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EG4 6500EX-48 grid draw increases as PV starts up in the morning

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I finally got my first 4 panels connected to my EG4 6500EX-48 yesterday, it was late in the day when I flipped the breaker, so my input was about 108 watts. I was just pleased to finally have a PV input to the system.

What i did notice right away was that the inverter where the PV was connected was ramping the fans up and down, pretty aggressively, despite the low input from the PV, this continued until PV dropped to 0.

This morning, as I watched the sun come up around 6:45a and monitored the system with SA I am noticing that there's an increase in draw from the grid as the PV starts flowing and I'm wondering if this is normal? I'm not in the room with the inverters, but I suspect that inverter is cranking the fan up and down and that might account for the draw, but hoping someone can weigh in.

Inverter is currently in SUB mode and I was normally seeing about 108w from the grid (assuming both inverters running) when there was no PV.

1676815066805.png
 
It looks like solar started waking up at 6:12. And dropped off between 6:30 and 6:45, then started building up.
 
From what I’ve been told, the idle consumption of the inverters is supposed to come from the AC In when it’s hooked up. It does make sense that your draw would increase with the fans spinning up since PV is introduced. I’ve never paid that much attention in the morning to the grid draw but mines always fluctuating with loads.
 
I am experiencing the same strange results in SUB mode but my line draw when the sun comes up and pv starts up is around 500-600 watts. It reads this with no load at all on the inverters, breaker off.
When the batteries get to 70% and inverters switch to SBU mode the mystery 500 -600watt draw disappears.
 
bones1 said:
I am experiencing the same strange results in SUB mode but my line draw when the sun comes up and pv starts up is around 500-600 watts. It reads this with no load at all on the inverters, breaker off.
When the batteries get to 70% and inverters switch to SBU mode the mystery 500 -600watt draw disappears.
Click to expand...
Trying to remember, I thought I heard someone else mention this as well. Never figured out why though.
 
w8dev said:
Trying to remember, I thought I heard someone else mention this as well. Never figured out why though.
Click to expand...
That was me on your YouTube channel. I will run more tests this weekend. Also, I updated solar Assistant to the latest version and it seems a bit unstable from the last version. Wondering if it could be reporting incorrectly.
 
Solar Assistant only reports the information it receives. If the information is incorrect, it's not Solar Assistant.
 
bones1 said:
That was me on your YouTube channel. I will run more tests this weekend. Also, I updated solar Assistant to the latest version and it seems a bit unstable from the last version. Wondering if it could be reporting incorrectly.
Click to expand...
Hmm, I thought there was someone else as well.

@Subdood did you notice this issue as well?

I haven’t noticed any problems on the latest version of SA.
 
timselectric said:
Solar Assistant only reports the information it receives. If the information is incorrect, it's not Solar Assistant.
Click to expand...
That's not totally correct. Solar Assistant performs calculations with the data it's given, and many times those calculations are incorrect which is the fault of the programmer, not the inverter. There's the well known bug where Solar Assistant will continue to report the last data point that it received while a device was on, even if that data point no longer exists once the device is off. As an example, Solar Assistant should be able to recognize when a charge controller has shut down for the day but it doesn't always do that. Many times I see solar output at night that's obviously not there and Pierre explained that it's reporting the last valid data point it received and will continue to do so until the controller wakes up the following morning and sends new data. It also likes to report a phantom 45 watt draw from utility that doesn't exist. Don't get me wrong, I love the product but there's lots of room for improvement. Maybe one day soon some of those promised "upgrades"(notifications, power management) might actually happen instead of being pushed farther and farther back in favor of supporting new inverters instead.
 
shopman said:
It also likes to report a phantom 45 watt draw from utility that doesn't exist.
Click to expand...
Do you have to program the idle consumption for the Growatt inverters (used for utility calcs). I know you do for the 6500s.
 
shopman said:
That's not totally correct. Solar Assistant performs calculations with the data it's given, and many times those calculations are incorrect which is the fault of the programmer, not the inverter. There's the well known bug where Solar Assistant will continue to report the last data point that it received while a device was on, even if that data point no longer exists once the device is off. As an example, Solar Assistant should be able to recognize when a charge controller has shut down for the day but it doesn't always do that. Many times I see solar output at night that's obviously not there and Pierre explained that it's reporting the last valid data point it received and will continue to do so until the controller wakes up the following morning and sends new data. It also likes to report a phantom 45 watt draw from utility that doesn't exist. Don't get me wrong, I love the product but there's lots of room for improvement. Maybe one day soon some of those promised "upgrades"(notifications, power management) might actually happen instead of being pushed farther and farther back in favor of supporting new inverters instead.
Click to expand...
While I understand what you are saying.
I don't consider being stuck/frozen, the same as reporting inaccurate data.
Being stuck is pretty obvious to see.
Versus reporting something different from what is being received from the monitored equipment.
 
timselectric said:
While I understand what you are saying.
I don't consider being stuck/frozen, the same as reporting inaccurate data.
Being stuck is pretty obvious to see.
Versus reporting something different from what is being received from the monitored equipment.
Click to expand...
Ok. I'll give you a better example of the flawed code. I have some Lifepo4 batteries that began to degrade where the BMS was correctly reporting the drop in state of health as a percentage. As the SOH dropped, Solar Assistant would, and still does, report the drop in SOH as an overcharge in percentage when the batteries were fully recharged the following day. As an example, the SOH had dropped to 99.5% and after charging the batteries, Solar Assistant reported the SOC to be 100.5%. That right there is a flaw in the way Solar Assistant is calculating the SOC. When querying the batteries via the BMS software, all of the data was correct and the BMS wasn't reporting an SOC of 100.5%. As the batteries continued to degrade the loss in SOH always showed up as an increase in SOC in Solar Assistant. Like I said previously, it's a great piece of software and I love it's features but there are some problems with the code that need to be addressed. After uncovering this defect I now use a Victron Smart Shunt to reliably track the SOC of my batteries. As I'm writing this I realized that I need to let Pierre know about this issue. I'm a beta tester and do keep in contact with him when something needs attention.
 
If it's reporting correctly with the Victron shunt.
The problem was with the BMS.
SOH is a useless number anyway. It's a best guess from something that is terrible at guessing.
 
w8dev said:
Hmm, I thought there was someone else as well.

@Subdood did you notice this issue as well?

I haven’t noticed any problems on the latest version of SA.
Click to expand...
I don't have Solar Assistant so I can't comment on that.

But I have noticed that with a constant load, like a small space heater, that the PV power is higher when the grid is assisting, than when you have solar only. I don't have batteries, BTW.
 
Subdood said:
I don't have Solar Assistant so I can't comment on that.

But I have noticed that with a constant load, like a small space heater, that the PV power is higher when the grid is assisting, than when you have solar only. I don't have batteries, BTW.
Click to expand...
I was more thinking about seeing a larger draw from PV early when you were on utility power. Like what @bones1 mentioned below.

bones1 said:
I am experiencing the same strange results in SUB mode but my line draw when the sun comes up and pv starts up is around 500-600 watts. It reads this with no load at all on the inverters, breaker off.
When the batteries get to 70% and inverters switch to SBU mode the mystery 500 -600watt draw disappears.
Click to expand...
 
what do you make of this ??
load is 678w
pv is 190w
and no drain on the batts or the grid
so what is powering the load ? magic juice ?
this is in SBU mode with 2 lv6548 and eg4 batts
SA.jpg
 
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