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EG4 18Kpv Resilience

R

RibarRanch

New Member
Joined
Oct 7, 2023
Messages
8
Location
Arcadia, FL
I've got my system up and purring like a kitten. All is well in my solar world. I've contemplated what would happen if the 18Kpv smoked a board or something I wasn't ready for. I'm not too sure if the grid-to-load bypass would keep working if the 18Kpv died. In IT world, we keep redundancy in the entire infrastructure, so to that end should I hang a second 18Kpv on the wall in dark mode (off) just incase of a total meltdown of the primary box?

When we installed the 18Kpv, we had grid and load connected at one point with no batteries or solar and it was pass-thru-ing while it was "off". Is this the way it would work if a board smoked and the brain was toast?

Just early morning contemplation..... thoughts?

ps - last pic I took.
IMG_3194.jpeg
 
Would be nice if it does that.I think this is one of the features of the New Midnite Solar One, additionally, Current connected and @Adam delay confirmed that these units are far simpler to repair.
Midnite also mentioned they are stocking boards for the One and power flo batteries.
 
Mahendra Gomanie said:
Would be nice if it does that.I think this is one of the features of the New Midnite Solar One, additionally, Current connected and @Adam delay confirmed that these units are far simpler to repair.
Midnite also mentioned they are stocking boards for the One and power flo batteries.
Click to expand...
I have my eye on the eg4 18k as well
 
That is the general reason why i prefer two smaller inverters in parallel because if one breaks you still have an inverter. Not that im against the larger inverters AT ALL and will probably go that way when more of my stuff dies.

Me personally, I would say unless you want your backup to have 100% full capabilities you could keep a smaller inverter as a backup, or keep only a generator as a backup. I would say its 'excessive' to have a whole nother 18k as a backup, but that's really down to your personality. I wouldn't judge you, but my cheap ass would have a smaller and cheaper unit as a backup, personally.
 
I have two 18Kpv in parallel, and as far as I can tell, the Primary _may_ continue to function if it loses track of the Secondary, though I'll have to test that. I'm nearly certain that the Secondary will shut down if it loses communications with the Primary. So it looks like if one fails (and doesn't blow up the other one via the parallel outputs) I'd have to switch my loads over to the grid using the (virtual) external transfer switch and then reconfigure the functional one for single mode.

@EG4TechSolutionsTeam can you confirm any of the above?
 
Far less expensive to install a manual grid bypass circuit for that hopefully rare catastrophic event. Just figure on quick shipping a replacement. Unless of course you have five grand just laying around.
 
This has been on my pet peeve list since last year. Any fault on either inverter everything drops to standby. You should be able to only shut down the problem unit on most faults. Like "Lost Battery Comm" or perhaps intentionally if you want to walk a firmware upgrade. In a perfect world you would it would work like a compute cluster. Three nodes, any two can handle the load. I can take any one offline for maintenance. A Cisco or Juniper switch stack as an example, you lose the 'master' one of the slaves takes over. The clustered config is stored on all the boxes, with each box in it's defined role. Should the old master re-appear it contacts the cluster is informed it is no longer the master and re-joins as a slave. I find it annoying you have to shut everything down to do maintenance on one node.

Faults need to be handled based on severity. For now defaulting with WTF? -> drop to standby is fine, nobody wants anything to get fried, but the granularity/specificity of action needs to improve. It does need to proceed "with deliberate speed", incrementally erring to the side of caution. Also if the bitch flips to standby for ANY reason, that should be logged independently with the reason.
 
RibarRanch said:
at one point with no batteries or solar and it was pass-thru-ing while it was "off"
Click to expand...

if you're lucky, a fried AIO will still pass-through power from the grid. I would not bet my life on it.

I too have been thinking of having a spare one. Currently I can get one with some mouse clicks .. in under a week.
That may drastically change in a SHTF event (think grid down for 6+ months). No internet, no mouse clicks ordering, no delivery.

Warning: tin foil ahead

RibarRanch said:
to that end should I hang a second 18Kpv on the wall in dark mode (off) just incase of a total meltdown of the primary box?
Click to expand...

Google "hot reserve vs cold reserve". I too am thinking of having a spare AIO, but it would not be hanging next to the active one. It would be in a Faraday's cage.

Even if your AIO simply got lost to a small fire, you would not want the backup next to it.
 
