Adding storage to my Enphase system

[svetz]

Sounds like you at least did better than here.... total today so far today is is 1.3 kWh (about 3% normal), all thanks to Sally. Of course, far better to have some rain and wind than fire.

...There should be a way to remote reset the inverters...

That would sure be nice! I've only had one do that and I'm pretty sure it was heat related.
Have you looked into the new installer's toolkit? Possibly there's a way to put them in/out of standby?

...All this because I tried a power fail simulation...

Mine have always come back after 5 minutes like the spec says. The Envoy doesn't control their 5 min recheck AFAIK. So, due to a simulated outage 11 of 16 panels went off and stayed off? That seems very odd... possibly the Envoy got into a bad state and told them to shut down? Any similarity in the 11? (e.g., east facing).

... I covered the panel, it stopped communicating, I waited 5 minutes and then uncovered the panel and it is back making power...

Brilliant! I'll have to remember that trick.

 

[GXMnow]

There is some similarity. The 4 lower panels on the lower roof never skipped a beat. They stayed producing power as the XW took over making the grid, along with the upper panel on the far end of the lower roof, which is the furthest panel from the Envoy. After the Envoy and panel power cycle, the next panel to come back to life was the one CLOSEST to the power tie in on the upper roof. The other 3 on the lower roof did not come on until I did the panel cover and open again. The last one, I only covered for about 2 minutes and it came right up. So I don't think they need to lose the DC input for long to do a reset. In the Enphase Installer Toolkit, the ones that are still offline are saying "AC Frequency Out Of Range Grid Instability" on the Status line.

Even with the power cut and such, I have still managed to produce 5.7 KwH so far today. Will likely hit close to 7 KWH by the time I lose all sun at 7 pm. Enough is poking through the smoke to make a dull shadow. 2 days ago, I could not make a shadow even at high noon. The sun was just a brighter glow in the sky. But with all 16 panels working, I did still top 9 KWH's of production that day. Today certainly would have been higher without the inverters going offline.

If I do scroll to the bottom of the Enphase Installer Toolkit, there is a "Power Production Enable" slide switch. I can try cycling that and see if it will wake them up, but I doubt it. The processors in the iQ7's just think my grid is still out of frequency range. It makes no sense. One thought I had was changing the grid profile. But I don't need Enphase looking at my logs and wondering what I am doing poking around.

 

[GXMnow]

So I got brave and just tried the "Disable Production" switch. On my XW I could watch the power drop by about 100 watts as each micro turned off 1 at a time. IT went all the way to zero power coming in from the XW output. I waited until the toolkit app confirmed all 16 were shut down. That took another 2-3 minutes. Then I flipped it back on. The power went back up in steps of about 100 watts, and, stopped at 1,000 watts with 9 inverters. The other 7 are still offline. Same Error "AC Frequency Out Of Range"

 

[GXMnow]

At 3 PM, over 4 hours after my power fail test, I got an automated e-mail from Enphase Enlighten.

Enlighten has detected a production issue on this system.

 

[GXMnow]

Some good news, as expected, when the sun came back up this morning, all 16 of my panels are back producing power properly, so my power fail test did not damage anything. I have a service ticket in to Enphase to try and find out why they locked out like that. Maybe a software update is in order.

 

[Hedges]

He says Enphase is pushing a firmware upgrade to fix the problem.

Remote updates is the bane of good software development.

 

[Ampster]

Remote updates is the bane of good software development.

I agree but it allows the hardware to be sold earlier. I waited a year and a half for the AC coupling firmware upgrade on my Outback Skybox but was happy using it without that feature in the meantime.

 

[Hedges]

I agree but it allows the hardware to be sold earlier. I waited a year and a half for the AC coupling firmware upgrade on my Outback Skybox but was happy using it without that feature in the meantime.

HP will sell you an oscilloscope with limited memory.
Later if you give them more money, they will sell you the code to access additional memory already installed.
Software lets them sell you hardware that you already own.

