diy solar

diy solar

Adding Schneider XW Pro

My main panel is just a single row of breakers. No way to put another across from the bottom one.

And I could not meet the 120% rule with my A/C feed as it requires a 40 amps breaker. The start surge on that beast is 105 amps. That is the main reason I just can bring myself to put it in the backup loads panel. That is well beyond the rating of the transfer relays in the XW. And the maximum short term current in off grid mode is just 51 amps for 1 minute. Even with a soft start kit, I don't think it could crank it up.

Yes, there is a Square D brand knife switch disconnect that cuts off the entire Enphase system. If I add Enphase inverters, my original plan is to put them into the Envoy on a second array breaker. My backup loads panels is way below spec, so there is no issue putting a 30 amp back feed breaker in there. The XW is feeding the other end of the buss bars in the backup loads panel with another 30 amp breaker. So that is a total of 60 amps of feed into a 100 amp rated panel.

The grid side of the XW is on the 20 amp back feed breaker in my main panel. This is my "weakest link". It is easy to make the XW limit to not exceed 16 amps going back, and it even knows how much it can add to the export coming from the Enphase AC coupled inverters, so even if I command it for 16 amps of back feed, it will only back feed 5 amps, if the Enphase is already pushing back 11 amps. The 2 problems are that it can't limit the Enphase back feed, and if the loads draw more than 20 amps, where is the extra power going to come from?

As long as the battery is not full, it limits the back feed by stuffing the extra energy into the battery.
As long as there is enough energy in the battery, it limits the draw from the grid input by using power from the battery.

But we don't have unlimited battery capacity. I need a backup plan for those few times where the battery is not able to handle enough to limit the grid side power.
 
GXMnow said:
Fault F01 means the output voltage was too low. There could be several reasons for this.
The most common cause is an overload situation. The XW is not able to supply enough current.
Do you have the ability to still pull the battery summary for the time that the fault occurred?
What was the battery voltage and current at shortly before the fault?

Once the output FETs failed, it obviously could not longer put out enough power, but was it trying to do more than it's rating, or did it fail for some other reason first?

Fault F55 is an EEPROM memory error. EEPROM is a backup memory for settings. When any settings are changed, the live changes are done in RAM which needs power to hold the values. The XW line periodically writes the RAM settings values into EEPROM which is "Electronically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory". It has to erase a group of cells, and then write the new values, and maybe some of the old values back to the whole group. The most common cause of the F55 fault is if the battery voltage drops too low while the system is in this process of writing to the EEPROM. Some of the cells may have been written bad values, or some cells may have been left erased. It knows the values are bad. It will load default values, and you may need to go into configuration to put your values back. The default values might be unsafe for some installations. For example, it may have set the charging current too high for your batteries.

When I had my BMS do a shut down, I was lucky it did not cause any other problems. Mine was not running at much current at the time. It was actually a bad cell voltage sense lead that caused the fault, so the BMS did not interrupt a high current. The XW just reported low DC voltage and went into grid bypass mode until I got the BMS working again. Had I been off grid, it would have been a much more serious issue. This is another reason I like having at least 2 battery banks. I now have 3 separate strings. So if a single BMS acts up again, the system can stay running on the other 2
Click to expand...
This happened in the morning hour at around 9am. I have an external timer with hourly settings on when to allow grid power to go through the inverter and charge the batteries.

From 6pm to 8pm the 10pm to 12am then 4am to 6am. During the day grid is off. The reason of doing this was to limit the energy we use from grid and save of power bills. Since the inverter does have the option of prioritizing the sources of power. As long as grid is detected by the unit this becomes the primary source.

I have to strings of 280ah Eve lifepo4 each with a separate Daly bms 250amps. However one strings hasn't been working since we are waiting for a replacement of a cell that failed.

The charger is set at 15% it capacity. I doubt this was the problem since at the time of the fault the grid power to the inverter is prohibited by our external timer.

I don't have the voltages or current of the batteries at that particular moment when the fault occurred.

We noticed one breaker had tripped during this time. For overload I believe the cct breaker are supposed to trip off and protect the system.

