I have been looking at the Jackery 5000, and it appears to keep the 240v ports powered at 120v output, when doing AC input. According to youtube channel Jasonoid, he tested it and when the AC input is active, the 240v power is not available, but the outlet switches to 120v with a bridged output. Meaning, you can't power any 240v outlets on your transfer switch, but all the 120v sockets will stay powered, regardless of which leg they're on. Seems like a plus for the Jackery. Bigger battery, bigger inverter, and the 30A and 50A sockets stay powered (although at 120V instead of 240) plus a free smart home panel (during the early bird sale) makes it seem better suited to my use case. Thanks for all the info shared here!
My Anker Solix Home Power Panel and F3800s setup
- Thread starter Volusiano
- Start date
altoids745
New Member
Thank you for your post. I have a setup similar to yours and was wondering why my batteries were happy to provide power during peak but would not charge during off-peak. Switching to the lowest off-peak tier was the key.
I will most likely elaborate on my setup in the future, but wanted to thank you for now for your write-up. It helped me immensely!
I will most likely elaborate on my setup in the future, but wanted to thank you for now for your write-up. It helped me immensely!
Volusiano
New Member
I agree that the Jackery 5000 seems to beat the Anker Solix F3800 in almost all aspect. If you're only interested in using it for home backup in case of grid down, I would recommend going for it. But if you do want to also use it for grid-up Time of Use, then the Jackery Smart Transfer Switch cannot do AC Coupling to reduce grid consumption to 0 during Peak time periods like the Anker Home Power Panel can, as far as I can tell. You can program it to use battery for your critical loads to help and achieve Peak shaving, and yes, maybe even take over 100% grid use if you only use battery on your critical loads and nothing else on the main panel (the non-critical loads). But the Anker HPP makes it easier to just make EVERYTHING in the whole house accessible and be used by the battery, although of course you still need to be selective and judicious about electricity usage during peak time to achieve 0 grid draw.
Volusiano
New Member
Glad to hear you can use some tips from my posts to save you time with getting it set up properly!
theturtle32
New Member
@Volusiano - Just wanted to say thank you for writing up such a detailed description of your setup, your reasoning, your experience, and what you've learned along the way. I am installing a very similar setup in my detached garage workspace (which is air conditioned and has a server rack running 24/7) for TOU peak-shaving (and will soon be adding a few solar panels as well). Like you, I do not have a critical loads sub-panel attached, I have only connected the main panel side, with the CT probes, to the garage subpanel.
My F3800 + HPP was automatically discharging during on-peak times, but it was not automatically re-charging from grid power during off-peak times, which totally perplexed me until I came across this thread and learned that it will only automatically recharge from grid power during "super" off-peak times. It would be really nice if their mobile app made this kind of logic clearer. There's no documentation of that behavior that I could find ANYWHERE in their documentation, not in the App, not in the user manual or installation guide PDFs. So thank you for saving me by sharing that critical tidbit!
My F3800 + HPP was automatically discharging during on-peak times, but it was not automatically re-charging from grid power during off-peak times, which totally perplexed me until I came across this thread and learned that it will only automatically recharge from grid power during "super" off-peak times. It would be really nice if their mobile app made this kind of logic clearer. There's no documentation of that behavior that I could find ANYWHERE in their documentation, not in the App, not in the user manual or installation guide PDFs. So thank you for saving me by sharing that critical tidbit!
francismagnolia
New Member
What happens if you do not connect the current transformer clamps from main grid wires of main panel to HPP?
I have a 240V 60A 14-50 receptacle in the garage I can hook up the HPP F3800 system. I plan to use a 14-50 plug pig tail and connect it to the grid side of the HPP. Running the current transformer wires seems like a hassle in my case (lazy / too cheap).
I hope you guys with the successful working setup post a YouTube video on this. I believe there is no video yet on how @Volusiano came up with. Would you say it's an Anker approved use or off label?
Are you guys planning to file for the 30% solar tax credit (3kwh and higher home battery eligible) on this setup? Makes for a faster ROI
I have a 240V 60A 14-50 receptacle in the garage I can hook up the HPP F3800 system. I plan to use a 14-50 plug pig tail and connect it to the grid side of the HPP. Running the current transformer wires seems like a hassle in my case (lazy / too cheap).
