Schneider XW Vs Eg4 chargeverter charging.

I am still learning my setup and being off grid in general.

currently I only have my Schneider XW, four 5kw rack batteries and a Chargeverter with a small Ish Gen (no solar fitted as yet)

I've been charging my batteries via my chargeverter as most people seem to do (I just copied without thinking as I had too much to learn all in one go) but it's got me thinking.

I can only set the Voltage and amperage on my chargeverter, whereas I can do all that with my Schneider PLUSS I can set the charging parameters.

yes with the chargeverter, I have the battery BMS looking after things, But the more I read, the more I like the idea of the battery BMS being the second line of defence.

what are your thoughts and opinions plz ???

Ps, keep it simple as I am still learning.

Every situation is different.
Do what works best for you.
There are a few reasons why using the on board AC charger is problematic.
A cheap generator with low output or very dirty output.
Or maybe you don't want to have to transfer completely over to grid in order to charge.
Or maybe you want to keep your system isolated from the grid.
This is where the Chargeverter shines.

I do wish to be off grid completely, (for now)

I found it interesting that the chargeverter only allows you to set the voltage and amperage, nothing else.

at least with a MPPT or Using my Shneider, I have control over other charge paramotors.

don't get me wrong, I like my Chargverer, but I am thinking it's not the way to do things for my set up.

I can't see a good reason NOT to use the Schneider to charge over the chargeverter

if anyone has a good reason NOT to use the Schneider over the chargeverter, please chirp in

Urge38 said:

I do wish to be off grid completely, (for now)

I found it interesting that the chargeverter only allows you to set the voltage and amperage, nothing else.

at least with a MPPT or Using my Shneider, I have control over other charge paramotors.

don't get me wrong, I like my Chargverer, but I am thinking it's not the way to do things for my set up.

I can't see a good reason NOT to use the Schneider to charge over the chargeverter

if anyone has a good reason NOT to use the Schneider over the chargeverter, please chirp in

Click to expand...

If it works for you. Nothing wrong with that.
Like I said. The Chargeverter solves problems.
If you don't have problems, it's not needed.

I'm not sure what parameters you are referring to. (Maybe TOU) But the Chargeverter is just a stand alone charger. Voltage and amperage settings is all that you need for a stand alone charger.

Most people with an XW and grid power do use it for charging.

I decided not to because I didn't want to run thick input wire from the grid. I have a 20 amp AC input and 30 amp output.

The xw will try to power your loads and change your battery at the same time. With a small generator this may cause the generator to disqualify.

This happens to me every time my well pump turns on. I actually physically turn it off when we're charging.

The benefit of the chargeverter in this situation is all power goes to the batteries directly and the inverter functions as normal. Ie no disqualifying of power.

The downside to the chargeverter imo is that in an event that something happens to your batteries, you can't bypass and run Ac directly like you can when the generator is hooked to one of the xw Ac inputs.

One last thing. When Ac coupled (not that you are), the xw will not stop potentially backfeeding your attached generator, so you need to either use a contactor triggered by the generator, or a physical disconnect to turn off the Ac coupled solar.

kennyb said:

The xw will try to power your loads and change your battery at the same time. With a small generator this may cause the generator to disqualify.

This happens to me every time my well pump turns on. I actually physically turn it off when we're charging.

The benefit of the chargeverter in this situation is all power goes to the batteries directly and the inverter functions as normal. Ie no disqualifying of power.

The downside to the chargeverter imo is that in an event that something happens to your batteries, you can't bypass and run Ac directly like you can when the generator is hooked to one of the xw Ac inputs.

One last thing. When Ac coupled (not that you are), the xw will not stop potentially backfeeding your attached generator, so you need to either use a contactor triggered by the generator, or a physical disconnect to turn off the Ac coupled solar.

Click to expand...

I might be mistaken, but I think you can disable the Gen support, and so the gen will still charge but not support loads.

XW is a bi-directional low frequency inverter. The AC voltage and battery voltage is ratio'd by the bi-directional inverter. The inverter will adjust the ratio but there is a response time to the adjustment. What this means is if there is a short spike in grid AC voltage there will be a short spike in battery voltage and resultant spike in battery current until inverter readjusts its battery to AC voltage ratio.

When you have inverter charging setup for float mode charging, the inverter will try to maintain the precise float voltage. What this means is if you have an external secondary charger that attempts to raise the battery voltage above the inverter's float voltage setting the inverter will draw current from battery and push it to AC output loads (or grid if export selling is enabled) in attempt to maintain precise float voltage as inverter defines the float voltage on battery.