The electronic behind the cap bank burnt and the Daly bms smoked too. Very strange
 
Justeric said:
This happened in the morning hour at around 9am. I have an external timer with hourly settings on when to allow grid power to go through the inverter and charge the batteries.

From 6pm to 8pm the 10pm to 12am then 4am to 6am. During the day grid is off. The reason of doing this was to limit the energy we use from grid and save of power bills. Since the inverter does have the option of prioritizing the sources of power. As long as grid is detected by the unit this becomes the primary source.

I have to strings of 280ah Eve lifepo4 each with a separate Daly bms 250amps. However one strings hasn't been working since we are waiting for a replacement of a cell that failed.

The charger is set at 15% it capacity. I doubt this was the problem since at the time of the fault the grid power to the inverter is prohibited by our external timer.

I don't have the voltages or current of the batteries at that particular moment when the fault occurred.

We noticed one breaker had tripped during this time. For overload I believe the cct breaker are supposed to trip off and protect the system.

The electronic behind the cap bank burnt and the Daly bms smoked too. Very strange
Click to expand...
What do you have for the solar power? Is it AC or DC coupled? Total watts of panes?
 
So that works out to 345 x 16 = 5,520 watts of possible peak solar power. That should be fine on those EVE 280 amp hour cells. You are looking at maybe 100 amps of charge current, so less than 0.5C on a single string of cells. But you would need a BMS that can take more than 100 amps of charge current. With 2 strings and BMS units, then you should have no issues with the currents. But you may want to set your absorb voltage down to just 54.4 volts with 16 LFP cells. Going into the upper knee can easily cause a single cell to run away and then the BMS shuts down. You need a vey tight top balance to go higher than 54 volts.

To get around my initial problem of getting the XW to charge, I had thought about forcing it off grid for some time each night. But as I looked into that, I was concerned about what other issues it might cause. Since you have DC coupled charging, why do you need to pull it off grid? All evening, I have mine running in "Grid Support" where the inverter is providing all of the power I need to run my loads. In fact, I also set it to export "Sell to Grid" a small bit to cover loads back in my main panel before the XW. After 4 pm when my electric rate jump way up, I make it export enough to cover all the loads in my house, even zeroing out my central air conditioning. I don't know if the older XW's can work with the Watt Node, but if it can, you might even be able to program true zero export mode. Since I am AC coupled, Schneider's zero export control does not work. I have to use my own external controller to make it work. With the DC solar, using a Schneider MPPT, it seems to work fairly easy.
 
GXMnow said:
So that works out to 345 x 16 = 5,520 watts of possible peak solar power. That should be fine on those EVE 280 amp hour cells. You are looking at maybe 100 amps of charge current, so less than 0.5C on a single string of cells. But you would need a BMS that can take more than 100 amps of charge current. With 2 strings and BMS units, then you should have no issues with the currents. But you may want to set your absorb voltage down to just 54.4 volts with 16 LFP cells. Going into the upper knee can easily cause a single cell to run away and then the BMS shuts down. You need a vey tight top balance to go higher than 54 volts.

To get around my initial problem of getting the XW to charge, I had thought about forcing it off grid for some time each night. But as I looked into that, I was concerned about what other issues it might cause. Since you have DC coupled charging, why do you need to pull it off grid? All evening, I have mine running in "Grid Support" where the inverter is providing all of the power I need to run my loads. In fact, I also set it to export "Sell to Grid" a small bit to cover loads back in my main panel before the XW. After 4 pm when my electric rate jump way up, I make it export enough to cover all the loads in my house, even zeroing out my central air conditioning. I don't know if the older XW's can work with the Watt Node, but if it can, you might even be able to program true zero export mode. Since I am AC coupled, Schneider's zero export control does not work. I have to use my own external controller to make it work. With the DC solar, using a Schneider MPPT, it seems to work fairly easy.
Click to expand...
Exporting to grid is not an option back here in kenya. So you get my point where I say I limit the power from grid. The policy is still under debate in parliament
 
Justeric said:
Exporting to grid is not an option back here in kenya. So you get my point where I say I limit the power from grid. The policy is still under debate in parliament
Click to expand...
The 54.4 absorb voltage is set at that. At the moment I only have one string working bms is rated at 250amps. Could the problem of EEPROM writing have caused changes that affect bms?
 
