Midnite 12k AIO The One

[rrleesb]

I've had this for a couple weeks now and it's been great. I've been averaging about 25kwh per day from ~7k in solar panels. This is mostly limited by the zero export (300w buffer). For the house loads, the AC and dryer seem to be the biggest loads. When AC is running I pull about 4kw and when the dryer is on it's about 8kw.

I had a couple issues and questions during install and the help at Midnite has been fantastic. They have returned calls and understood my needs well.

I have a Apexium battery in the works so hopefully I can use more of the solar during non-daylight hours.

On my list of things to do:
1. bury conduit for PV wires
2. build battery
3. build ground mount (solar panels are just on the ground)
4. Trench Cat 6 (300ft) and put CTs at meter instead of at house panel, about 1/2 of my load is from another panel that is double lugged at the meter and not being measured currently

 

[Daddy Tanuki]

sweet, are you running it batteryless right now?

 

[goldserve]

Can’t wait to get my hands on one of these.

 

[rrleesb]

sweet, are you running it batteryless right now?

I am.

 

[harjms]

That's good to hear. I'm currently in the process of getting one of these as part of my solar install. Looking forward to having it installed.

 

[ARHillBilly]

I've had this for a couple weeks now and it's been great. I've been averaging about 25kwh per day from ~7k in solar panels.

View attachment 241561

What app is that and how did you get it???

 

[rrleesb]

What app is that and how did you get it???

It's a webportal not an app. I was setup by midnite for it. It's still in a beta phase.

 

[ARHillBilly]

It's a webportal not an app. I was setup by midnite for it. It's still in a beta phase.

It looks pretty cool!

 

[Offgrid Jungle]

Things to do - add to the list...
### cover the circuit wiring coming out the the breaker panel. It's illegal the way you did it.

 

[Steve777]

I've had this for a couple weeks now and it's been great. I've been averaging about 25kwh per day from ~7k in solar panels. This is mostly limited by the zero export (300w buffer). For the house loads, the AC and dryer seem to be the biggest loads. When AC is running I pull about 4kw and when the dryer is on it's about 8kw.

I had a couple issues and questions during install and the help at Midnite has been fantastic. They have returned calls and understood my needs well.

I have a Apexium battery in the works so hopefully I can use more of the solar during non-daylight hours.

On my list of things to do:
1. bury conduit for PV wires
2. build battery
3. build ground mount (solar panels are just on the ground)
4. Trench Cat 6 (300ft) and put CTs at meter instead of at house panel, about 1/2 of my load is from another panel that is double lugged at the meter and not being measured currently

View attachment 241561

I am curious, did you ever extend the CTs to your meter? If so, what cabling did you use and how did it work?

I will be installing a MN The One soon (I hope) and also have the meter ~180' or so from the main panel and inverter.

Thanks

 

[rrleesb]

I didn't. I ended up injuring my shoulder I'm not going to be able to do anything for quite a while . My plan was to use cat 6.

 

[Adam De Lay]

The CT connection is just a CAT cable, so you should be able to extend no problems. I would think you could go up to the max length of a CAT cable before you need a booster which I believe is around 300'.

 

[goldserve]

It’s all about the voltage drop and propagation of the electrical signal but that’s not a concern here. The typical 3000:1 CTs will have 0.1A of current going through at 300A. Cat6 cable is around 14ohms per 100m. The error proportional to length of cat6 cable and current it is measuring. It would help knowing what the internal burden resistor is for the circuit measuring the current is.

 

[peufeu]

Your inverter can talk to a smartmeter using modbus over RS485 instead of a CT. If you don't fancy digging, this can be transmitted wirelessly, with modbus to WiFi converters, for example, or modbus to ethernet then ethernet over powerline.

 

[Kornbread]

Your inverter can talk to a smartmeter using modbus over RS485 instead of a CT. If you don't fancy digging, this can be transmitted wirelessly, with modbus to WiFi converters, for example, or modbus to ethernet then ethernet over powerline.

Can this work for other inverters? Where can I find out more?

 

[goldserve]

Can this work for other inverters? Where can I find out more?

Only if the inverter supports it. Usually the ct connection is analog, reading a voltage or current based CT. You need an inverter that knows how to talk modbus over RS485.

 

[peufeu]

Yes it won't work if the inverter only wants to use a CT to measure power. But if it can use a smartmeter to measure power instead, these pretty much all talk Modbus-RTU over RS485 so a pair of wireless RS485 transmitters should work. Before buying stuff, RTFM, because you need transmitters that can work as a pair, one server and one client, which is not the usual wifi serial server that will only talk to a PC. Maybe these would work, I haven't tried, and there are so many features it's hard to tell lol.

 

[Kornbread]

Urg. My back hurts just thinking about all that digging.

 

[peufeu]

Indeed lol. I like wired stuff, cables are more reliable and the manual is shorter

 

[NC_hydro]

You realize you can rent a trencher? Smarter not harder folks...

 

[Kornbread]

You realize you can rent a trencher? Smarter not harder folks...

Maybe the op can rent a trencher, I have too much buried in that area to risk running into spicy dirt.

language

 

[Hedges]

Voltage from CT is pretty low; mine are 0.333V @ 100A.

You could make an op-amp circuit boosting that to 3.33V or more, then divide back down with resistors at far end. That reduces noise as a percentage of signal.

Use shielded cable to block electrostatic coupling. Grounded to inverter, and grounded to driving op-amp circuit (with isolated DC supply feeding it) to block magnetic coupling. Maybe supply op-amp with DC fed from inverter, e.g. 2 or 4 twisted pair wire. (Best avoiding ground to chassis at far end where CT is located.)

 

[peufeu]

What are the CT specs?

 

[Steve777]

Been doing some testing on extending The One's CTs:

Used a 200' CAT6 shielded direct burial cable and a 10' CAT6 shielded interior cable. The MN CT cable was plugged into a Female-Female CAT6 adapter and then to the extending CAT6 cable, to extend the CTs. Note too, the 200' cable was just coiled on the floor not laid outside on the ground (which is snow covered and frozen here now). Test procedure was fairly simple: Note the current/wattage draw before and after plugging a 1500W space heater into outlets outside the AIO's outputs, and on outlets on the 100A and 50A AIO breakers.

In short, both cables worked, with no apparent differences in the power/current measurements. All the numbers were withing 5% or so of the previous readings, well within the slight variations in house loads.

I am continuing to run the test, and will report if I do see any differences or issues. But at first look, it appears that the CTs can be extended, at least up to 200'.

Several folks here have expressed a need/desire to extend their CTs, so I wanted to let folks know about what I've found. Looks like you can extend them, with off the shelf products.