Avoiding efficiency losses on the 6000xp

[mattcony]

@AZ Solar Junkie well it worked ! - I had to go out and leave the house but watched it on the web and it worked. Nothing happened at 15% and I started to think it wouldn’t work but once it clicked to 14% a few seconds later it updated and switched to grid. From what I can tell there was no loss of power at the house as I have alerts setup in my home assistant. It’s a cool feature ! Who needs a transfer switch

 

[ChrisSwolls]

Awesome post and info. My XP will be here in a week or two, this will be my first setup that won’t be completely off grid. I’m sure I’ll have tons of questions trying to get this thing setup, I love the bypass idea and let the PV charge the batteries back up.

I just need better batteries now lol

Oh, and I’m up in Coconino. Nice to see other Arizonians lol

 

[ChrisG]

@AZ Solar Junkie, we have our XP running in passthrough at our cabin (AC First always on). Not there at the moment so just running fridge, freezer and a few lights on timers. PV will be connected soon. Based on the numbers on pulling from grid, maintaining battery and powering loads I’m an about 70% efficiency (screenshot below). If I set mine up similar to use using ECO will efficiency be considerably higher?

 

[AZ Solar Junkie]

@AZ Solar Junkie well it worked ! - I had to go out and leave the house but watched it on the web and it worked. Nothing happened at 15% and I started to think it wouldn’t work but once it clicked to 14% a few seconds later it updated and switched to grid. From what I can tell there was no loss of power at the house as I have alerts setup in my home assistant. It’s a cool feature ! Who needs a transfer switch

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Awesome Yeah mine works the same way - always lets the batteries get to 1% lower than your threshold. Glad it’s working for you as well!

 

[AZ Solar Junkie]

Awesome post and info. My XP will be here in a week or two, this will be my first setup that won’t be completely off grid. I’m sure I’ll have tons of questions trying to get this thing setup, I love the bypass idea and let the PV charge the batteries back up.

I just need better batteries now lol

Oh, and I’m up in Coconino. Nice to see other Arizonians lol

It’s like waiting for Christmas . Hello to a fellow Arizonan . It is certainly the best place in the country to do solar, eh? Couldn’t ask for more sun. I used to look forward to the winter - but solar is making me look forward to summers too

 

[AZ Solar Junkie]

@AZ Solar Junkie, we have our XP running in passthrough at our cabin (AC First always on). Not there at the moment so just running fridge, freezer and a few lights on timers. PV will be connected soon. Based on the numbers on pulling from grid, maintaining battery and powering loads I’m an about 70% efficiency (screenshot below). If I set mine up similar to use using ECO will efficiency be considerably higher?
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Yeah once you have solar coming in you’ll be able to disable AC charging so it will only charge with solar and only use the grid for bypass when the batteries are low, then you’ll essentially have 100% efficiency as far as it will only pull exactly the power demanded by the loads.

 

[Buff]

@AZ Solar Junkie, we have our XP running in passthrough at our cabin (AC First always on). Not there at the moment so just running fridge, freezer and a few lights on timers. PV will be connected soon. Based on the numbers on pulling from grid, maintaining battery and powering loads I’m an about 70% efficiency (screenshot below). If I set mine up similar to use using ECO will efficiency be considerably higher?
View attachment 203936

I see the same thing when in AC first even if AC charging is disabled. It continuously bumps between a low wattage charge and discharge and uses about 60w on top of it. When not using AC first and only doing EOD it switches to a "different" bypass that has the 100% efficiency and import is the same as the consumption power. I wish AC first mode used this "different" bypass and not the weird battery thing.

 

[ChrisG]

Yeah once you have solar coming in you’ll be able to disable AC charging so it will only charge with solar and only use the grid for bypass when the batteries are low, then you’ll essentially have 100% efficiency as far as it will only pull exactly the power demanded by the loads.

I’m surprised how 4 watts in to maintain battery decreases efficiency that much.