After you get the EEPROM error, it would be a good idea to go through and check every setting in the system. It would not directly effect the BMS, but it could easily change the charging voltages and currents.

Zero export is the normal setup on the XW line. It should only supply power to the output side of the inverter. You need to specifically turn on "Sell to grid" for it to push any power to the AC1 input.

Technically, I am not really selling any battery power o the grid. But I do have some fairly large loads in my main panel. These are things I won't normally use during a grid outage, but when the grid is good, I still want to use solar power to run them, if I have energy left in the battery. So I have an external controller that adjusts the sell to grid current every 5 seconds. It measures the power being used in my main panel and tells the XW to grid sell that much power. My utility grid power meter basically stops. But when my battery runs too low, the grid seamlessly takes over and keeps everything running.
 
Knowing what you guys now know about schneider and their poor and inept customer service alongside lazy, uninterested and unmotivated engineering / management....would you pick the same system today? I was thinking of going with a 6848, one of their charge controllers, pdp and gateway ...but they really nickle and dime you for everything. I don't mind paying for a high quality inverter and scp but honestly the pdp and anything needed to communicate with the system like the gateway should come as part of the purchase. I was looking at a AIO unit first to get me going but was eventually going to move to a more professional modular system. The conext 6848 seems like a love / hate unit from my reading; like you guys have pointed out the inverter is rock solid and starts heavy loads which is why I'm looking at it. I'm going to be out rural shortly and need something that is robust and reliable, while I'll not be off grid at first that could happen. I need a solid reliable system that will last, has flexibility to pull from the grid or gen when there's not enough sun/batt ..I think they call that sbu mode. I also need it to start heavy loads like a deep 1-2 hp well pump at about 400/600 feet. From reading this thread and others everybody says the same thing...great hardware but horrible customer service, crappy software that doesn't really work and a company that seems to lost its way on caring and excelling. So, again if you were to do it all over again would you still go with this unit or choose another one and if so which one? I'm looking at conext, outback, magnum. I don't want to spend a bunch of money and have a glitchy system I have to babysit. I plan on a 48V system with maybe some eg4 batteries. I'd add another inverter at a latter date as funds permit for a redundant system.
 
Last edited:
If I was to do it again, I wouldn't use AC coupling to charge my battery.
I think I'd be happier if I went with a DC coupled system. But, I installed the original grid tied solar with no plans on adding a battery later.

As much as we give them a hard time, Schneider has been response to the basic and set up questions. It's only when pushing to to the edge of their system or pointing out weaknesses that they become useless.

Most of my issues have been caused by a combination of not fully understanding the limitations of the hardware and a software update that didn't agree with my set up.
 
400bird said:
If I was to do it again, I wouldn't use AC coupling to charge my battery.
I think I'd be happier if I went with a DC coupled system. But, I installed the original grid tied solar with no plans on adding a battery later.

As much as we give them a hard time, Schneider has been response to the basic and set up questions. It's only when pushing to to the edge of their system or pointing out weaknesses that they become useless.

Most of my issues have been caused by a combination of not fully understanding the limitations of the hardware and a software update that didn't agree with my set up.
Click to expand...
Well maybe but I've see three other users two are off grid homesteading and they both had issues with firmware, stacking, the gateways etc and schneider was totally useless. One of them bought his two inverters from a arizona wind and the dealer was on point to try and help but in the end he got so frustrated he just disconnected one inverter. I think the other guy figured his issues out with the help of another youtuber that installed a dual setup and was also an electrician. Both cases the manufacture didn't resolve the issue. I wish you could stack the SW modules they seem less problematic.
 
GXMnow said:
With my batteries hiding in my garage, I don't have your heat issue. They are up to about 86F (30C) now, with the outside air at 95F in the shade on my north side porch. My other outside air temp sensor is still out of the sun under the eve on the north side of the house. That one shows 102F because it is not far enough under the roof and it seem to be getting some radiated/conducted heat from the bottom of the roof overhang. Have you measure the real watt hours it takes to run the chiller?
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Yeah, I wish I had that option. It was my original hope, but that wasn't going to pass inspection.

