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diy solar

Help, charging 16 S off generator back up

Wycowboy

New Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2020
Messages
77
Hi everyone, truly appreciate any help that people might be able to send our way

We have a small off grinding home.
2800 watts of pv 2 strings of 4 300 w panels
Midnight classic 200 charge controller
Magna sin 4000 watt off grid inverter
16s diy battery with overkill bms
That we replaced our AGM batteries with.

This battery system has been so much better. We rarely have to use our Honda EG 5000 generator which is wired directly into our magna energy inverter.

However, we ran into a problem this year, which we had not had in the past and definitely have not had with our lead acid batteries.
The problem is when we run our generator and switch the circuit breakers on our inverter to pass through and charge after about five minutes the main 240 V circuit breaker on the generator itself trips stopping the charging. We’re not sure why it runs for five minutes. We have tried taking all the loads out of the system and trips, we have tried adding large loads to the system and still trips.
A consultant suggested that we do not switch the circuit breakers into pass-through mode and just allow current from the generator to go to the inverter,

We are unsure if this will damage our Midnight Solar controller, since I’m not sure if the Midnight Solar controller can handle AC voltage. We are kind of at a loss but don’t want to try anything without ensuring we will not damage the system.

Any thoughts people have would be much appreciated:)
Jeff and nikki


So for clarity,

The circuit breaker is tripping is the one just to the right of the red knob on the very left of the generator. In the past, to charge and run our house off the generator, we have flipped the breakers on the left of the generator one up one down with the rocker arm. Then switched breaker number three to allow power from the generator into the inverter.

The person we talk to as a solar consultant here suggested that we leave breaker one and two on the inverter in the position they are pictured in. Which is our normal house operation system offer Solar, but turn on breaker number three which will allow generator power into inverter.
 

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Why don't you just bypass the inverter all together?
Connect the generator directly to a rectifier and connect that your battery bank.
That would allow the inverter to invert all the time.

How many amps are you charging the battery with?
 
Reason why we haven’t done that? Not really sure other than when we originally had this system spec for us by a local solar company. This is how they told us to set it up. Also, I’m not really sure what a rectifier is, but if there’s a simple way to do that, it seems great.:)

Not exactly sure what we’ve got for charging amps right now. It’s been a while since I poked around in the Midnight Solar settings.
 
A rectifier takes AC power and converts it to DC power, they are commonly used in Telecom / IT.

You can buy a bare rectifier such as an Emerson. I'm running a 3KW, ~50A charging, that cost ~$100.
I started a thread here that has a pile of info.
You could also buy a chargeverter, it's essentially 2 rectifiers with some logic in a case.
 
You could also buy a chargeverter, it's essentially 2 rectifiers with some logic in a case.
a bit pricy - but they look nice and they work - I bought two! (should have bought second one before the V1 was out of production, so they matched ! :ROFLMAO:
I recommend them, but will try the Emerson next, to see how they do.

IMG_6377.jpg
 
a bit pricy - but they look nice and they work - I bought two! (should have bought second one before the V1 was out of production, so they matched ! :ROFLMAO:
I recommend them, but will try the Emerson next, to see how they do.

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The CVs are nice and definitely serve there purpose well for a plug and play option.
The bare rectifiers are a DIYers empty canvas. There's some excellent info and high quality builds in the thread.
 

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