I hope you guys with the successful working setup post a YouTube video on this. I believe there is no video yet on how @Volusiano came up with. Would you say it's an Anker approved use or off label?
Are you guys planning to file for the 30% solar tax credit (3kwh and higher home battery eligible) on this setup? Makes for a faster ROI
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Volusiano
New Member
Thanks for the kind words! I've since found that the Facebook group for the Anker Solix F3800 is a much more active bee hive than this forum when it comes to F3800 discussions specifically, so I've kind of moved over there and neglected checking this forum on a more regular basis. But if you want, feel free to join the FB group and you'll learn a lot of great things over there like I did, too.
Volusiano
New Member
It depends on what you're planning to use your HPP and F3800 for. If you want to use it for Time of Use or you have roof top solar panels tied to the grid that you want to automatically managed for you with the priority of using solar first and foremost, and also charging the battery with the excess solar, then use the battery next, then grid last, then it's critical to have the CT clamps on the main lines in order for the HPP to know how far it can control the AC coupling of the F3800's power to off load the grid draw to 0A.
But if you simply want to use the HPP/F3800 for automatic backup power transfer for outages, then it's not as critical to use the CT clamps. The HPP will just think that there's no household load demand at all, so it won't tap into the F3800 for use unless there's an outage. But that would be not tapping into the great potentials that the HPP and F3800 can do beside just doing backup power. Hey, but if you have no solar, and no need for Time of Use, then it is what it is.
I'm retired so I have very little tax liability to take advantage of the solar tax credit, but I'm going to do it anyway because why not? Every little bit helps.
What I came up with, tapping into my electric oven 240V 40A outlet, is definitely unconventional, but because I don't use the backup load side for anything, there's nothing dangerous about it because I'd only pull at most 5.5 KW from it for charging the 2 F3800s and 2 BP3800s. The 40A breaker keeps everything safe and in check, and the output of the 2 F3800s is derated to 6 KW max when AC coupling to the grid, which is also well within the 9.6 KW capacity of the 40A 240V breaker. The key thing here is not to put a backup load sub panel in which can require a 50A draw demand that the 40A grid side connection wouldn't be able to keep up with.
bfaubion
New Member
I'm trying to understand how this F3800 works. I have a few questions for you..
- If you only have one F3800, can you wire that directly into a circuit breaker, or is the only option to plug it into that Anker smart home panel, and then that smart home panel wires directly to the house sub-panel breaker?
- What exactly does this smart home panel box do besides combine the F3800 and then route to the house sub-panel?
- And if you have solar panels, you can plug those directly into the F3800? And then does the F3800 charge from the solar, and then discharge to your house sub-panel?
- Can you tell the F3800 to ONLY charge from solar panels, and then discharge to your house sub-panel as needed?
- If you are using more than what your F3800 is providing.. like the AC and a few appliances, will you home blend the power from both the utility and the F3800 at the same time?
wwu123
New Member
1. Not directly into a breaker, but through any 120V or 240V generator inlet or transfer switch/panel that you would normally connect a gas generator to backup circuits.
2. Automatic transfer switch, wireless comms to cloud logging (access through smartphone app), local bluetooth connectivity, grid-tie solar and main panel CT's, AC coupled solar charging, grid-interactive waveform syncrhronization, main panel backfeeding with zero export, TOU and other algorithmic charging and discharging. I won't count the hybrid inverter, as technically the inverter is in the F3800.
3. Yes, you can plug directly into F3800 (DC coupled). The DC panels have no interaction with the Home Power Panel, and will charge the F3800 directly (yes, the energy can then be discharged through the on-board outlets or via the Home Power Panel). 60V, 27A, 1150W limit per DC port.
4. Yes, you can disable charging from grid, so it is only charged via solar (whether AC coupled via Home Panel or DC coupled directly from DC ports)
5. Yes the Home Power Panel is grid-interactive (if the grid is up) and the grid is always connected to fill in any excess power needs, even if feeding the house with battery power
bfaubion
New Member
@wwu123 awesome thanks for the details! So this is amazing that this is grid-tied, and at the same time it can connect directly to solar panels, and be used on a daily basis as an energy supplement. I can set this whole thing up myself. I’m wondering.. how does one get away without needing a solar permit when using the smart home panel, because it’s grid tied? Usually anything that’s grid-tied needs permits from the utility. I feel like I could set my panels up however I want outside and the utility would not be able to have a say, which is what I want.
