An Enphase Ensemble Installation

[svetz]

...This is a blog post by Enphase detailing Power Start....

Interesting data in the accompanying technical brief, it confirms some of the suspicions posted in the soft-starter thread about voltage being reduced. The O-scope traces look suspiciously like well behaved devices. Sounds like the voltage where it resets is just a little south of 186V.

...we ...employ a proprietary brownout control algorithm to help cope with large inrush loads called Power Start™. This algorithm detects when the inverter approaches its maximum power limit and then begins to actively reduce voltage and frequency in attempt to maintain the inverter at its limit using active feedback. ...many devices (such as pumps and compressors) will draw less current as the voltage and frequency reduce, this temporary reduction in current, known as a brownout, is often enough to keep the inverter within its operating limits, known as ride-through. This allows equipment such as pumps and HVACs to turn on using significantly less power than what would have been otherwise required (see graph below).

 

[Ampster]

I never liked the idea of a critical circuits panel. They're nice in that you can ensure that the inverter can't be overloaded. But if I hear a commotion outside, I want to flip on the outside lights and see what's going on. Maybe I want to use the microwave, or see the news on the tv, or whatever. Why shouldn't I get to choose? This is America after all!

I wholeheartedly agree we should have a choice. That is why when I rewired my panel I moved everything and used wiring gutters above and below my main load center and my special loads panel. I don't like the term critical loads panel either so I call the one that is hooked up to the hybrid inverter my special loads. If I change my mind and a load falls out of favor then I can easily swing it to the other panel via the wiring gutters.

 

[svetz]

...Ok, now I need to get a FLIR...

Will said it best here.... This is why DIY is always so expensive... it's the TOYS!!! ;-)

...I wholeheartedly agree we should have a choice [e.g., ditch the critical panel!]...

I've been slowly figuring out the eventual automation for here on how to control the power and started a couple of threads on it (smart panels, RF & the Smart Solar Home), but the basics is to measure the frequency to know how much curtailing their is, then automatically flip on devices on/off (e.g., EV charging, hot water) depending on the amount of surplus power.

 

[GXMnow]

I started reading the manuals on the WattNode box. I want to get one anyways so the XW can do "Zero Sell" by measuring my power to/from the grid. But if I can read the data, I think I can also adjust the charge current to also zero out the extra grid current from my Enphase inverters. If power is going to the grid, raise the charge current a small step and check the meter again. Even a one minute test loop would be fine. If I start taking power from the grid, reduce the charge current. Rinse and repeat. Adjust the step size and sample time to make the change smooth but quick enough to keep the grid power within 100 watts or so either way. The XW-Pro already has a control loop like this but only for when it is inverting and selling to the grid. It adjusts the grid sell power to drive the main panel loads and keep the power to the grid close to zero.

Now once we have that data though. If the battery tops out, we can't stuff power into the battery any more, and if solar falls too much, we don't want to use the battery. Now you can also use the data to decide to turn on an electric hot water heater instead of reducing the solar power, or turn off the EV charger, rather than having it pull from the batteries or grid.

 

[GXMnow]

I don't mind the term "Essential Loads". To me, those are the things i want working all the time. Though, I am starting to think, maybe I got too small of a panel. I am using a full size 2 pole breaker for the Enphase feed, and another full size 2 pole for the XW. That only left me 2 more full size slots. I put in tandem breakers to give me 4 20 amp 120 volt circuits. 1/2 on L1, 3/4 on L2

1) refrigerator, stove igniter, led kitchen lights
2) internet gear, pc, living room led lights, maybe more?
3) dish network, tv, bathroom led lights, maybe more?
4) Furnace blower / igniter, maybe add cell phone charger outlets on this one. Furnace only pulls 8 amps.

I also tapped a pair of outlets in the garage right next to the panel. Tied on with breakers 2 and 3.

If we ever have a long extended outage, I can always move over some wires and power something else. My one limiting issue is that I only ran a single 3/4 conduit to the main panel to feed the essential circuits. But if we are down for days, I could easily turn around the solar disconnect and feed the entire panel with the main breaker turned off. With a 6,800 watt inverter, and my solar, I could certainly fire up the A/C for a while if it got stupid hot. And it does do that here.

 

[svetz]

The prime reason for me to have a smart circuit controller is the solar power isn't steady, it's like a box of chocolates. There are some things I'd probably never want to run off the battery (e.g., ev charging, the hot water tank). I only want those to run when there's otherwise excess solar energy. With a "normal" critical circuits panel, once the critical items are powered everything else is just thrown away. Even if wired into your load center, if you manually opened those breakers, you'd have to manually close them to make use of the solar power. It's easy to know from the Envoy when there is excess solar and how much excess there is. So the hope is with a little RF those can be automated so I'm only throwing away solar energy when there's absolutely nothing I could use it on.

Tom Hanks, what an incredible actor!​

 

[svetz]

FKEC doesn't have a TOU... why is the system set to Savings Mode?