Without having to make a service call.
Rumor has it that in the early days, if you paid IBM for a RAM upgrade, service tech would show up with a pair of dikes and snip a jumper.

Upgrades deployed later after they've been developed is good.
Correcting latent bugs in a digitally programmed circuit breaker, throttle/brake control system, pacemaker? ... not so much

But giving us features we can break into for free? That's great.
I have a Tek scope with 1 Ghz, 4 GS/s specs. I've read where you can change a filter on the lower end models to improve bandwidth (and you can add RAM).

ITAR controlled my

 

[Ampster]

No doubt there have been abuses. I am driving an EV that has five cameras and a massive dual cpu board. It would let me upgrade to full self driving if i want to pay $4,000. However I did get software updates that gave me a warning if an event happened while parked and I could take the USB memory card to my computer and review it. Later I got an update and a viewer app that now lets me view an event from the car right after it happens. That is what I call continous improvement and adds value to a one year old vehicle.

 

[GXMnow]

I really don't like the pay per feature digital keys. I sure hope it does not turn into Schneider wanting me to pay another $500 to add working "Time of Use" shift capability.

 

[Ampster]

@GXMnow, did you get your Enphase dropout issue resolved? The guy on the other forum has all his running, but still sees ocassional drop outs. He did mention the
community.enphase.com forum and some relevant comments there if that helps.

 

[GXMnow]

Yes, all 16 inverters came up fine with the sun. I also got a reply from Enphase tech support, they are pulling the logs from my system to see if they can tell why they locked offline.

I'll take a look at that Enphase forum tomorrow. I worked a log day today, and have a full 8 hour again tomorrow.

Since I was working all day, I was not here to switch my system to discharge until about 7:30 so it didn't pull the battery down much at all. It's still at 55.6 volts. I think I will leave it in discharge and just lower the current a bit for tomorrow for the 4 to 9 pm ToU. I have to finish the PLC code. I have all the routines working, but I need to chain them together into a program. I am also trying to make it easy to configure so other's with an XW can use it also.

 

[GXMnow]

I finally got a decent response back from Schneider, thanks to Real Goods. And Enphase got back to me as well. Evidently they have had a few others lock out like mine and they are looking into the cause. Evidently this has happened on people with a Tesla Powerwall. Hmmm. The Rule 21 grid profile may be the culprit.

As for Schneider, no real answers yet, but the guy I am in contact with at least seems to understand what is going on and he is remoting into my Gateway to look at how things are operating. I gave them a little remark about how the Skybox is able to do "Time of Use". I can't tell if they are looking yet, but I did make a habit of changing the charge rate a few times to match my solar production today. I actually got the battery topped out shortly after 2 PM while still exporting some. But the battery did only need 5.3 KWH's since it didn't grid sell the whole time yesterday. Air quality is still not great, but it is obviously much better as I was able to produce 22.4 KWH's yesterday, and no track to top 20 KWH's today, even with a few drops due to spotty clouds. It also helps that it is ONLY 96F out today.

Time to get back up to speed on the PLC programming after actually working my real job for 3 days. They called in a few of us to help replace some sloppy wiring that was done in a rush a few years ago. The venue has been closed due to Covid, so we got in and ripped out the garbage and ran fresh cables and moved the gear from temp racks in wall cavities to a proper serviceable equipment room.

 

[GXMnow]

So last night and again this morning, my Conext Gateway has decided to start vanishing from my network. I am wondering if the Schneider tech is poking around and it's locking up. I had it connected via WiFi and to get it back on network, I have had to cycle the power at it. When it stops talking to the web app, it also would not reply to a ping even. A few times before, I would have to re-open the web page, and okay the non secure link, but when it did that, I could still ping the box. I sent another reply to Schneider to see if they were in the box. Of course, no reply yet. I ran a cable out to it, just temp for now, draped across the floor and going through a door, but let's see if it stays on the network with hard wire. The WiFi seems a bit sketchy.