wwu123
New Member
"Grid-tied" has a different meaning in these forums. This is technically more like a zero-export, hybrid inverter - it can never export to grid like a grid-tied inverter, because of the way it operates.
bfaubion
New Member
Ah ok.. I was trying to understand that aspect of exporting. I don't want to export to the grid, but I do want to connect to my main subpanel only, and power the circuits there from the battery during certain times of the day. I wasn't planning to use a separate critical loads panel. IF the CTs were not installed with the HPP, how does it know how much energy to send to your main subpanel? (FYI, I would install the CTs, just trying to understand how this works)
wwu123
New Member
It will not send anything to the main panel without those CT's in place. Many of the algorithms may not work properly without the CT's installed. But it should work exactly as you want, if the CT's are in place.
In my install the Home Power Panel and backup panel are pretty far from the main panel, so I currently have the CT's installed at the grid wires coming into the Home Panel. So as far as my install is concerns, the service entrance is righ at the Home Panel, therefore it won't ever send any power to the main panel - which is fine for my use case as 90% of my 120V usage is on the backiup panel. Basically it'll never allow the CT's to show negative current (power going back upstream of the CT's). So my install works more like EcoFlow or other smart panels that can only go off-grid, but can never feed to the main panel - though it still has the advantage of being able to supplement the battery in overload situations by blending grid power.
For anybody using these in TOU mode, is idle consumption a problem at all ? I watched a YouTube video where they claimed that with inverter on, it is about 70w at idle. If this is accurate, that’s over 1.5kWh per day. I need about 14kWh to cover my TOU peak rates, that’s either 2 inverters with 2 batteries or 1 inverter with 3 batteries. Considering idle consumption, would a single inverter option be better ? It seems like max output power would be the same in both conjugation for TOU. Are there any reasons to have 2 inverters ?
wwu123
New Member
If you read through the inverter sub-forums here, you'll see that inverter overhead or idle consumption is a concern for all inverters, particularly a 6000W one as in the F3800. There are better and worse ones, but F3800 is about typical it seems. I was concerned in the beginning when I only expected to cycle just a single F3800 daily, as 70 watts takes a toll with only 3.8kwh daily TOU capacity - my plan then was to run as many loads in DC as possible, and any small AC loads to be powered via a smaller power station that was refilled by the F3800 via DC as well. That way the F3800 inverter would almost never be on except for emergencies.
Fast forward a year, I also have a BP3800 expansion battery, plus three server rack batteries for about 23 kwh of total capacity, and will be typically cycling about 10-20 kwh daily. At that level, up to 1.5 kwh of daily losses is tolerable - in fact, reading these forums, it seems "idle consumption" only refers to losses when not powering loads, the same overhead when powering high loads is just factored into the overall system roundtrip efficiency.
But it doesn't have to be 1.5kwh daily - if for TOU, the inverter fortunately only appears to be on when power loads during TOU periods, and when AC recharging (which you can structure to go as quickly as possible) - so if only peak shifting, you can have the inverter off for half to 2/3 of the 24-hour daily cycle., so no inverter overhead or idle concumption much of the time. I only recharge the F3800 via off-grid solar now, so I could have the inverter on for only my 5-hour TOU peak and off the rest of the day.
But yeah, if you worry about inverter overhead, running one F3800 with expansion is half the overhead of running two F3800's, which is why I do it that way. But most folks will recommend two F3800's, because who doesn't want 12,000W of power available on-demand, all the time? Yeah, most folks are not about efficiency (even though it correlates to cost-savings)...
bfaubion
New Member
I've got another question some of you may be able to answer. The HPP comes with a 100 amp breaker to put in your whole house subpanel, that's for consuming AND backfeeding to your house subpanel. But, I thought we had to work with the NEC rule of no more than 120% total power coming into a panel when using two power sources? For example, I have a whole house subpanel on a 200 amp breaker, so according to the NEC, I could only add a total of a 40 amp breaker designated as additional backfed power on my 200 amp busbar.. so there's no way I could add a 100 amp backfeed breaker. Is there something about this system that allows it to get around that NEC rule?
