EG4 18kpv questions

[reiters]

I am familiar with grid-tie and off-grid. I have both. I am trying to decide if a 18kpv would be a good choice as a replacement. What I have works but is very complex setup. If something happened to me, my wife could never run it.

Can the 18kpv work as a whole home UPS. I feel confident that 12kw will cover my usage 99% of the time. Only time it might fail is Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner. AC, oven, microwave, lights etc etc all at the same time might exceed 12kw. Will the 18kpv act as a grid tie in grid mode so that I could pull all 200 amps if I wanted and pushing whatever solar I have back but if the grid fails it would switch to battery and be limited to 12kw? I get it that I would have to somewhat think about power if the grid is down. I don't want my wife to have to think about power when grid is working.

SS has an upgrade option to trade in the 2x spf5000es for a 18kpv but it's $3000 (I'd buy 2) that I shouldn't spend. I know I can run from just one but I require redundancy (a spare).

Current setup:
4x spf5000es (3 parallel and 1 used as a battery charger from generator)
2x 6k grid tie
1x victron transformers
6x eg4 lifepower
miles of wires
multiple breaker panels for all the switching options
etc etc

What a mess... But works great.

 

[zanydroid]

(You might have posted in the wrong section for discoverability)

18kpv will probably be simpler but not zero-effort. It would be 10x simpler than what you have right now, but it's not clear how to answer the question of whether it's simple enough. I doubt you can find someone to do remote support for it either, while I suspect it's more likely for there to be remote management services for Enphase and for SolArk.

You may not get automatic generator charge if combined with those grid-tie inverters (usually they use up the generator port, if you want to AC couple them to activate them when off-grid); you would likely want to rewire them to DC coupled directly into the 18kpv to reduce the number of interacting components.

Will the 18kpv act as a grid tie in grid mode so that I could pull all 200 amps if I wanted and pushing whatever solar I have back but if the grid fails it would switch to battery and be limited to 12kw? I get it that I would have to somewhat think about power if the grid is down. I don't want my wife to have to think about power when grid is working.

Yes, that's exactly the intent of these 200A grid bypass/support setups (whether with everything in one box like the 18kpv and SolArk 15K, or with a separate MID (Microgrid Interconnection Device) like with the latest Growatt hybrid and Enphase).

They are supposed to be bypassable with no internal components if there is a problem. However, quite a few people install with 200A service bypass ($1000, which blows your budget more) to provide a external way that is foolproof / idiotproof if something goes wrong. There could be a software fault, or the bypass relay could be melted.

You would need POCO interconnect approval to connect the 18kpv this way (even with zero export, zero export does not mean zero bother / get the POCO out of your face). Unless your existing EG4 LifePower are 9540 listed for the 18kpv you may have trouble passing inspection (since a lot of AHJ will check for this on ESS), so you would need to buy one 9540 battery to pass inspection and hide your non-compliant batteries while they are at your house.

 

[reiters]

Admins feel free to move my post to another section if I chose the wrong one. So many sections to chose from. I tried to get it right.

Great response. I am not necessarily looking for remote support. I paid good money for my current setup to be installed and ripped it all out after they left because it would have burned my house down. I'm a nerd and have no problem managing the complex setup but my wife doesn't have a clue how to run it. My wife is smart but doesn't know electric or really have a desire to learn it. If I can hook the 18kpv to batteries and grid and it just run the house from the grid while pushing any solar I have to the grid (I understand the raised voltage and uses my generation first etc) then that would be ideal. That is what I was thinking it does but I wanted someone that knew more than me about hybrid to chime in. I would be eliminating all my current equipment if this works as expected. I have 24k of solar panels so unlikely to waste much if any due to clipping.

My utility doesn't really care all that much. I gave them a hand drawing and filled out a one page form and they came out and replaced my meter. Didn't care to look at anything. I am way more concerned about their linemen's safety than they seemed to be or maybe they just aren't qualified to determine what they are looking at. Its a small rural coop. They only have 5 or so customers that have solar and I think I'm their second largest. One lady has more solar than me and she does microinverters and grid-tie only.

I have a main panel and a secondary panel. The "loads" panel has had the grid removed and rerouted to a secondary panel that I use as a transfer switch. It has a interlock to prevent me from killing someone (other than myself). It's used when I run the generator as well.

Its an old 15k military generator so it's manual start on the very rare occasion I need it. Needed it this year when power was out for 5 days after a storm. Had to run generator for around 8 hours during the night. I can't afford days worth of batteries in the TX sun. AC drinks battery juice. I had elderly neighbors stay at my house because I was one of the only houses in the town to have AC. Several other neighbors would bring their phones to my house to charge.