Almost as sketchy as the sky has been. The smoke is clearing a bit and the peak power is getting back into the 3,200 watt range and it even hit 3,500 watts today, but it is all over the place, dipping down to about 1,100 watts around 10 am, where I should be well over 2,200 watts. The outside temp is hovering just under 100F still, but that is low enough that my A/C compressor (and power consumption) does get a bit of a break compared to the 110+ days. The last 3 days have all been under 20 KWH's from So Cal Edison. Much better than the 6 days averaging over 40 KWH and topping out at nearly 54 KWH's last Sunday at 118F outside. A/C running constantly, hot solar panels, and a ton of smoke in the air is not a good combination. My SCE electric bill for the last 31 says came out to $221 for the power. OUCH!

 

[Hedges]

There's a reason I'm using RS-485 not WiFi or Ethernet.

Finally clear skies in San Jose. It was looking like Mars last week.

My last "Bill" was a credit of $655 for the month.
A year ago the peak time of use was switched from Noon-6:00 PM to 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM. Then I got another notice it was changing.
Turns out I've apparently been getting a credit of $0.45/kWh from Noon to 6:00 PM until just recently; they didn't make the switch last year after all.
And I earned this credit even though I had started freely burning power up to 3:00 PM (start of part-peak under the new schedule.)

My water bill, though, that has hit four figures.
Too bad the electric surplus isn't payable in cash, or I'd use it to buy water.

 

[Ampster]

Too bad the electric surplus isn't payable in cash, or I'd use it to buy water.

You could use that electric surplus to make water.

The Atmospheric Pure Water Generator - Hammacher Schlemmer

Water generator that makes up to five gallons of delicious, purified water a day, pulled entirely from moisture in the air. The water generator uses a micro-computer to initiate a seven-stage filtration system that condenses vapor into pristine water.

www.hammacher.com

 

[GXMnow]

My last "Bill" was a credit of $655 for the month.

$655 credit for just one month? How much solar do you have?

 

[Hedges]

$655 credit for just one month? How much solar do you have?

I put in 10 kW (AC) and aimed it at 2:00 sun to optimize Noon-6:00 PM production.
So figure average 55 kWh/day over the year, much of that during peak rate time, and better during optimal season.
Looks like 49 kWh/day delivered during those peak hours would provide this credit, if balance of consumption was covered by part-peak production.

Now that peak rates are in effect only when the sun don't shine, what I'm working on is paralleling additional panels at other orientations, for more kWh (credited at off-peak times) but same peak wattage.

 

[GXMnow]

So I got my next months electric bill. The XW-Pro has been shifting between 7 an 10 KWH's each day from Peak to Off Peak rate. It averaged out to just about 8 KWH each day, but it was only up for about 3 weeks of the month. We also had some of the hottest weather, and poor solar output due to smoke etc. So it was my most expensive month since the solar panels went up. But had I not been using the XW to shift power, it would have been about $31.50 more. Not a huge savings, but it will add up and help pay for having backup power. If I can get moved over to the Prime D ToU rate, it will save another $10 with the same amount of power shift. I can move some more, but I don't want to work the batteries too hard just yet. For now, I am just using about 45% of the battery capacity each day. The BMS says I have cycled 4,865 amp hours in and back out of the battery. At an average of 53 volts, that is almost 258 KWH's in just under 4 weeks. I hope the pack holds up for a few years of this.

 

[400bird]

Wow, 3 weeks and you have moved 5,000 ah! I hope the LG cells are up for the task.


Down south (SDGE/SCE) and do you see monthly bills and just not pay them until true up?

I am in PGE territory. I can see peak and off peak useage. And a monthly running total towards my annual true up. I suppose I could use that to get a monthly bill. It looks like August 2020 my electric bill was $61. 2019 was $6.