@Volusiano i noticed what you said about ToU mode, and the max it’s outputting is 1.92 kW for a single f3800. So I guess If I’m just discharging to my house subpanel like you, It won’t ever exceed that? In that case I could use my 40 amp breaker, and it wouldn’t be a problem. I guess I don’t understand why they include a 100 amp breaker… seems excessive.
“6. A few things to note about Time of Use limitations with the Anker setup. In off-grid backup load mode, you can expect to get the full 6000W from each F3800, totaling 12 KW for 2 F3800s to power your whole house. HOWEVER, in Time of Use mode, the Anker HPP will derate the power down to 1.92 KW for 1 F3800, double it to 3.84 KW of power for 1 F300 + 1 BP3800”
@Volusiano i noticed what you said about ToU mode, and the max it’s outputting is 1.92 kW for a single f3800. So I guess If I’m just discharging to my house subpanel like you, It won’t ever exceed that? In that case I could use my 40 amp breaker, and it wouldn’t be a problem. I guess I don’t understand why they include a 100 amp breaker… seems excessive.
“6. A few things to note about Time of Use limitations with the Anker setup. In off-grid backup load mode, you can expect to get the full 6000W from each F3800, totaling 12 KW for 2 F3800s to power your whole house. HOWEVER, in Time of Use mode, the Anker HPP will derate the power down to 1.92 KW for 1 F3800, double it to 3.84 KW of power for 1 F300 + 1 BP3800”
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I'll throw this out there even though it's not directly related, as I'm using the Jackery system, but it is my opinion that you don't have to worry about it because you're not feeding the main panel any additional input. The Jackery panel also comes with a 100 amp breaker, and is integrated into a 12-slot transfer switch. I assume you will be working with a transfer switch as well, yes?
So here's the thing: if you're dumping raw solar input into your home panel, then yes the 120% rule applies. But in these cases we're not. Because you're not dumping raw power in. You're instead removing capacity out of your main panel, and transferring it to the sub panel/transfer switch, and the transfer switch can either power the circuits through grid power or through power station power, but not both. You won't be powering anything new, or putting more power into the panel at all.
Check this doc, I hope it explains what I'm surely failing to.
AIUI, the worry in the NEC is that when you add a second power source to the main panel (external solar input), then you're increasing how much power is flowing through not only the breakers but also the busbars, and can therefore overload the bus bar or other connections or wiring, etc. That main breaker was sized to that panel and that wiring as a complete system, so arbitrarily dumping another huge load of power into it can cause a fire.
But we're doing the opposite. In the Jackery's case, we're actually moving all three wires and the circuit breaker itself off the main panel, over to the transfer switch, and the transfer switch handles whether it's going to use grid or power station input to feed that circuit. Which means there's zero additional power flowing through the main panel; in fact there's usually going to be LESS power flowing through the main panel! Any solar input to the power station cannot be backfed into the main panel, it can only be fed through the subpanel/transfer switch. And any circuits that the solar/battery system powers, will be circuits that are not drawing on the main panel, so the net effect will be that the main panel will be handling less energy in most conditions than it currently is. The 120% rule doesn't apply at all in these conditions because we haven't added any input to the main panel at all.
I would imagine the F3800 system behaves similarly, in that it can't backfeed into the main panel and because it uses a transfer switch, the net effect should be no additional power on the main panel, which would (AIUI) negate any need to invoke the 120% rule; you'd have to verify if that's the way it works.
Hopefully a qualified electrician will be along soon to clarify any mistakes in what I've written.
So here's the thing: if you're dumping raw solar input into your home panel, then yes the 120% rule applies. But in these cases we're not. Because you're not dumping raw power in. You're instead removing capacity out of your main panel, and transferring it to the sub panel/transfer switch, and the transfer switch can either power the circuits through grid power or through power station power, but not both. You won't be powering anything new, or putting more power into the panel at all.
Check this doc, I hope it explains what I'm surely failing to.
AIUI, the worry in the NEC is that when you add a second power source to the main panel (external solar input), then you're increasing how much power is flowing through not only the breakers but also the busbars, and can therefore overload the bus bar or other connections or wiring, etc. That main breaker was sized to that panel and that wiring as a complete system, so arbitrarily dumping another huge load of power into it can cause a fire.