I know... sounds crazy right? It's because I don't want the battery to stay at 100% charge all the time now that I've learned it shortens their lifespan. Mine are only for emergency backup, so the goal is to: store the battery at 50% (?) charge over winter, we hardly have any outages then and even at 50% SoC it would last hours. 90% charge in hurricane season 100% charge if a hurricane is coming. Enphase's interface is made to be simple, that is is you can't set things to the wrong values and they take care of a lot of stuff for you behind the scenes. Have to admit, given all the charging and setting problems I've seen on the forums, idiot-resistant is really appreciated.

So, how to accomplish all 3 goals?

It's set as if there was a TOU plan in place with the off-peak (time battery allowed to charge from solar only) is 10 pm to 4 am. So, the battery never charges from solar and drains to the reserve level (95% in the image above) while on-grid. That satisfies bullets #1 and #2 above provided I remember to change the reserve level at the beginning and end of hurricane season. If off-grid it allows 100% charge.

The Encharge has an interesting feature called Storm Guard, the idea behind it is if there is severe weather moving in it changes to the full backup plan for the duration of the storm allowing the battery to fully charge from solar. So, that should satisfy #3. Not perfect, with net-metering it would be nice to have an option to charge from grid while Storm Guard is active (assuming it doesn't do that).

I say should above as I have to see it to believe it. I'm not from Missouri, but believe I've driven through the state enough times for it to be fair. I'm guessing the 90% base charge will give it enough time with Storm Guard to charge from solar to 100%.

But to be honest, I'm sorta impressed. I see the difficulty folks on the forums have as there are dozens of complicated settings with poor documentation and little on the interactions between them. Doing it manually and needing to remember the ins/outs over the years of it's lifespan? I'd have to automate it. So, while what I've described might seem complicated, it's nothing compared to other systems.

That's the theory anyway, will let you know how actual practice works out.

 

[svetz]

This is interesting (to me anyway), Enphase has a "battery" estimator and if you're an existing customer it can read your solar panel and battery data at https://estimator.enphaseenergy.com/

 

[svetz]

Encharge Bug?

It's a nit, but ever since reducing the reserve capacity to 90% (believing a lower voltage prolongs life, see #144), emails from Enphase have started arriving during the "solar charging" window 10 pm to 4 am (e.g., won't charge from solar unless below capacity). For example, this came in at 1:20 AM:

System Alert

The following is a summary of an issue that has been detected on this system.
Encharge storage system’s state of charge is below the reserve capacity of 90% Check Current Status »
1 device affected

As you can see from the lack of battery activity, the only time anything odd looked like it was happening was at the shift to 4 AM.


I suspect what's happening is that the Encharge's are consuming battery power for their LEDs and communications, so depending on their initial state going into the night, one or more (in this case just one for the whole night) flips the reading from 90.0% to 89.9% and it causes Enphase to fire off an email warning me to conserve battery power. The other 3 devices probably started the night at 90.1% and never fell below 90%, there have been nights where I get two emails at different times/devices. The blip at 4 AM is all 4 devices start charging, but overcharge a bit so discharge back to hit the 90% reserve. At least it's clear the battery will charge from the grid too (net-metering has equal rates, so doesn't make a difference when it charges).

Still, nice they send me a warning. I'd rather have it than not and it's a pretty small nit.

 

[svetz]

Enphase Contact Experience

I really like email as a contact medium, mainly as I can put everything down coherently and not have to deal with my cell phone transmission problems.

But email is not the best way to contact Enphase, YMMV. I suspect first level of support is outside the U.S. and often times what I think is coherent translates very poorly so naturally they don't always get what I'm asking. Sometimes leading to humorous results (my first couple of emails trying to ask what they recommended for an off-season capacity got back results: LiFePO4 is not an Enphase product offering, please check with your installer, Yes, you can change the capacity).

Fortunately, they also have a chat option. The guy in chat understood the question right out of the gate, but the response was long enough I'm sure he had to ask someone, but short enough it wasn't an actual engineer. He responded 90-95%. Also took the time to report the email issue above

 

[svetz]

Got an email from the Enphase system that the battery profile changed... I'm pretty sure it was the Storm Guard feature because of Sally. But, their code needs work, it would be nice if the email alert said why it was doing it (e.g., copy the alert verbiage into the email or at least say it was tripped because of Storm Guard).

The Storm Guard feature says it switches for "severe weather alerts" from NOAA. We do have a few weather alerts currently: a flood warning, storm watch, a hurricane warning, and small craft advisory. But AFAIK, NOAA hasn't issued a "severe" alert yet for here. So, not quite sure how the algorithm works, but glad it's coming on early rather than late. Sally is definitely tightening up and intensifying.

 

[GXMnow]

Does Enlighten tell you what the profile is? Can you override what they set remotely?

