I have a very limited space for a home solar system. I currently have 640 watts and believe I can increase to 1280 or 1920 watts. I have a Victron 100/50 inverter and a 2000 watt Giandel inverter. My goal is to add the additional solar and AC charging. To do so, I am considering an EG4 all in one unit. In order to keep my idle consumption down, I would continue to use my Giandel inverter (which seems much more efficient) and leave the EG4 inverter on sleep mode unless I am actively using power during a sunny day and can capture the pass through efficiency. Does this make sense? Or am I missing something? Thanks for any help.
Can I reduce idle consumption w/ second inverter?
- Thread starter awsears
- Start date
1201
Solar Wizard
What is the idle consumption of your current inverter?
OzSolar
Whatever you did, that's what you planned.
Yes, your idea is sound.
Fully off-grid? A two inverter house makes sense for reducing tare losses and you'd also have a 2nd inverter in case one went down. Limited function is better than no function.
A low idle loss inverter like like a Victron Phoenix 250 could run every light, computer and internet router in almost any house. It's not going to run your fridge though but I think you get the idea.
Last edited:
My Giandel indicates approx .4 amps on my 24 volt battery with no load being pulled. I am saying all of this in case I am missing something, but believe it is only drawing 10 or 12 amps in idle mode....which seems impossible when you read that the EG4 and other all in one charger inverters draw as much as 80 watts when the inverter is on.
As a side note, I am considering upgrading my battery to 48 volts. The 24 volt was purchased during the pandemic and there were no 48 volt EG4 batteries available. So any thoughts on that would be appreciated as well.
Off grid in the sense that it would not feed back into the grid, but I would like to have AC charging available for those long periods of cloudy days.
Thank you for your help
1201
Solar Wizard
Why dont you replace the giandel with a victron and add a second charge controller?
I really like that idea and wanted to do that originally, but the details got the best of me. What Victron hardware do I need for AC charging? What Victron hardware do I need to coordinate two solar chargers and one AC charger on a single battery (or battery array)? And does anyone have a diagram of what it should look like? So I became intimidated and began to look for the Plug and Play options that are designed for those of us who are "Watt Challenged." Way to many words to say, if you can give me some insight, I will definitely go that route.
1201
Solar Wizard
A victron inverter charger. Most of their inverters have an ac charger built in
None. The charge controllers are charging the battery to whatever voltage you set, same as thw ac charger. If you have a Venus os device (cerbo gx, raspberry pi) you can use soc for charging if you have a victron smart shunt
It's really simple :connect charge controllers to battery, connect inverters to battery and inverter ac output to loads. Connect grid power to inverter ac input for ac charging
Q-Dog
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Victron Smart chargers (those with bluetooth) can coordinate charging with each other and will switch from bulk to absorb to float to storage at the same time if on the same smart network.
Many thanks. And I am going forward with this plan.
For background, I am building this system mostly to learn, but my stated reason to people (so that I don't look like a person who would build a solar power system for fun) is to provide emergency power to a few electronics in my home like a refrigerator and coffee maker in a power outage. Would you get rid of the EG4 24 volt battery and start over with 48 volts before I commit to this new hardware?. Many have suggested that 48 volts is the only right answer for home system?
Thanks again
For background, I am building this system mostly to learn, but my stated reason to people (so that I don't look like a person who would build a solar power system for fun) is to provide emergency power to a few electronics in my home like a refrigerator and coffee maker in a power outage. Would you get rid of the EG4 24 volt battery and start over with 48 volts before I commit to this new hardware?. Many have suggested that 48 volts is the only right answer for home system?
Thanks again
wpns
Solar Joules are catch and release
Your secret is safe with us. 8*)
wpns
Solar Joules are catch and release
I'd tend to agree, though it depends on the home. Have you done a power survey to determine peak and daily requirements? That's pretty much step one, though 2KW of solar isn't a lot, and if your idle power is 80W, that's 2KWHR/day or 20% of your generation just to keep the inverter going.
I've been really happy with the 18Kpv/PowerPro ESS, though it sounds like you could get away with their 12 or 6KW units, which might have correspondingly lower idle power.
Q-Dog
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Build whatever works for you but I certainly would try to use what you already have. A 24 volt system is easy to build and great for anything up to about 3000 watts. If you have continuous loads over 2400 watts go bigger.
We are happy with both of our 24 volt systems. The small setup in our "shed" uses a Victron 24/1200 inverter and gives us lights and power to run sewing machine, radio, phone charger, fans, etc.
Our "emergency backup" house system is based around a Victron MultiPlus 3000 and keeps the refrigerator, computer network, security cameras and a few lights going 24/7. We have also run clothes washer, gas dryer, electric kettle and induction burner during a power outage. During the summer we run a window A/C from the extra solar, which reduces our PoCo bill. We used over 400 kWh of solar power last month (about $50 worth if we had paid the PoCo for that power).
I built the small system at 24 volts so we can use components from either system where needed during extended power outages, but it would be plenty capable at 12 volts.
We are happy with both of our 24 volt systems. The small setup in our "shed" uses a Victron 24/1200 inverter and gives us lights and power to run sewing machine, radio, phone charger, fans, etc.
Our "emergency backup" house system is based around a Victron MultiPlus 3000 and keeps the refrigerator, computer network, security cameras and a few lights going 24/7. We have also run clothes washer, gas dryer, electric kettle and induction burner during a power outage. During the summer we run a window A/C from the extra solar, which reduces our PoCo bill. We used over 400 kWh of solar power last month (about $50 worth if we had paid the PoCo for that power).
I built the small system at 24 volts so we can use components from either system where needed during extended power outages, but it would be plenty capable at 12 volts.
a 24/3000 multiplus 2 would suit you well, It has a 70 amp AC charger built in. advertised 13w idle consumption.
Two victron mppts can coordinate charging over bluetooth. When the AC charging happens they will likely throttle back unless networked with the multiplus with a Cerbo GX or Cerbo-s GX.
Sounds great, I will attempt to position 6 panels for 1920 watts, add a second victron charge controller, use a second Victron charge controller
Thank you. This seems like exactly the scale and project type I want to attempt.
Sounds great. As much as I will be investing, the additional money for the Cerbo GX is not a big deal and it sounds like it would help the devices coordinate charging. Thank you.
Joel Jahn
New Member
If I have your first post question, correct? Just saying for my EG4 6000XPs they idle at 60watts. I only see that low consumption when only being fed by PV, to just light up the inverter, do anything else and it uses more power in addition. In order to use less than 60 watts you would have to turn it off. You didn't name which EG4 inverter you were looking at but guessing all are about the same. And have yet to see any high frequency inverters use much less.
Similar threads
