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EG4 18kpv stealing bites from the grid

Electric_Blue

Electric_Blue

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I have a brand new EG4 18K inverter that I just finished the installation on. Today I am keeping an eye on it and I notice that it is stealing little bursts of power from the grid all day long. The unit is connected to 800Ah of EG4-LL and was generating +12kw on the solar but nonetheless, it keeps going back to the trough. I upgraded the firmware inside the inverter from the app and the display firmware from the USB port so everything is up to date as of today.

This unit is self-consuming so I would have expected it to pull power from the batteries before it grabbed it from the grid, and it does pull it from the batteries when a cloud passes by so I am a little confused as to this behavior. I flipped the breaker off, on the grid panel to remove the temptation and it hums right along as expected. No issues with any loads applied. I am not selling power back in my current configuration but I keep grid power applied to be able to seamlessly transition to the grid when my batteries reach my SoC threshold.

I would rather not have it pull power from the grid if possible simply to maximize my own efficiency. But at the end of the day, it's likely only a few kilowatts so I am not going to cry about it. I just don't like lose ends. Anyone have thoughts on this? Here is an image of it rubbing its thievery in my face while I was typing this out. Please dont focus on the MPPT values, it was behaving the same way when they were over 12k and charging the battery at more than 8k. Its not only during discharge.

1693169869083.png

-Jason
 
Electric_Blue said:
I have a brand new EG4 18K inverter that I just finished the installation on. Today I am keeping an eye on it and I notice that it is stealing little bursts of power from the grid all day long. The unit is connected to 800Ah of EG4-LL and was generating +12kw on the solar but nonetheless, it keeps going back to the trough. I upgraded the firmware inside the inverter from the app and the display firmware from the USB port so everything is up to date as of today.

This unit is self-consuming so I would have expected it to pull power from the batteries before it grabbed it from the grid, and it does pull it from the batteries when a cloud passes by so I am a little confused as to this behavior. I flipped the breaker off, on the grid panel to remove the temptation and it hums right along as expected. No issues with any loads applied. I am not selling power back in my current configuration but I keep grid power applied to be able to seamlessly transition to the grid when my batteries reach my SoC threshold.

I would rather not have it pull power from the grid if possible simply to maximize my own efficiency. But at the end of the day, it's likely only a few kilowatts so I am not going to cry about it. I just don't like lose ends. Anyone have thoughts on this? Here is an image of it rubbing its thievery in my face while I was typing this out. Please dont focus on the MPPT values, it was behaving the same way when they were over 12k and charging the battery at more than 8k. Its not only during discharge.

View attachment 164779

-Jason
Click to expand...
If you disable any charge first. Like PV charge first you will be set up in self consumption. As long as one of those are enabled it will pull from
The grid. I can help you if you PM me
 
137W from the grid while solar and battery are carrying the remainder of a 6,654W load is actually excellent when in self consumption mode with no sell back. The loads in your house are constantly changing, sometimes abruptly with appliances like air conditioning, and even the grid voltage and frequency vary a little bit. It would be impossible for the inverter to react fast enough to always ensure an exact Zero amount of power flow to or from the grid.
 
Thanks Bentley. My previous Voltronic 6K units (EG4 EX6000-HV48) did not behave this way. They had "modes", "Solar/Battery", "Hybrid" or "Solar/Battery/Utility [SBU]", and "Solar/Utility/Battery [SUB]". Only in Hybrid mode or SUB mode would they take any power at all from the grid. So this was my reference point. With this Lux unit I cannot really find any comparable mode, rather simply a "Stop Discharging when battery xxx" setting. So it seems this unit is in perpetual "Hybrid" mode.
 
I’ve noticed that my 18K will do an off little dance with the grid every morning and evening when the solar is not strong. Sometimes it does this during the day if it’s cloudy. I have an external real time energy monitor on my installation and this is what that looks like:

IMG_1486.png

Like you, I don’t like unexpected behavior. In the above picture the generation line is a 4K grid tied array to gauge the amount of sun. The power used is not much but the 18K should really keep its act together. @Luxpower_Gilbert: any idea why it does this? I’m on FAAB-1312.
 
Another interesting thing to note on the opposite side of this coin is, I am in the path of this hurricane in Florida. I want to go into the storm with a full charge of battery power so I enabled AC charging and am bringing my batteries up to 100%. However, I cannot find any way to tell the inverter to stay only on Grid power and NOT to use any battery until the grid goes offline. The maximum setting on the "stop discharging" threshold is 90% for both on and off-grid. So while I can charge to 100 I cannot stop it from using 10% off the top once the charge completes.

This inverter really needs a mode setting like the Voltronic based units do. Solar/Battery/Utility (SBU) or Solar/Utility/Battery (SUB) to dictate load source production.
 
You could also set AC charge and set the charge rate at 0.1 (100watts) . The inverter would continue to charge at 100 watts and all the load would be on the grid.
 
Zapper77 said:
You could also set AC charge and set the charge rate at 0.1 (100watts) . The inverter would continue to charge at 100 watts and all the load would be on the grid.
Click to expand...
Very true. There are a lot of settings you can adjust to achieve this but in reality it should just be 1 setting
 
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