 

[Buff]

I’m surprised how 4 watts in to maintain battery decreases efficiency that much.

I think because in AC first it has the charger/inverter on also which has ~60w overhead. Seems the EOD bypass is straight through and doesn't do this which is why there is essentially no loss from grid to consumption. I couldn't find a way to get to this straight through bypass other than EOD.

 

[ChrisG]

I think because in AC first it has the charger/inverter on also which has ~60w overhead. Seems the EOD bypass is straight through and doesn't do this which is why there is essentially no loss from grid to consumption. I couldn't find a way to get to this straight through bypass other than EOD.

And this require Battery ECO mode also?

 

[AZ Solar Junkie]

And this require Battery ECO mode also?

I believe so - see the working modes doc attached to this post- https://diysolarforum.com/posts/1007676/

 

[mattcony]

@AZ Solar Junkie looking for any suggestions here - so my battery ran out during the night (I raised the cut off to 20%). The bypass kicked in as expected but now the sun is up and my solar should have started to recharge but it hasn't. 07:30am is when I see charging start at the moment (April). Voltage is good. When I tested it the 1st time it was during the day and the PV was already active (see my screen shots above).

Have I messed up my settings somehow or do I have a problem?

 

[AZ Solar Junkie]

@AZ Solar Junkie looking for any suggestions here - so my battery ran out during the night (I raised the cut off to 20%). The bypass kicked in as expected but now the sun is up and my solar should have started to recharge but it hasn't. 07:30am is when I see charging start at the moment (April). Voltage is good. When I tested it the 1st time it was during the day and the PV was already active (see my screen shots above).

Have I messed up my settings somehow or do I have a problem?

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The only potential issue I see with your settings is that you have the discharge cut-off and the on grid EOD thresholds set to the same value. I always set the discharge cut-off threshold to be lower by a couple percentage points.

 

[EG4TechSolutionsTeam]

@AZ Solar Junkie looking for any suggestions here - so my battery ran out during the night (I raised the cut off to 20%). The bypass kicked in as expected but now the sun is up and my solar should have started to recharge but it hasn't. 07:30am is when I see charging start at the moment (April). Voltage is good. When I tested it the 1st time it was during the day and the PV was already active (see my screen shots above).

Have I messed up my settings somehow or do I have a problem?

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If you could DM the serial number for the inverter, I can take a look.

 

[Buff]

@AZ Solar Junkie looking for any suggestions here - so my battery ran out during the night (I raised the cut off to 20%). The bypass kicked in as expected but now the sun is up and my solar should have started to recharge but it hasn't. 07:30am is when I see charging start at the moment (April). Voltage is good. When I tested it the 1st time it was during the day and the PV was already active (see my screen shots above).

Have I messed up my settings somehow or do I have a problem?

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Not sure how big your array is but I've noticed with my smallish array the PV charging/inverting doesn't turn on until there is about 50-60 watts of solar being produced. I assume this is because the inverter uses about that when using PV power.

 

[mattcony]

UPDATE: I had to leave the house yesterday BUT at around 08:30 the PV kicked in and it did start to charge but I lost a good hour of typical PV input. Fast forwards to today, my batterys are in good shape and i'm not on bypass and my solar is already charging at 7am as expected.

@EG4_Jared I will send you my serial, thanks for the offer

 

[Cropper]

New here, trying to wrap my head around this setup. In order to have the load carried by the PV / Battery / Grid Power but only allow battery to be charged by PV is as follows:

Setting 20 - must be enabled to allow bypass mode function for this setup.

Setting 12 - End of Discharge Cutoff SOC value must be greater than the SOC Start in value in (Setting 14)

Setting 14 - enabled, start and end set, times don’t matter

Example:

Setting 20 (Enabled)

Setting 12 (25%)

Setting 14 Start (20%) End (80%)

PV and Battery will power load until the battery reached 25% (Setting 12) at which point grid only powers the load. If sun is out PV will charge battery to 10% above 80% set in (Setting 14) Once battery reaches 90% (10% + 80%) the process repeats.