Once I get my PLC working, I may use the inputs to set a few "profiles" in my XW-Pro. I am hoping to be able to detect when it goes off grid to change the charge settings automatically. But while it is on grid, I would also like to be able to choose how much I have it leave behind after it pushes in during the peak rate time. If I know we have a possible PSPC etc. I can have it leave more in the pack.

 

[svetz]

For all my complaining above about the email, the notice in the events section is perfect! --> Just saw that this morning, also got an email that it had been cleared. ...Does Enlighten tell you what the profile is? Can you override what they set remotely?... YES to both! Storm Guard is something optional you have to turn on too.

​

​

Storm Guard looks to have worked well, to the left is the charge/discharge profile. Kudos Enphase! ...I am hoping to be able to detect when it goes off grid to change the charge settings automatically. The nice thing about Storm Guard is it let's you change profiles based on the NOAA weather alerts before the power goes out. For example in your setup you might not want to discharge to the grid during TOU rates if you suspect you'd have no solar or Grid in the morning. The weather alerts are pretty easy to parse and something you might think about after you get your PLC working. ...If I know we have a possible PSPC etc. I can have it leave more in the pack... That planned outages are the new normal still freaks me out [rant: when/how did that ever become acceptable?] As most of you are probably aware @GXMnow lives in an area where PGE cuts power to avoid setting things on fire. Obviously having a similar feature for planned outages would be way cool. Currently Storm Guard is a free service, but if they ever decide to charge for it I'd just program it in to what I already have. My goal is to have the system automated before I lose the last of my marbles.

 

[svetz]

With Sally we've had a lot of clouds and I've been ignoring the warnings from the monitoring software. One popped up a few hours ago and as I had just come in from outside I knew there were no clouds... I'm like what the heck... sure enough... for the last 3 days one panel has been under performing. Different one from last time (its been doing fine). Didn't see anything in the microinverter status or physically wrong with it, the led was flashing green which the manual says, "Normal operation. AC grid function is normal there is communication with the Envoy. "

As it's been 3 days I doubt throwing a blanket over it will work to reset it. The "health" report says nothing is wrong and it has a current timestamp.

 

[GXMnow]

Do you have the Enphase Installer Toolkit app? I can just click on connect to an Envoy and see the status of each inverter. My ones that did not come up all said "AC Frequency Out Of Range". And they also showed 0 watts. Since you did get some power, I am wondering if you had a panel get cracked. The recommendation I saw from Enphase on things like this is try swapping two panels. If the error follows the panel, you have your answer, it is a bad panel. If the problem stays with the inverter, you also have your answer, the inverter is likely bad. If both start working, it was probably a bad connection between the panel and the inverter.

 

[svetz]

At least the API knows it's not producing and not operating, Enlighten doesn't seem to know.

{"device_status":"envoy.global.ok"], "last_rpt_date":"1600271110", "producing":false, "communicating":true, "provisioned":true, "operating":false},

From Enlighten:

It is producing some power, it also has enough power to communicate.

 

[svetz]

Can you guess which panel is having a problem? Yup... It's running about 144°F, just a little hotter than the rest. I wonder if it has anything to do with the approaching equinox (e.g., longer max power & hotter) as it was the spring equinox another inverter had this type of behavior.

​

 

[Ampster]

That planned outages are the new normal still freaks me out

I am in the same situation and part of the reason i upgraded my system is because of that reality.
My opinion is those planned outages are a direct result of deferred maintenance by the three big Investor Owned Utilites in California.
The payback on my system will come from the money I save by essentially load shifting most of my consumption out of the peak high rate period. As more people do that, the revenue to those IOUs will decline. Their short term deferral of maintenance could result in a long term decline in revenue. It is not a pretty picture.

On a more optimistic note i see that Tesla is able to implement the same kind of storm event charging for areas affected by those power outages. It is nice to see private industry filling the gap left by our requlated monopolies.

 

[svetz]

Looks like my installer reset it remotely... it's producing again.

{...
    "device_status":["envoy.global.ok"],
    "last_rpt_date":"1600285275",
    "producing":true,
    "communicating":true,
    "provisioned":true,
    "operating":true}

There's a message in the events log that the Envoy was rebooted, but that might have been coincidental.
Update: The reboot was from 9/14
Update: Well, possibly not really fixed... still not producing as much as the others.

 

[svetz]

The chronology...

9/8 - Panel about 92% power of it's neighbors
9/10 - Panel about 70% power of it's neighbors
9/11 - Panel about 60% power of it's neighbors
9/12 - Too overcast/rainy for any readings
9/13 - Panel about 10% power of it's neighbors
9/14 - Panel about 14% power, Envoy Reboots, Ensemble firmware update
9/15 - Panel about 10% power
9/16 - Status says it's producing, but reporting about 60% of it's neighbor's watts. Of course the day is about done here so hard to say.

There are a few messages I don't recognize in the unfiltered events: High Skip Rate and DC Bridge Hw Protection.