ASword
New Member
I’m new here, and I see a few other threads with people looking for advice on their specific situations, I hope it’s not out of line for me to do the same. I don’t see a recent thread with a matching list of requirements and considerations.
I have a house with 200A service, 5.1kW grid-tie solar PV (with sell back) on roof, and an 8.5kW standby generator. Primary and secondary panels, with almost everything on the secondary. Automatic transfer switch that kicks on the generator when the grid goes out. The typical draw is less than 2kW, and have never overloaded the generator, but there are three loads that are on the main panel which I’d like to be able to selectively choose to run during an outage. They aren’t on the main panel because they would likely be too much for the generator, and the secondary panel is full!
So my current issues and wish list are:
I have a house with 200A service, 5.1kW grid-tie solar PV (with sell back) on roof, and an 8.5kW standby generator. Primary and secondary panels, with almost everything on the secondary. Automatic transfer switch that kicks on the generator when the grid goes out. The typical draw is less than 2kW, and have never overloaded the generator, but there are three loads that are on the main panel which I’d like to be able to selectively choose to run during an outage. They aren’t on the main panel because they would likely be too much for the generator, and the secondary panel is full!
So my current issues and wish list are:
- Generator is much too noisy at night
- Generator burns too much propane when lightly loaded (peak efficiency is at about 8kW)
- Want instant switch to backup for a few reasons — the 10 seconds for the generator to start is really disruptive
- Don’t get benefit of solar when grid is down
- Would like to be able to run three of the heavier loads and have some sort of load shedding scheme
- Provide generator support functionality (ie supplement generator output based on current load)
- This would just leave two 240v breakers on the main panel which definitely don’t need to be backed up, so would ideally like to replace the big empty main panel with something more space effective
- Want potential to add more PV, but can’t increase the amount of sell back I am currently allowed
- Power company just introduced time of use billing option, so want to use a battery to leverage this
- Strong surge and imbalance capability because a power reset event would be a serious marital issue
- Control interface with which I can programmatically control the system, preferably Ethernet
- Schneider 6.8kW XW pro — when I started looking into this over a year ago, this looked like the device to beat. Capacity a bit on the low side, but really strong surge & imbalance capacity. Looks like it is at or near end of life now though? And the firmware is less than ideal. But very robust hardware.
- Midnite Solar 10kW AIO — looks like a really strong contender. Has a couple of smart loads, but not enough and they wouldn’t work if inverter fails.
- EG4 GridBoss/Flexboss21 — has become my leading candidate since I became aware of it. Only system that directly solves the main panel issue and the smart loads. GridBoss looks like it’ll keep working even if inverter fails, plus it has a bypass that will power most from the grid although I think we lose generator if GB itself is put into bypass. Looks like some approvals still pending, but I’m at least six months away yet. This one looks like the simplest wiring job.
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