But we're doing the opposite. In the Jackery's case, we're actually moving all three wires and the circuit breaker itself off the main panel, over to the transfer switch, and the transfer switch handles whether it's going to use grid or power station input to feed that circuit. Which means there's zero additional power flowing through the main panel; in fact there's usually going to be LESS power flowing through the main panel! Any solar input to the power station cannot be backfed into the main panel, it can only be fed through the subpanel/transfer switch. And any circuits that the solar/battery system powers, will be circuits that are not drawing on the main panel, so the net effect will be that the main panel will be handling less energy in most conditions than it currently is. The 120% rule doesn't apply at all in these conditions because we haven't added any input to the main panel at all.
I would imagine the F3800 system behaves similarly, in that it can't backfeed into the main panel and because it uses a transfer switch, the net effect should be no additional power on the main panel, which would (AIUI) negate any need to invoke the 120% rule; you'd have to verify if that's the way it works.
Hopefully a qualified electrician will be along soon to clarify any mistakes in what I've written.
bfaubion
New Member
Actually it is backfeeding into the main panel.. that’s how the OP has it setup, he’s got no backup panel, and I wasn’t planning to do a backup panel either, just feed it back into my main panel. But he’s also saying that the F3800 derates the power when backfeeding into your main panel. I updated my reply above to include what he said there. In that case, a 40 amp breaker on a 200 amp panel wouldn’t be a problem. I think they include that 100 amp breaker for the backup subpanel.. I wouldn’t have known that the f3800 derates the power like that, glad he mentioned that. Thanks for the details, and what you are saying for the backup load panel makes sense If that’s the way you plan to use it..
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@wwu123 Thank you for the detailed reply. I thought I read somewhere here that F3800 inverters stay on all the time in TOU mode, presumably to guaranty quick backup switching. Are you saying that in your setup they turn off unless charging or discharging ? That would be a great option for those of us that don't care about instant backups.
wwu123
New Member
I wasn't really that sure for the first few months, as there's no direct indicator whether the inverter is on or not. But after looking at months of the historic graphs in the Anker app, particularly how much DC solar is coming in vs how much battery discharged to loads, the difference is basically my overhead (since I don't recharge from grid anymore). The daily overhead losses seemed fairly correlated to how many peak TOU hours I set (I'm playing around with stuff so not strictly setting it to only my utility's exact five peak TOU hours each day).
Also, during the "off-peak" periods where it is neither charging nor discharging (the so-named "off-peak" period, as the "super off-peak" is how they designate when to recharge from grid) - there is slight drain of the SoC, so the unit seems to be self-powering itself during these times. The amount of drain during "off-peak" seems fairly correlated to about 10-20W of overhead (which is the self-consumption without the inverter), rather than the 70W when the inverter is on.
So I'm inferring they did the smarter of the two options in leaving the inverter off during these often long "off-peak" periods since the inverter is not needed for on-grid TOU use. I did notice during a brief outage, it took about a second for the backup power to kick in, when it happened during an "off-peak" period, vs an outage that occurred while the F3800 was powering the house (no blip at all). So you may not be wrong about it taking longer to go into backup if the inverter was not on.
whdigital
New Member
I don't want to hijack this thread, but I'm thinking some of you here could really answer the one I just started over in another sections. I'm looking for some help from the F3800/SHPP gurus! https://diysolarforum.com/threads/anker-smart-home-panel.99822/
Does anybody have any experience with using different CTs from what comes with the SHPP ? I've got the same setup as the OP, with the 240 outlet and all that. Ran CT cables to the panel to find out that I don't have main cables there but have bus bars between the meter, main breaker, and the panel. Included CTs don't seem to fit on them.
Volusiano
New Member
I have bus bars in my main panel, too. Fortunately the CT clamps fit on them OK. I put some insulation tape on the bus bar before I wrap the CT clamps on for good measures. Did you actually try on the CT clamps and they don't fit, or did you just look and don't think it'll fit?
I did try, they really don’t fit. I ordered Emporia Vue with rogowski coils and integrators to see if that fits and if it might work with HPP. Arriving this week.
I see a lot of “coils won’t work in place of CT” replies in this forum, but not sure why. Seems to me that integrators are there precisely to make them work like a CT. Might need a better more programable
Integrator than Emporia’s. Anybody has any idea on coils with integrators in place of CTs ?
I have one more question for anybody who might know. Main CTs are there to enable TOU on main panel, isn’t that right ? If I just put CTs on the HPPs own breaker on main panel, would it never push any power back ?
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