diy solar

diy solar

Adding Schneider XW Pro

Found 16 - 425 watt LG panels, local pickup @ rexelusa Friday!

www.lg.com

LG LG425QAK-A6: 425W High Efficiency LG NeON® R Solar Panel with 66 Cells (6 x 11), Module Efficiency: 21.4%, Connector Type: MC4 | LG USA Business

Get information on the LG 425W High Efficiency LG NeON® R Solar Panel with 66 Cells (6 x 11), Module Efficiency: 21.4%, Connector Type: MC4. Find pictures, reviews, and tech specs for the LG LG425QAK-A6
www.lg.com www.lg.com

They just barely fit in the space available on the shed roof, under the existing REC365AA panels.
(SnapNrack rails are 336.5", 8 LG panels & mounting brackets = 332")

shed_roof_solar_expansion_2022.png
Eight will face West, eight East.
Will be configured two strings of 8S.
DC coupled, (385 VDC, 10.8A)

I read that LG is no longer in the PV business, don't care.
The PV availability is currently a giant mess here, glad to find these!

After the solar upgrade this Winter, I will move the ancient 80 gallon water heater 4500 watt load over to the XW Pro inverters.

The WH timer will be set to run the heating elements (non-sequential) during peak Sun.

If the inverter load is under the 14,400 watt limit, I'll keep the old WH in service until it breaks.
The largest load the inverters have seen this Summer was 9.2kw, and that was not typical.

(The well pump cycled on while all the other loads were active, including the 2-stage heat pump compressor cranked up to maximum 3500 watts, it normally runs 2100.)

If any difficulties with the load arise, I'll replace the old WH w/ a heat pump unit.
 
Today I picked up 4* of Hanwha Qcells 480 watt panels, charge controller, and other miscellaneous components.

Look how tiny this charge controller is! It's teany compared to the XW! I didn't have any bananas around for scale, but I did have a can of spray paint...

PXL_20220928_224517986~2.jpg


Obligatory panels in transport shot.

PXL_20220928_224531186.jpg
 
Here in Florida, after the hurricane. No utility power.
Cannot get more than 500 watts of charge from AC2 (gen) into my batteries. Any ideas ?
Gen will automatically provide the house loads power plus 500 watts more for charging. But when my loads go down, I still cannot see more than the 500 w into batteries. When I have grid ac1 before the storm, I could charge 2 to 3 kws.
 
Yikes, glad you're safe and concerned about power.
Can you share some of your settings in the XW?
Have you tried the simple rewiring to put the generator on AC1? (obviously remove the grid from AC 1)

What is the firmware version on the XW?
 
Keepsake,

Check the AC2 breaker size setting. The XW-Pro will limit draw on an AC input to keep it below the breaker size selection.
The other thing to look at is Generator Support. It may be trying to go to invert to help the generator run the loads.
 
I spent a little time yesterday and mounted the charge controller and combiner box.

The easiest way to run the conduit isn't going to work for me. Simple but ugly.
The area is tight and I can't realistically move the XW or the junction box.

I'm going to try running the short conduit run in flexible non metallic and just run it tight up against the XW.

Don't mind the CAT 5 cable mess, I'll clean those up once the conduit runs and mounting is finalized.

PXL_20221002_045312619.jpgPXL_20221002_045317831.jpg
 
Looking good. I wouldn't be mixing and matching devices though unless you found a way for the XW to talk to the charge controller. Have you posted your battery area ?
 
keepsake said:
Looking good. I wouldn't be mixing and matching devices though unless you found a way for the XW to talk to the charge controller. Have you posted your battery area ?
Click to expand...
I am also looking at adding a non Schneider MPPT to my system. I thought about it a lot, and I am curious to see how this ends up working out. But as I think about it... Other than having the monitoring all in one place, why do these devices need to talk?

The XW-Pro is looking at the battery voltage.
If it is in charge mode and the battery rises too high, it will stop charging.
If it drops too low while inverting, it will just stop inverting.

The Charge controller is also looking at battery voltage.
It only has charge mode. If the voltage goes too high, it stops charging.
If it sees the battery go too low, I think it has a warning alarm, but the load is more controlled by the inverter.

I have used my stand alone 600 watt charger to push some energy into my battery bank, and the XW-Pro does not seem to care. The only bad part is that the Schneider total energy page is wrong. It does not know to add in the power that was coming in from the charge controller. You woul ned to add up the energy from the charge controller separately.

I had thought about adding the Schneider Battery Monitor. Since it measures a shunt at the battery, it will see the power coming from the other brand charge controller. The question is if the Schneider software would get confused if the battery energy is going up even if the only Schneider charging device is not charging?

When 400bird gets it up and running, it will be interesting to see how the software handles it. I don't see it being unsafe at all. It is just a mater of the monitoring.
 
In theory is should work fine, as GXMnow said, both the XW and Mindnite charge controller make decisions based on battery voltage, it should work fine.

I don't expect any issues, outside of spending some time adjusting the XW parameters...

I don't use the Schneider monitoring on a regular basis, so that doesn't make any difference to my uses. It would be nice to have been able to use the Schneider charge controller, but that adds significant experience and the arc fault has no sensitivity adjust. I would be concerned about false alarms and not having any options short of turning off arc fault detection. With the Midnite charge controller the arc fault detection sensitivity is adjustable.

keepsake said:
Have you posted your battery area ?
Click to expand...
Post 289 and 309 in this thread have pictures of my battery.
 
Much better!

PXL_20221003_012128368.jpg

PXL_20221003_012131055.jpg

I also ran about 1/2 the conduit run.
I'm not sure if is was the easy half or the difficult half.

There's lots more bends in the garage rafters.
But remaining half is the mostly straight run through the attic, I'm not looking forward to that.
 
xw4548 never qualified on AC2.
If I send generator in ac1 its fine. And grid on ac2 fails to see a freq sample. ac2 from grid does show L1, L2 voltages, and the combined V, just no Hertz.
Has anyone ever attempted to diagnose or repair an AC board in an xw4548. Mine is out of warranty. Seems a shame to replace entire board for something simple.
Has anyone else experienced this ac2 freq issue ?
 
keepsake said:
xw4548 never qualified on AC2.
If I send generator in ac1 its fine. And grid on ac2 fails to see a freq sample. ac2 from grid does show L1, L2 voltages, and the combined V, just no Hertz.
Has anyone ever attempted to diagnose or repair an AC board in an xw4548. Mine is out of warranty. Seems a shame to replace entire board for something simple.
Has anyone else experienced this ac2 freq issue ?
Click to expand...
This thread is mine. About building my system. In "Show and Tell"

You posted the same exact question in at least two other threads. Please stop. I don't mind getting side tracked, but this is excessive.
 
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