Gavin Stone
Solar Addict
That’s specifically for the lcd screen. That has to be done with a flash drive.
Honestly I didn’t know you could upload firmware from a flash drive on the 18kpv. I asked about this early on. I think Solark has this option.
EG4 18kPV Q+A general thread
- Thread starter SignatureSolarJames
- Start date
That’s specifically for the lcd screen. That has to be done with a flash drive.
Honestly I didn’t know you could upload firmware from a flash drive on the 18kpv. I asked about this early on. I think Solark has this option.
Zapper77
Renaissance Man
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2022
- Messages
- 2,341
That's the LCD update.
FilterGuy
Solar Engineering Consultant - EG4 and Consumers
The phase shift should not be an issue if the inverter is working properly. The inverter will sense the grid is available and start adjusting the frequency and phase till it matches the grid. (This can take several seconds) Only then will it close its relays to reconnect to the grid.
On the load side the frequency and phase shift will be slow and should not affect anything.
Gotshocked!
Solar Enthusiast
Not the transfer switch, the disconnect.
Gotshocked!
Solar Enthusiast
There's no chance of damaging anything? It's not like I'd be doing it all the time, just when the batteries were getting close to 20% which so far, they haven't even come close.
FilterGuy
Solar Engineering Consultant - EG4 and Consumers
One more thing to note: On reconnect, the transfer time is effectively zero. From the point of view of the loads the power is never off.
With hybrid inverters the transfer time only comes into play when the grid goes down. The transfer time is determined by how fast the inverter can ramp up to take over and then disconnect the grid.
FilterGuy
Solar Engineering Consultant - EG4 and Consumers
No chance is a high hurdle, but I can't think of what it would cause damage. From the inverter's point of view, using a disconnect is no different than a blackout on the grid and the inverter is designed for and handles grid blackout events just fine.
Gotshocked!
Solar Enthusiast
On another note, do I need to charge the batteries to 100% then draw them down to 20% for 2 weeks in order to balance batteries for BMS communication? Deep cycling? Is it in the manuals? I didn't see it.
Sean helped me commission this thing. He said because I didn't have the comm hub dialed in at the time that I'd need to set the batteries to lead-acid & the Float Volt to 56.4 or something like that, which I did with him on the phone. The hub is dialed in now and I haven't made the change to lithium yet because I had a female tech (didn't ask her name) on the phone yesterday morning with a couple quick questions and this dongle issue. She told me he must've forgotten to mention it (or did he?) and that I've got to do all the b.s. above.
Which one of these 2 is correct?
Sean helped me commission this thing. He said because I didn't have the comm hub dialed in at the time that I'd need to set the batteries to lead-acid & the Float Volt to 56.4 or something like that, which I did with him on the phone. The hub is dialed in now and I haven't made the change to lithium yet because I had a female tech (didn't ask her name) on the phone yesterday morning with a couple quick questions and this dongle issue. She told me he must've forgotten to mention it (or did he?) and that I've got to do all the b.s. above.
Which one of these 2 is correct?
Gotshocked!
Solar Enthusiast
Can this be used to do download the firmware? ksmithaz1 had mentioned it and I saw something he did somewhere regarding this.
For those of you with connectivity issues, what phone are you running? I ran into some weird issues with another device (smart EV charger) and I ended up using an old phone I had laying around and it connected fine. Some weird wi-fi compatibility with my current phone.
Might be worth a try.
Might be worth a try.
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
The video is but it's all the same. Stick the appropriately named files in the correct folders, turn it on, wait.
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
Coupla times in the summer. You have to format a fat16 usb stick like 8g or 4g. Extract
Mostly what I was alluding to. If you soft-switch to the grid which is tied to the inverter and you are using the "load" lugs, you will be fine. This is the scenario above. If your panel is nailed to the grid lugs, and you are driving the load and you flip on a breaker that simply throws grid power at the same connections it will work, but may give you grief. It might go bang kinda loudly depending on what's running, it might pop some breakers. You could momentarily be out of phase as much as 180 degrees producing a 480V potential between the inverter and the grid. The same is true from the load perspective if you run a transfer switch as inverter primary and grid secondary to load common. This is a break/switch scenario, but your electric devices could see a 180 degree instantaneous polarity reversal, which will cause a significant albeit brief surges. This would not feed back to the inverter at that point, but when you switch back.... Now if your switch time is fairly long (>100ms) it won't matter much.
