EG-4 18kw pv inverter, generator won't with it

murmeister said:

Don't get me wrong. I really like the 18Kpv. When it's working, it's amazing - albeit somewhat loud. When it doesn't work right, my anxiety level rises and SWMBO starts asking questions for which I have no answers. If things hadn't already been working, I'd still be in "configuration" mode and would tinker with settings until I got things just right. Having JUST said "Ahh, it's nice to have everything working like it should", after running the generator tests, we started getting the PV faults the very next day. I know, I know ... I should have just kept my mouth shut. I invited the karma demons to come visit my inverter with the firmware update.

All in all, the system *IS* a beast. I expect it will only get better and better. I'm just ready for a little break in the Solar Drama and would like to focus on the tons of other projects I have lined up on my property.

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I had some weird pv issues after move to 1919 also. With 1818 I had pv inputs set at none and it worked fine. With 1919 I had to change that to all 3 independent and no issues since.
I haven't tried gen charging batts on 1919(would only run loads on 1818) so maybe that's fixed now.

nathandeb said:

...I had pv inputs set at none and it worked fine.

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::scratching head::

I thought that would cause the inverter to disregard PV inputs. Is that not the case?

Granted, I just followed the advice of SS in choosing all three strings independently and I didn't research this setting. I "thought" I understood what that option was controlling.

murmeister said:

::scratching head::

I thought that would cause the inverter to disregard PV inputs. Is that not the case?

Granted, I just followed the advice of SS in choosing all three strings independently and I didn't research this setting. I "thought" I understood what that option was controlling.

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I would have thought so too but out of the box it was set to none and it still was using my pvs just fine

nathandeb said:

I would have thought so too but out of the box it was set to none and it still was using my pvs just fine

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I'm going to go change the setting right now and see if my "flicker and beep" problem goes away today. I'll report back..

murmeister said:

I'm going to go change the setting right now and see if my "flicker and beep" problem goes away today. I'll report back..

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and i see I reported the fw change backwards...under 1818 I had it set to independent and it worked. Under 1919 I had to change to no pv inputs or it was constantly drawing from grid. Reported this to @EG4_Jared but he hasn't gotten back with explanation. So to recap: using 1919 and no pv inputs and all is working well

We already had one flicker and beep (it's all the UPS systems in the house that beep) before I switched to no PV inputs. Generally, the inverter just shuts off the PV inputs once the batteries are at 100% SOC. This morning, the flicker caused the inverter to pull from the grid and the PV was still charging the battery. I had two independent paths drawn on the screen 1: from PV to batteries, 2: from grid to house. Perhaps when this happens once the batteries are full, it knows not to pull from the PV since the batteries need no power and it just draws from the grid. That's why I only see grid draw in the afternoon once the batteries have been topped off.

It's the darnedest thing.

One other interesting thing: this morning, the system corrected itself and everything ultimately resumed normal operation (before I changed the PV inputs). I have mixed feelings about whether I want the lights to flicker again. I want this to work properly, but I also want to know the root cause and the ultimate correct solution!

Well, we experienced the same behavior today. Switching the PV input setting didn't solve our problem. Looks like we're rolling back until we can get more info about what's going on.

Jared from EG4 has been helping us and said he'll pass along our data to the engineers for review. No idea how long all that will take. In the meantime - I just want to stop using the grid when we have so much PV and battery available. Hopefully, the rollback gets us back to where we were - functional, but unable to charge batteries from the generator.

Gotta give a huge shout-out to @EG4_Jared! What a trooper. He rolled my firmware back so we can be operational again. Hopefully, things will be ready in the near future to get back onto 1919's successor.