Quattrohead said:
In that case I make a feature request to say that the master inverter can reprogram itself to dump the slave if it has a problem, as long as the master sees no subsequent problem of its own.
Click to expand...
Potentially it shuts down to avoid problems when they are running in three phase mode etc. You wouldn't want it deciding it knows best and reconfiguring itself.
 
ksmithaz1 said:
This has been on my pet peeve list since last year. Any fault on either inverter everything drops to standby. You should be able to only shut down the problem unit on most faults. Like "Lost Battery Comm" or perhaps intentionally if you want to walk a firmware upgrade. In a perfect world you would it would work like a compute cluster. Three nodes, any two can handle the load. I can take any one offline for maintenance. A Cisco or Juniper switch stack as an example, you lose the 'master' one of the slaves takes over. The clustered config is stored on all the boxes, with each box in it's defined role. Should the old master re-appear it contacts the cluster is informed it is no longer the master and re-joins as a slave. I find it annoying you have to shut everything down to do maintenance on one node.

Faults need to be handled based on severity. For now defaulting with WTF? -> drop to standby is fine, nobody wants anything to get fried, but the granularity/specificity of action needs to improve. It does need to proceed "with deliberate speed", incrementally erring to the side of caution. Also if the bitch flips to standby for ANY reason, that should be logged independently with the reason.
Click to expand...
Two AIOs. both completely separate systems. providing dual feeds to equipment that supports multiple psus. Perhaps dual input PDUs for single powered equipment.

Personally if I needed such critical power at home I'd be using seperates. No chance of PV panel voltages reaching the battery due to hardware failure, easier modular replacement of inverter/chargers and SCCs etc.
 
It's a function of probabilities. I find it highly unlikely that I would lose an entire bank of inverters. If something happened that cooks your power plant, you would likely lose enough other stuff, that a spare inverter would likely be the least of your worries. The vast majority of failures are not of the catastrophic variety that take out everything. Generally you lose a random component here or there in a complex system. What I want is reasonable resilience for component failure. It's the hard drive array cold vs warm vs hot spare issue. If the cabinet blows up a spare drive is irrelevant. Otherwise you can keep a cold spare or a warm one, or you can bring it into the array as a additional parity. The research has shown that your probably better off bringing the drive into the array vs a warm or cold spare. Results are the same with most equipment, as time approaches expected lifetime of a device you need to replace everything anyway, it's the random failure that is the problem to solve, and simply having additional equipment online that is capable of preventing a service interruption is ususally the correct answer. Seamless failover and adequate redundancy is the goal.
 
Brucey said:
Potentially it shuts down to avoid problems when they are running in three phase mode etc. You wouldn't want it deciding it knows best and reconfiguring itself.
Click to expand...
Yes, this is almost exactly what I want. It should detect and take a proper course of action without shutting everything down, that should be part of the configuration not a re-configuration.
 
Brucey said:
Two AIOs. both completely separate systems. providing dual feeds to equipment that supports multiple psus. Perhaps dual input PDUs for single powered equipment.

Personally if I needed such critical power at home I'd be using seperates. No chance of PV panel voltages reaching the battery due to hardware failure, easier modular replacement of inverter/chargers and SCCs etc.
Click to expand...

I disagree. This is not exactly rocket science, it's computer science. This is a problem that has been solved there is nothing difficult about it you just need to be careful. That means you need to detect and analyze the failure and take an appropriate response.
 
TM48 said:
Far less expensive to install a manual grid bypass circuit for that hopefully rare catastrophic event. Just figure on quick shipping a replacement. Unless of course you have five grand just laying around.
Click to expand...
It could cost me $5K in power by the time I got the inverter shipped back and an RMA (re)installed.
 
wpns said:

CyberPower, ack, phhhttt!​

One of the points of this exercise was to do away with all the various UPSen and their requirement for constant battery replacement.
Click to expand...
Meh, I still have UPS's on my primary compute stack and in the closet network rack. The problem is I DO screw with my gear from time to time, and because it lacks good resilience, I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot. I bought one of those USB/battery banks with a separate charging port that had 12v and 5v outputs to put in front of my OrangePi based control system. The switch is 48v POE, currently all is behind 240v power supplies, but I want to convert the whole system to run directly from the LifePO 48+v bus, probably leave the bank for the CPU and relay control. 10Kmah I think will run the pi and relay board for well over 4 hours. If I could just get a Lion UPS for less than $2K. . . Power security for equipment is about layering for faults. Nothing is perfect.
 
wpns said:

CyberPower, ack, phhhttt!​

One of the points of this exercise was to do away with all the various UPSen and their requirement for constant battery replacement.
Click to expand...
Well no battery in that just dual inputs, single output. So then perhaps an inverter bypass so you can switch back to grid while the firmware upgrade does it's reboot thing? or does the 200A pass thru complicate things?
 
Brucey said:
Well no battery in that just dual inputs, single output. So then perhaps an inverter bypass so you can switch back to grid while the firmware upgrade does it's reboot thing? or does the 200A pass thru complicate things?
Click to expand...
Doh! Missed the fact that was just a switch, so would cause the various computers to reboot anyway. I saw Cyberpower and threw up in my mouth, so didn't read the whole thing. My bad. #NoEasyAnswers
 
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