and subpanel bus support it, though, do I really need a subpanel breaker smaller than 200a? I get that it could trip the main 70a breaker if I draw more than 70a, but having a sub panel breaker at 70a would trip too. I guess one is more annoying than the other but it's not a...

The text on the right is what I'm referring to

You can also ignore the envoy, I think, and just literally wire them up to the sol-ark, for what it's worth. But the envoy allows you to change grid profiles and use the CTs etc.

@Markus_EG4 or @EG4_Jarrett - do either of you know? @Luxpower_Gilbert

But I am doing a partial backup using a backfeed breaker

OK, so we have the same experience. Cell temps are there, t_bat just says "2", and we're getting about 80% efficiency round trip. Are you comparing roughly the same states of charge in your screenshots? Also - are you doing a lot of charging from the grid?

Voc needs to consider temperature. STC voc is like 460.

If an inverter meets the UL1741 spec as a power control system then the 120% backfeed rule can be circumvented as the inverter itself can be programmed to avoid overloading the bus of the main panel. I know the solark has this certification. Any expectations for the eg4?

So I've got it attached to the powerpro (not sure how the thumb screws work TBH, but whatever). The opposite plane has the knockouts for the 18kpv, but no way to run screws down for the 4 threaded nutserts on the conduit box. Did I just get an old 18kpv without the holes? No mention of drilling...

DC to DC is probably harder than inverting tbh

Ransomware makes sense if the company or customers have money.

I think officially you can modify the system up to 1kw over the original size without requiring a new interconnect agreement

But permitting doesn't require me to notify the utility company, so I imagine NEM 1.0 stays in effect. I just figure it might be worth trying to have valid permits for the electrical work in the unlikely event I ever had an insurance claim etc

Per this diagram, they state that the critical loads subpanel breaker must be no bigger than 70 amps. I don't get why - as long as the critical loads subpanel is rated for 200a, and the wiring from the 18kpv to the critical loads subpanel can support 200a, won't it be fine? My reasoning: 1) My...

Yes, I was going to ask you the same thing.

Yeah that's my point. There's no obvious ground connection on this conduit box

Also - anyone in the bay area work through one of those third party permitting/design companies?

I don't have a scope. I do have CTs measuring real/apparent/reactive power and PF on my critical loads panel so I could try to plot that but it doesn't really tell us if the 18kpv puts out some janky waveform

Before I retire my old string inverter and have an entirely microinverter based solution (RSD requirements, california, etc), does anyone know if it's possible to just run the output of the string inverter to one of the breakers in my IQ combiner/envoy box? Obviously the envoy won't be able to...

you could pop one open and see if the BMS is from a known mfg, and then go from there Or just open loop 'em and whatever

I have an 18kpv and 2 of the EG4 powerpros

I don't think the heater is running at all based on the cell temps (which basically are tracking the ambient temperature, it's not like they're getting cooked). And the 96.7% LFP inefficiency wasn't included in the original post, was it?

I could throw the inverter in an off-grid mode, then watch the reported battery discharge rate vs the measured power (incl power factor) on the LOAD terminals and see if they're congruent? Here's another graph just looking at Jan 15th through the 19th - going from 32% SOC up and down back to...

Do both

I wasn't suggesting doubling up on a breaker in the subpanel. Basically, the IQ combiner is a PV aggregation subpanel that has 4 inputs (breakers). 2 of them are in use with 20a breakers, and I have 2 open slots. The whole IQ combiner lands on a single backfeed breaker in the main panel. Rather...

I sample the 18kpv's battery charge and battery discharge sensors every 5 seconds and integrate the curve

In this case does the 200a load breaker in the 18kpv qualify? To me it seems that running 3/0 from the 18kpv to the critical load main-lug-only subpanel would reflect the 200a load breaker minimum wire size

Actually I now dont think this is true. The internet is littered with stuff to the contrary. Maybe the best thing to do is just see if I can get a hybrid inverter and batteries permitted. At that point the only questionable thing is the amount of PV but that's a separate problem I guess. Any...