Got that correct?

 

[EG4TechSolutionsTeam]

Setting 11 determines the on-grid cutoff SOC/Voltage, instructing the inverter to switch to grid power when it's available. Setting 12 establishes the cutoff SOC/Voltage when the grid is unavailable. Setting 14 controls AC charging from the grid, while Setting 20 enables eco mode, which bypasses all loads to the grid once Setting 11 is reached, remaining so until the batteries are recharged.

 

[Madcodger]

Setting 11 determines the on-grid cutoff SOC/Voltage, instructing the inverter to switch to grid power when it's available. Setting 12 establishes the cutoff SOC/Voltage when the grid is unavailable.

Can setting 12 be set using the app?

We are totally off grid (no utility power) so I want to be able to tell the inverters when to just shut down completely and stop consuming power. How does one accomplish that?

 

[ChrisG]

Can setting 12 be set using the app?

We are totally off grid (no utility power) so I want to be able to tell the inverters when to just shut down completely and stop consuming power. How does one accomplish that?

These settings will stop discharge for EPS and put inverter into a low discharge state of 10-11w.

 

[Madcodger]

These settings will stop discharge for EPS and put inverter into a low discharge state of 10-11w.

Thanks. That's what I've used, but just wanted to double check. I wish EG4 had a master setting in the app that says, "I don't have grid available", and then just doesn't even show all the useless (to off-gridders) grid settings.

 

[doc3g]

Thanks for this thread. I'm trying to understand whether the 6000XP will accomplish my desired goal and would appreciate some input.

My starting battery is a temp solution comprised of LG 18650s in a 14s3p setup (Lithium ion, ~10Ah) just to have something in place. The permanent solution will be the same cells in a powerwall of ~ 200Ah. Given the battery chemistry, I only want to use my batteries as a backup in the event of grid outage.

- PV array is 4k. Plan is to setup a critical loads panel that would draw <3K, with the intent to draw from solar during the day and then have the inverter switch over to grid to run the circuits if solar is insufficient. In the event the grid was down and solar was insufficient to power the load, the system would then pull from the batteries.

Is this a viable option w/ the 6000XP?

 

[TM48]

You may wish to re-think 18650s if they would be in your dwelling. Also the recommended ah is 200 for the 6000xp. 10ah wouldn't begin to support it. If you're cost conscience build your own out of 280ah cells. There are numerous threads on this site to help.

 

[doc3g]

You may wish to re-think 18650s if they would be in your dwelling. Also the recommended ah is 200 for the 6000xp. 10ah wouldn't begin to support it. If you're cost conscience build your own out of 280ah cells. There are numerous threads on this site to help.

I agree, the 18650s are somewhat of a regret, but, I ended up with 1200+ unused LG cells for ~ $300 and I've got a boat load of hours into processing them (shucking them out of plastic, capacity testing, labeling, re-wrapping, etc) so it makes more sense to use them as opposed to spending several thousand dollars on new batteries, even if that means installing everything in the shed.

Reading some other threads, it seems like the 6000xp won't do blending, so I guess I'm going back to my original plan to get a 3000EHV

 

[ChrisG]

Thanks for this thread. I'm trying to understand whether the 6000XP will accomplish my desired goal and would appreciate some input.

My starting battery is a temp solution comprised of LG 18650s in a 14s3p setup (Lithium ion, ~10Ah) just to have something in place. The permanent solution will be the same cells in a powerwall of ~ 200Ah. Given the battery chemistry, I only want to use my batteries as a backup in the event of grid outage.

- PV array is 4k. Plan is to setup a critical loads panel that would draw <3K, with the intent to draw from solar during the day and then have the inverter switch over to grid to run the circuits if solar is insufficient. In the event the grid was down and solar was insufficient to power the load, the system would then pull from the batteries.

Is this a viable option w/ the 6000XP?

10ah isn’t going to work. 3kw critical load panel will pull 62a out of the battery @48v.