Remote / Distanced CT's or Energy Meter with Sol-Ark or Luxpower

[edgecrusher]

Good Day All:

Looking for some advice/experience.

I am early in planning an install that would utilize either a Sol-Ark or Luxpower inverter (both seem to meet Canadian code). One (of many) challenges I am facing is that I want to mount this inverter/batteries/solar away from the main house, in a power shed.

My mains are 240v split phase, and 200A. The power shed is ~75m (250') from the house. I'm planning on running ~150A feed from the main panel to the power shed, then back to a critical loads panel in the house. Since the distance is quite long, I highly doubt I can run the CT's mounted to the utility feed the 250' to the power shed, especially along the same route as the buried AC.

I see that with the LuxPower, I could potentially install a SDM630 meter (assume I can use the CT version), and then modbus back to the power shed. I don't believe that Sol-Ark has this capability.

Goal here is zero-export, but I would like to be able to offset loads NOT on the critical panel when I have excess solar/battery during peak.

Any experience, thoughts, ideas?

 

[SeaGal]

I'm not familiar with those inverters but I understand the Sol-Ark/Deye/Sunsynk inverters do support an RS485 / modbus energy meter like the Eastron you mention.

With an energy meter you can then do what a few of us have done to implement remote connectivity of RS485 over Ethernet - see my posting here...

Wireless solution to feed CT clamp data to hybrid inverter

Hi all, I've just found the forum whilst trying to research a solution. I'm looking for some guidance with regards to battery storage. I have a Luxpower 3.6K hybrid inverter with approx ~3Kwp solar panels. I'm trying to figure out if it's feasible to DIY adding battery storage (obviously...

diysolarforum.com

and the subsequent discussion on that thread.

 

[kommando]

I use Hiflying EW11's for all my RS485 connections not directly next to my data logger, no long cable runs or a route for a lightning strike to hit an inverter and then take the data logger with it. the server one on the inverter converts RS485 to Wifi and the client one at the data logger converts back from wifi to RS485. There is also the option in the settings for the server to output modbus tcp on its IP address and port 502 or a custom port. I have a CT meter with RS485 currently wifi connected to a data logger 20m away which could just as easily be an Inverter. Just to careful to match the CT meter to the Inverter so they can understand each others RS485, some RS485 meters have different firmware to suit the Inverter and its no good trying to get the wrong CT meter to work.

 

[edgecrusher]

Other than the SDM630 (which seems hard to source in North America), what other modbus based power meters have other successfully integrated with the Sol-Ark or Luxpower (lux says only the SD630)....

I'm quite familiar with modbus/rs485.. so I guess I could emulate exactly what the inverter is looking for....

 

[edgecrusher]

Alright, I think I have the right 'tools' to make this work with Luxpower, but after reading some of the challenges others are having with near net zero export, it has me seriously considering Sol-Ark.

Anyone heard of remote energy meters with Sol-Ark? Everything I see is just CT's....