When it's hot out the pack gets up to ambient even with 2" of foam insulation and a passable air seal on the lid.

To answer your question on useage.
There's 3 components to the chiller.
Pump 8 watts
Evaporator fans 14 watts
The one variable is the compressor.
I just measured the current at 85 ambient and got 1.3 amps at about half speed. But, when the ambient temps are higher, that could easily double.
I decided to turn down the speed, in hopes that lower cooling but more coolant movement would better distribute the heat. When I left the current was at 0.7 amps for the compressor, basically just above the minimum of about 0.55 amps.

So, the rough math puts that at 150 Wh to run the chiller for one cycle.

At the lower speed the chiller ran for 2 hours.
I'm not sure it limited the temperature differential.

But, the worst news is not a surprise for anyone. I've got a coolant leak ?
This coming weekend I'll be taking out the top pack to address the leak I found and check for others.
Luckily it is a small leak.
 
realpinochet said:
Well maybe but I've see three other users two are off grid homesteading and they both had issues with firmware, stacking, the gateways etc and schneider was totally useless. One of them bought his two inverters from a arizona wind and the dealer was on point to try and help but in the end he got so frustrated he just disconnected one inverter. I think the other guy figured his issues out with the help of another youtuber that installed a dual setup and was also an electrician. Both cases the manufacture didn't resolve the issue. I wish you could stack the SW modules they seem less problematic.
Click to expand...
Well, if the Schneider thinks the answer is in the manual, they're just going to point you at the manual.

I'm not sure what to say about they other guy not being able to get his dual stacked XW's working. PVdude here did it. I understand his grumbling about the extra expense of purchasing the adjustment tool. But, other than that it seemed straightforward.

If there's any question/concern about install or needing support, I recommend an Outback Radian. At the very least, so you don't hold it against me if your unhappy with the Schneider.
 
400bird said:
Well, if the Schneider thinks the answer is in the manual, they're just going to point you at the manual.

I'm not sure what to say about they other guy not being able to get his dual stacked XW's working. PVdude here did it. I understand his grumbling about the extra expense of purchasing the adjustment tool. But, other than that it seemed straightforward.

If there's any question/concern about install or needing support, I recommend an Outback Radian. At the very least, so you don't hold it against me if your unhappy with the Schneider.
Click to expand...

400bird said:
Well, if the Schneider thinks the answer is in the manual, they're just going to point you at the manual.

I'm not sure what to say about they other guy not being able to get his dual stacked XW's working. PVdude here did it. I understand his grumbling about the extra expense of purchasing the adjustment tool. But, other than that it seemed straightforward.

If there's any question/concern about install or needing support, I recommend an Outback Radian. At the very least, so you don't hold it against me if your unhappy with the Schneider.
Click to expand...
Nah man, I'd hold it again the producer. Isn't Schneider made in America, if so I expect top notch support.
 
realpinochet said:
Knowing what you guys now know about schneider and their poor and inept customer service alongside lazy, uninterested and unmotivated engineering / management....would you pick the same system today?
Click to expand...

I haven't used Schneider inverters (just electrical panels/breakers) so can't comment on them.
I use SMA Sunny Island, Sunny Boy (and now TriPower), have split phase and 3-phase systems.
I would do the same thing for off-grid.
 
Before I got the PLC control working, I would not think of getting another Schneider, BUT...

Now that I have the PLC control, the Schneider XW-Pro can do things very few inverter/charger units can. The ability to very quickly adjust the output current in both charging and grid sell with quite fine adjustments is great. It is just kind of sad that you need another device to do the control. There is no reason at all that they couldn't build the control I am doing into the Gateway (Insight) firmware. I had it doing optimized AC coupled battery charging without any external sensors, only using the data from the internal current/power metering. I only had to add the extra power meters to be able to zero my grid side while powering loads back in my main panel. And the XW-Pro CAN do that if it is DC coupled and you add the WattNode power meter. For the price of the WattNode I got my PLC and the pair of PZEM-016 power meters, and still have money left over. It is not "revenue grade" metering, but t is sure close enough for what we are doing.