OK, I looked at how my sums compare to what EG4 records as "daily battery discharge". My integral tracks the "total power in" pretty accurately (the curves follow each other) but EG4's "daily discharge" reads much higher than what I'm seeing from the instantaneous stats. I wonder if the power...

Yeah, I don't think it's cold enough to necessitate that, but it's also inconsistent. Here's data from the 16th, where the divergence only starts at 7pm?

Also, other days, it seems pretty spot on:

That certainly sucks. I wonder if they'll let me swap in a hybrid inverter solely in a grid-tie configuration though.

Can you unclamp one of the CTs from the inputs, then evaluate what your meter says vs the 18kpv for the remaining input? Then re-attach the other CT, detach the first one, and do the same? This gives us some more troubleshooting data that might explain the problem. Also - read your settings...

I suppose but I really doubt it given the cell temps, ambient temp, and the fact that I didn't have the firmware that ostensibly turns on the heater outside of charging windows

Mine doesnt' do that, and i'm not using "charge first" but who knows?

I've got a system installed around 2011 on my roof that has 36 250w panels in a 12s3p configuration. PVWatts says the most I get (and I can confirm) is around 7200w a/c out of the setup since it's kind of west-facing. It currently runs to a Fronius 10.0 ig plus inverter that everyone claims is...

Note to anyone else - this information is really annoying (impossible?) to derive from the 18kpv telemetry, so with the 18kpv you're almost forced to tap into the envoy telemetry. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough but it's not there in any of the basic feeds, and may be derived implicitly by the...

It ended up being far more powerful just to use home assistant directly.

yeah, so 450w total. i dont' see that at play here.

I hear you but I have a meter main combo that doesn't let me interrupt to run to the 18kpv. It has two bolt on jumper bars after the main breaker that theoretically could go to the 18kpv but I'm not sure that modification is allowed. (See attached)

The main panel will still have a 70a breaker feeding the GRID input of the 18kpv. I'm talking about the breaker size on the critical loads panel.

Is this all I'm allowed to change remotely, or is the site down? Tried with a few different browsers. The app works, but obviously has limited settings:

are you guys upgrading the lcd firmware too?

Main panel is protected by the 70a breaker on the main panel.

Yeah I think even using eg4s own magical totals, which may or may not be better than my method, it's still like 84.5% efficient

Right - And even to the extent that i'll never see 200a at the critical load panel input, I don't get why I have to limit it just because i'm using a backfeed breaker at the main panel versus a line side tap

home assistant gang here

Using tamarack now. Longer rails seem better if you can score them locally since there's less fiddling with heights to get things coplanar

Hmm. That doesn't seem right and I really don't think it should be needed to isolate your PV ground, but i'm not an EE. It sounds like fundamentally the inverter is broken - i don't know why the PV only works when the batteries are "on" (i assume you mean the breakers on the powerpros), and...

I can't change the "charge first" SOC settings in the app

Can you tell us what happened here so other people may know what to look out for if they search?

Yeah, I'm running 1312 (or 1213? whatever) and it doesnt' show 1616 available, even though the release notes have it

Right, I was going to connect it exactly like in the picture above (to the LOAD output), and run my enphase crap to the GEN input. GRID would be from a 70a backfeed breaker at the meter/main.

i agree. i paid for it and regret it very much.

Isn't that some app where you set the rates and its just displaying what you set?

No, I get that, but there are release notes for v.1616 that came out in "October" that the app etc doesn't see.

Seems like focusing on deterring vandalism would be better. Cameras if you need them I guess

No I'm talking about the NECs definition of a PCS. Look at the NEC 2020/2023

It's 1.8 (c). Occasionally it goes to 1.9c. It's in the 50s outside here.

Id go with aire for the length thing alone

Could you route to a fused disconnect that then runs 4awg to the breaker panel?