Hello
I have done some investigating of the various hybrid inverters that support AC coming from micro inverters on solar panels.
I have 10-12Kw of AC solar coming into home and grid tied and net-metered.
The 15Kw Sol-ark will accept 100% of that AC solar power as input to the generator, and will allow me to charge batteries for backup, and sell back to grid any excess power. If I went with some other vendor I would need two inverters , or be willing to turn off 1/3 of my solar in a grid down situation since the 12Kw Solark will only support 8 or 9kw of AC coupled solar.
My grid is pretty reliable, and so I would like to have an installation that is "normal" and operates normally when grid is up.
Solar operates and meets home power needs, and any excess is sold back to the grid. Minimize power usage.
One concern is the 90w of standby power consumed by the 15kw Solark. Assuming that is a 24/7 power consumption , I would like to see if it is possible to turn "off " the inverter when the grid is up, and the battery bank is fully charged. I see that Solark has a "pass through" feature, that you can setup and use, but I assume that the inverter standby power draw is still present.
Question for group.. if I want to be able to turn off the 15kw inverter to avoid the 90W standby power draw, could I just install some kind of switch that switches the incoming AC solar power from the generator input on the solark to my main panel.
This switch would be used when the grid is up, and the batteries are fully charged. In that situation, why do I need to inverter
"at the ready" running and consuming 90w?
I could then think of the Solark and fully charged batteries as a solar powered backup generator for use if/when needed.
If not needed it is ready and waiting, but not consuming power.
Yes I understand that when the grid goes down, and the inverter is off, my house would go dark, in the "normal manner" that grid tied solar operated.
Of course if I go on vacation, or am away from home for several days, I would flip the AC solar switch, too allow AC couple to the Solark, and leaves the Solark on 24/7 for power backup that is recharged from the AC coupled solar when I am away, and as long as the loads were small enough, and the battery big enough, all would be fine .
90w standby*24 hours is 2.16 KWh and that is about 5% of my daily solar production with 4 or 5 hours of sun on my 10Kw solar setup.
If grid is down this loss is fully understood and acceptable, but if grid is up, and batteries are full I would like to remove that loss.
Feel free to tell me I am overthinking this, and should just install the Solark 15Kw, connect my full 10-11kw Array and be done with it.
I have contacted Solark and they essentially said "try it" it might work. Does anyone here have a better understanding.
Thanks in advance for any education in this area.
CPU
I copied and pasted the steps to get the 12kw Solark Pass Through from a different thread to operate below: (Assume it is still drawing 90w in this mode)
==================================================================
The sequence to put the Sol-Ark 12K into pass-through mode is below. This may be handy in the future (hope I never need to do this. Probably good idea to print and put into the User Manual since I don't think its in there);
I have done some investigating of the various hybrid inverters that support AC coming from micro inverters on solar panels.
I have 10-12Kw of AC solar coming into home and grid tied and net-metered.
The 15Kw Sol-ark will accept 100% of that AC solar power as input to the generator, and will allow me to charge batteries for backup, and sell back to grid any excess power. If I went with some other vendor I would need two inverters , or be willing to turn off 1/3 of my solar in a grid down situation since the 12Kw Solark will only support 8 or 9kw of AC coupled solar.
My grid is pretty reliable, and so I would like to have an installation that is "normal" and operates normally when grid is up.
Solar operates and meets home power needs, and any excess is sold back to the grid. Minimize power usage.
One concern is the 90w of standby power consumed by the 15kw Solark. Assuming that is a 24/7 power consumption , I would like to see if it is possible to turn "off " the inverter when the grid is up, and the battery bank is fully charged. I see that Solark has a "pass through" feature, that you can setup and use, but I assume that the inverter standby power draw is still present.
Question for group.. if I want to be able to turn off the 15kw inverter to avoid the 90W standby power draw, could I just install some kind of switch that switches the incoming AC solar power from the generator input on the solark to my main panel.
This switch would be used when the grid is up, and the batteries are fully charged. In that situation, why do I need to inverter
"at the ready" running and consuming 90w?
I could then think of the Solark and fully charged batteries as a solar powered backup generator for use if/when needed.
If not needed it is ready and waiting, but not consuming power.
Yes I understand that when the grid goes down, and the inverter is off, my house would go dark, in the "normal manner" that grid tied solar operated.
Of course if I go on vacation, or am away from home for several days, I would flip the AC solar switch, too allow AC couple to the Solark, and leaves the Solark on 24/7 for power backup that is recharged from the AC coupled solar when I am away, and as long as the loads were small enough, and the battery big enough, all would be fine .
90w standby*24 hours is 2.16 KWh and that is about 5% of my daily solar production with 4 or 5 hours of sun on my 10Kw solar setup.
If grid is down this loss is fully understood and acceptable, but if grid is up, and batteries are full I would like to remove that loss.
Feel free to tell me I am overthinking this, and should just install the Solark 15Kw, connect my full 10-11kw Array and be done with it.
I have contacted Solark and they essentially said "try it" it might work. Does anyone here have a better understanding.
Thanks in advance for any education in this area.
CPU
I copied and pasted the steps to get the 12kw Solark Pass Through from a different thread to operate below: (Assume it is still drawing 90w in this mode)
==================================================================
The sequence to put the Sol-Ark 12K into pass-through mode is below. This may be handy in the future (hope I never need to do this. Probably good idea to print and put into the User Manual since I don't think its in there);
- Turn ON grid from utility
- Turn on grid breaker and load breaker in the inverter
- Set battery setup into "NO battery"
- Work mode as "grid sell"
- Turn off the Sol-Ark "central button"-turn off grid and load breaker.
- Wait 10 sec and turn ON grid and load breaker in the inverter.
- The inverter will have no lights but it will do passthrough;