I would not be surprised if other high end inverters can do what we are doing with the XW-Pro, but when I tried to find data control information, I struck out on most of the others. With the Schneider, we were able to find the complete register map with some details on how to use them. 400bird and I are using some different registers, so our controls are not the same, but the results are close. I totally trust the design and build quality of the device, and I am not at all nervous about having all that power running through it. I know what 4,000 watts can do. One marginal connection can make for a bad day. It runs cool, it's pretty efficient, and it has a lot of headroom to handle surges without breaking a sweat.

I have mixed feelings about the whole AC vs DC coupling issue. If I was designing a fully off grid system, I think I would still use BOTH. Use enough AC coupled microinverters to supply all of your sun up power needs, AND install enough DC charge controller coupled solar to supply all of your night time energy needs. That way you get the best efficiency at all times. Since I am staying grid tied for the foreseeable future, I lean a bit towards the AC coupling as it easily exports all the extra solar once the battery is full. But when off grid, if all the loads are supplied, and the battery is full, you really just have to curtail off the power, or run dump loads.

On paper, the Sol-Ark looks great. But I am just not a fan boy. The 12K inverter section seems a bit on the weak side, with no real headroom over it's rating, on each leg of the split phase. I have not seen anyone test their new 15K under demanding loads yet. Did they address the short term overload issues? The 12K also had some limitations on AC coupling, and it seems to need a fair bit of DC coupled solar to properly work. At the time I was adding my battery storage, that was a serious problem as I still have just the AC coupling.

I almost went with an OutBack Radian. It is a very good system. The one thing that kind of scared me off was the grid and output AC connections are spring/lever terminals. I prefer the hefty screw clamp terminals in the Schneider.

So my bottom line... As imperfect as the Schneider XW-Pro is, I am now quite comfortable with it and it's limitations. And the fact that SunPower chose to stuff an XW-Pro inside of their SunVault battery system, certainly shows that a premium solar company is willing to trust it as well. But they also had to program their own controller to make it work properly. Come on Schneider, you really should add these controls for AC coupled charging and grid zero inverting with only AC coupling.
 
My Sunny TriPower has spring loaded AC terminals (and screw terminal blocks for PV.)
I think the spring terminals may actually ensure proper clamping force, eliminating a common failure mode of screw terminals that loosen.

There are some inverter features controllable with industry standard SunSpec commands, such as mentioned in this manual:


No Wikipedia page yet (shows up as a reference of one other page).

SunSpec Modbus:

sunspec.org

Sunspec Modbus Initiative - SunSpec Alliance

SunSpec Modbus defines common parameters and settings for monitoring and controlling DERs and their capabilities, such as voltage regulation, setting power
sunspec.org sunspec.org

This may provide a standard protocol for control of many brands. Not sure it is in the smaller residential inverters, but I think plan is for all to be controllable.
 
realpinochet said:
Well maybe but I've see three other users two are off grid homesteading and they both had issues with firmware, stacking, the gateways etc and schneider was totally useless.
Click to expand...
A friend is off grid and has been fighting a Growatt firmware upgrade for months. Plenty of examples of similar issues with various manufacturers if you look hard enough.

Stacking issues... are you referring to the XW-Pro product or the SW? I have seen one user with four XW-Pro's stacked off-grid and reporting no issues.

In general, the advantage of Schneider is that the product lines are well established and firmware updates should generally not be ground breaking, necessary, etc., and that support does know what they know. (Speaking from direct experience with other product lines.)
 
Shimmy said:
A friend is off grid and has been fighting a Growatt firmware upgrade for months. Plenty of examples of similar issues with various manufacturers if you look hard enough.

Stacking issues... are you referring to the XW-Pro product or the SW? I have seen one user with four XW-Pro's stacked off-grid and reporting no issues.

In general, the advantage of Schneider is that the product lines are well established and firmware updates should generally not be ground breaking, necessary, etc., and that support does know what they know. (Speaking from direct experience with other product lines.)
Click to expand...
I think his was xp+ not the pro model.
 
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