You may see the XW pull from battery when charging and it switches from absorb phase voltage to float phase voltage. I believe if you have battery type setup for lithium battery it will not pull current out of battery to drop it to float voltage level. In this case it will adjust inverter voltage ratio to zero out battery current as long as battery voltage is at least above the float voltage set on inverter.

Two separate charging devices will likely have some tolerance on their voltage setting for charging. This often results in some bleed of current due to discrepancy in the two devices float voltage settings. Most external chargers will not attempt to pull down the battery voltage if above its float voltage setting.

Urge38 said:

I might be mistaken, but I think you can disable the Gen support, and so the gen will still charge but not support loads.

Click to expand...

Inverter is always connected to AC output. When pass-through relay is closed this also means inverter is tied in parallel with AC input.

The best it can do is adjust inverter battery to AC voltage ratio to minimize AC sourcing from battery. This is limited by reaction response time of the feedback control on inverter.

When you have a sudden surge load on AC output, the AC out surge current will leak through to AC input until inverter reacts and supplements AC power from battery. This can result in generator bogging down causing either generator AC voltage or frequency to go out of range causing inverter to release pass-through relay disconnecting from generator. Inverter will try to go through a resync with generator and reconnect if the generator comes back into acceptance range after AC load surge.

Lowering the maximum allowed AC input current limit on generator port (max breaker amperage setting on XW) will help on AC out surge currents.

Victron LF inverters have a feature called 'dynamic' load shaving. Based on rate of rise of AC load current it will temporarily lower the user set AC input port current limit. This is supposed to give the inverter a jump on catching and better supplementing surge AC out loads, better protecting generator from surge current overloads. Not sure how effective it really is for sudden appearing AC out surge currents.

As others have already mentioned, when the XW is connected to your gen, the "transfer relays" close to connect the gen to the internal AC bus. When that happens, your loads all are connected up to the gen, so if you have a cheap gen that puts out dirty power your loads will recieve that dirty power and also the XW may disconnect when surge loads kick in. Be cautious to not have the XW disconnect on a regular basis, as this will result in "welded relays". (Charging load seems to be the real killer for the relays, rather than passthrough loads!) The AC board costs well over 1k, so you don't want that happening. (The relays are replacable, but most suppliers won't do that for you. Gotta have connections for that, lol.)

In my personal experience it is best to have minimal loads on when charging via XW, using any portable gen! Surge loads such as washing machine or well pump will almost always cause the XW to disconnect. I generally will try to set the input breaker to a point of drawing approximately 75% of the gen's rated continous output, although there are many brands of cheap gens that you will need to set way lower!

A note to remember: The XW's breaker size setting will automatically derate actual draw to 80% of what you set it to. This is to avoid tripping a physical breaker, as continous rating on a breaker is generally 80% of nameplate rating.

One more note. Assuming this is the newer XW Pro, you may need to adjust a bit of backend settings if your gen's power is too dirty. Some people have problems with gens because of the grid interactive settings. There are quite a bit of settings available to adjust in the grid code section via the insight home or facility. Just please be very cautious if you do dig into those settings, as you could very quickly make things a bit worse by adjusting wrong settings!

The jist of those adjustments is simply "widening" the acceptable voltage and frequency settings. However, going too wide will risk damage to you "downstream" loads.

I wouldn't adjust, if you don't have any issues.

Cmiller said:

As others have already mentioned, when the XW is connected to your gen, the "transfer relays" close to connect the gen to the internal AC bus. When that happens, your loads all are connected up to the gen, so if you have a cheap gen that puts out dirty power your loads will recieve that dirty power and also the XW may disconnect when surge loads kick in. Be cautious to not have the XW disconnect on a regular basis, as this will result in "welded relays". (Charging load seems to be the real killer for the relays, rather than passthrough loads!) The AC board costs well over 1k, so you don't want that happening. (The relays are replacable, but most suppliers won't do that for you. Gotta have connections for that, lol.)

In my personal experience it is best to have minimal loads on when charging via XW, using any portable gen! Surge loads such as washing machine or well pump will almost always cause the XW to disconnect. I generally will try to set the input breaker to a point of drawing approximately 75% of the gen's rated continous output, although there are many brands of cheap gens that you will need to set way lower!

A note to remember: The XW's breaker size setting will automatically derate actual draw to 80% of what you set it to. This is to avoid tripping a physical breaker, as continous rating on a breaker is generally 80% of nameplate rating.

One more note. Assuming this is the newer XW Pro, you may need to adjust a bit of backend settings if your gen's power is too dirty. Some people have problems with gens because of the grid interactive settings. There are quite a bit of settings available to adjust in the grid code section via the insight home or facility. Just please be very cautious if you do dig into those settings, as you could very quickly make things a bit worse by adjusting wrong settings!

The jist of those adjustments is simply "widening" the acceptable voltage and frequency settings. However, going too wide will risk damage to you "downstream" loads.