So Yes/No/Maybe. Depends on how your wired.
Grab a scope or meter. We'll assume your neutral is shared, it becomes the reference point. While disconnected completely from the grid, Put one lead on an inverter leg the other on a grid leg, watch the voltage float around as the outputs float in and out of phase. If you have a scope put common to neutral, and connect a probe to l1 on the inverter and to l1 on the grid, watch the waves float in and out of sync. Now connect the grid to the inverter grid, the inverter will sync up and the waves will oscillate in lock step. Pretty cool actually, but that is what the three second delay is about. If your panel is wired in parallel with your inverter and the grid, and you don't keep it on all the time, ... As soon as the grid comes back you are likely to have a rapid phase shift.
Did that explain the issue? It's not a catastrophic thing, but can cause disruptions and issues. The power company may actually do this to you from time to time as it shifts loads around across town. I'm sure you've noticed a scary brown out or two that made a lot of noise with your appliances and/or AC.
FilterGuy
Solar Engineering Consultant - EG4 and Consumers
I am still not understanding where there would be an issue.
- When the grid is down or disconnected, load C is the only load seeing power.
- When the grid comes up or is reconnected, Load A and Load B would immediately see power... but that is a 'normal' turn-on event that they should be able to handle.
- After the grid is back on or reconnected, the inverter will sync its voltage, phase & frequency to the grid (This could take several seconds). After it is synced, it will close the isolation relays and switch from a grid-forming mode to a grid-interactive mode. If the inverter does this correctly, load C will see no sudden change.
Zapper77
Renaissance Man
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2022
- Messages
- 2,341
How are you coming up with 480v?
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
You just made an assumption: Both the grid and the inverter are down. I said if the break is more than 100ms or so it's not a problem. So I'm happily running along I have the grid disconnected from the 'grid' panel the inverter is pushing power to the grid panel in 'off-grid' mode (because otherwise you are not going to push power to the grid tied panel from the grid right? I could be wrong here.) So I notice the batteries are down to 5% so I throw the disconnect from the grid on and ....
So as long as you are connected to the load lugs, and the grid feed to the panel is thru the inverter, the inverter notices syncs, then switches on it's relay betwen grid/load. If load/grid/panel all tied together you just added another feed instantly, which could be out of phase. If you shut down the inverter, then throw the switch that's fine as well. Kinda depends on how you connected your ac breaker panels.
FilterGuy
Solar Engineering Consultant - EG4 and Consumers
If the load/grid/panel are all tied together it is wired wrong and is an extremely dangerous installation. The load side of an inverter system should *never* be tied to the grid.
Note. In the above sentence, I used the term inverter 'system' because if a MID (Microgrid Interface Device) is involved, the load side is defined by the MID box, not the inverter box.
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
By connecting -240v l1 on the inverter to +240v on l1 grid and vice-versa for a brief moment until they sync +-. If you are not tied they will fall out of phase. I've got a 240v line from the grid connected to my primary inverter. Since only one inverter sees it, it will not activate the relays, but it does keep them in sync, so when the inverters turn off and my transfer switch kicks my loads don't see a phase shift.
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
So the inverter will only feed power to the grid lugs when there is already power there? That could be my confusion. I'm only using the load lugs, but the darn thing wants to bridge to the grid under various setting scenarios. This makes the grid connection only useful if you are grid tied. Original manual does not make that clear, but it makes sense. I know you can't get any input that will only be used to charge the batteries either, I tried everything I could think of, it cuts on bridge relays to the load from whatever input you
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
So the inverter will only feed power to the grid lugs when there is already power there? That could be my confusion. I'm only using the load lugs, but the darn thing wants to bridge to the grid under various setting scenarios. This makes the grid connection only useful if you are grid tied. Original manual does not make that clear, but it makes sense. I know you can't get any input that will only be used to charge the batteries either, I tried everything I could think of, it cuts on bridge relays to the load from whatever input you
FilterGuy
Solar Engineering Consultant - EG4 and Consumers
That is correct. This is a fundamental safety requirement for a grid-interactive inverter. A grid-interactive inverter must sense when the grid goes down and immediately disconnect from the grid. If the inverter tried to power the grid while the grid was down, it would be extremely dangerous to any linemen trying to service the grid.