I wouldn't adjust, if you don't have any issues.

Click to expand...

As I said, I am fairly new, and dont profess to know much about my XW (which is the + not the pro)
another note, my Gen is a Honda inverter of only 2.6 kw

from watching a few videos, it seems to me that you don't have to use Gen support on the Shneider BUT you are still able to run the gen as a AC in for charging.

If anyone has played around with the Gen support, perhaps they might be able to say if you can disable Gen support for loads, but does the gen stay active for charging only????

my other thoughts are the AC2 (gen input) is not much different from AC1 (grid input) so relays etc will be doing the same work as If I was grid tied no ????

linked below is a David Poz YouTube vid,
at the start of the vid, David says he will be using the gen to charge the batteries through this Xw, in the next sentence, he says, there is also (highlighted the word "ALSO") a feature for Gen support, and he mentions he will be trying that also

Have I miss understood???

Urge38 said:

I might be mistaken, but I think you can disable the Gen support, and so the gen will still charge but not support loads.

Click to expand...

Gen support from the xw+ manual:

"Generator support allows power to be automatically drawn from the batteries to
assist an AC generator on AC2 to support heavy loads on AC OUT (loads that
exceed the available power from the generator).

Generators have a limited output current and it is possible to reach this limit when
operating heavy loads. The Conext XW+ is designed to assist the generator
when heavy current demands load down the generator by supplying additional
power from the batteries.

In addition, the battery charger can reduce its charging current to the batteries
so the combined AC current required for charging and the total load current do
not exceed the capacity of the generator or trip its output breakers or fuses.

For imbalanced loads and small generators, the generator support feature may
be used. When GenSupp Plus is enabled, the Conext XW+ will connect the center
of its transformer to the AC2 input neutral to act as a load balancing transformer.
This feature will attempt to balance the load between L1 and L2"


***
I've had an xw+ for 4/5 years now. There is no way, gen support on or off to only charge the batteries that I know of, and a surge will definitely knock your little generator offline. Wait...can you charge the xw with what I assume is a 120v generator? Ive never tried. Will it even qualify?

Urge38 said:

As I said, I am fairly new, and dont profess to know much about my XW (which is the + not the pro)
another note, my Gen is a Honda inverter of only 2.6 kw

from watching a few videos, it seems to me that you don't have to use Gen support on the Shneider BUT you are still able to run the gen as a AC in for charging.

If anyone has played around with the Gen support, perhaps they might be able to say if you can disable Gen support for loads, but does the gen stay active for charging only????

my other thoughts are the AC2 (gen input) is not much different from AC1 (grid input) so relays etc will be doing the same work as If I was grid tied no ????

Click to expand...

Your Honda is a 120v gen right? You do need 120/240 for the XW. It won't connect up to only one leg/ 120V.

Always, every time, never not this way...... how else can I say it..... Whenever the XW connects to an AC source, whether it is on AC1 or AC2, the loads are electrically connected to that AC source! The "charger" internally is simply the inverter working in reverse. The inverter is bi-directional, so when it connects up to any AC source it begins to draw from high side to low side through the transformer, and the FET board controls the charge rate going to the batteries based off your breaker size setting (available power) and your max charge rate setting ( max amps the battery can handle). As soon as AC source drops out, the inverter disconnects that input and begins to again push power from batteries, through FETY board, and on through the transformer to 120/240V AC bus and loads.

The charger is NEVER isolated from the inverter and loads!

Cmiller said:

Your Honda is a 120v gen right? You do need 120/240 for the XW. It won't connect up to only one leg/ 120V.

Always, every time, never not this way...... how else can I say it..... Whenever the XW connects to an AC source, whether it is on AC1 or AC2, the loads are electrically connected to that AC source! The "charger" internally is simply the inverter working in reverse. The inverter is bi-directional, so when it connects up to any AC source it begins to draw from high side to low side through the transformer, and the FET board controls the charge rate going to the batteries based off your breaker size setting (available power) and your max charge rate setting ( max amps the battery can handle). As soon as AC source drops out, the inverter disconnects that input and begins to again push power from batteries, through FETY board, and on through the transformer to 120/240V AC bus and loads.

The charger is NEVER isolated from the inverter and loads!

Click to expand...

I live in the UK my Gen is 230V

Urge38 said:

I live in the UK my Gen is 230V

Click to expand...

Got it. That should make things easier for you then! In a lot of ways it would be nice to have single leg 230v and not have to worry about leg imbalances!

I can't give a whole lot of advice on that though, as I have never worked with an XW on straight 230v.

I'm sure the surge loads will caused very similar actions to a split phase 120/240v setup though. So just watch out for your transfer relay!