Remote restarting Schneider XWPro inverter after BMS shutdown turns off inverter?

[LinuxGeek]

I am grid connected but live in a mountainous remote rural county in west Texas. The Co-op power company has been pretty reliable, but when a storm does take out the power, it is seldom a quick restart.

I primarily rely on my inverter/battery system as a whole house backup. I use an EG4 PowerPro 14.3KWh battery. While on vacation last summer, we lost power for 7 hours (first outage of that length). It was just long enough that my battery shut down due to low SOC. When I am home, I use an EG4 Chargeverter with a generator to charge the battery, but it is a manual option and not something I want running if I am not home.

For this outage, a neighbor came to my rescue and restarted my battery and inverter after the grid returned. Of course, a second battery probably would have saved me having to call to my neighbor. Solar panels and more battery storage are in the works.

Does anyone have an elegant solution for remotely restarting a downed system or keeping it alive in low power mode until the sun comes out or the grid returns?

I thought I'd poll for ideas. Thanks.

 

[Solar Guppy]

Only option is more batteries, 14.7kw is no where enough for a whole home backup and that's your issue. Not sure why you would expect it to auto-recover as once the battery is off-line, nothing could be done automatically.

 

[skyking1]

I am grid connected but live in a mountainous remote rural county in west Texas. The Co-op power company has been pretty reliable, but when a storm does take out the power, it is seldom a quick restart.

I primarily rely on my inverter/battery system as a whole house backup. I use an EG4 PowerPro 14.3KWh battery. While on vacation last summer, we lost power for 7 hours (first outage of that length). It was just long enough that my battery shut down due to low SOC. When I am home, I use an EG4 Chargeverter with a generator to charge the battery, but it is a manual option and not something I want running if I am not home.

For this outage, a neighbor came to my rescue and restarted my battery and inverter after the grid returned. Of course, a second battery probably would have saved me having to call to my neighbor. Solar panels and more battery storage are in the works.

Does anyone have an elegant solution for remotely restarting a downed system or keeping it alive in low power mode until the sun comes out or the grid returns?

I thought I'd poll for ideas. Thanks.

The main issue with a whole home backup is load shedding. If you do nothing with that when you go away, an unfortunately timed outage will wipe out big storage.
Are there some things you can do in that regard?

 

[LinuxGeek]

When I am home, usage can be 30+KWh/day. When on vacation, I only use about 800-1200 W/hour. I set the mini-split at 80 degrees and the rest of the consumption is the fridge + freezer - so it's pretty barebones consumption. I initially sized the system to last about 7-8 hours since we'd never been without power for more than 4 hours, and I had the chargeverter.

When my PC/server looses power, it restarts when the power comes back online. Too bad a similar feature doesn't exist with the inverter. My neighbor came home to a freezer of rotten food when a breaker tripped while he was on vacation. It could have been worse.

 

[Brucey]

How about for example setting xw to turn off at 48V? This should leave enough to power bms etc until sun comes back out?

 

[BKY2003]

When I was researching using the power pro with the XW6848, SS warned me that the OP situation could happen.

I did ask SS about setting the XW6848 LBCO to prevent the battery from discharging all the way. He said the discharge curve is usually so steep it might not catch it. He recommended having a backup charger on the battery.

Some of the ideas I was thinking of if I did use the power pro was, 1 changing the insight home firmware to 1.17 and selecting undefined for the battery BMS. Then try to setup coms 2. Buy a compatible EG4 LL-S battery and connect the xw6848 to this battery as the primary BMS for communications. Then connect the power pro to the EG4 LL-S. 3. Buying an auto start generator paired with the chargeverter. I have no idea if any of these ideas will work. But figured I’d share them.

But it is unfortunate that EG4 did not press Schneider to make the power pros compatible with the insight home/ XW6848 BMS selection.

 

[wheelman55]

We’re in the Big Bend/Terkingua area and 100% off grid.

Our system is a XW6848+ NA, 80-600 MPPT with 3 Discover 7.4 kw lithium batteries in a closed loop. All connected to a 5kw solar array.

When/if our battery bank shuts down from low SOC, the system restarts itself as soon as the sun hits the panels in the morning.

I did this as a test when I commissioned the system. We’ve never run the batteries down in real life.

We’re 390 ah of batteries at 48 volts.

It sure seems like your system should restart.

Dave Angelini specializes in Schneider gear. He’s active in the NAZ forum. Super knowledgeable and a great guy.

 

[niktak11]

You should set the inverter to stop discharging before the point that the BMS disconnects

 

[Solar Guppy]

When/if our battery bank shuts down from low SOC, the system restarts itself as soon as the sun hits the panels in the morning.

It sure seems like your system should restart.

OP has no solar, so when battery is dead, the inverter has no power source for the inverter

 

[BKY2003]

Another difference between wheelman55 and OP is wheelman55 is closed loop. OP should be open loop, or if he is closed loop I sure would like to find out how he did it.

 

[wheelman55]

OP has no solar, so when battery is dead, the inverter has no power source for the inverter

I didn’t catch the “no solar”.

OP lives an hour or so from us. There’s lots of sun down here.

 

[LinuxGeek]

Please clarify open loop vs. closed loop. I do have the inverter talking to the BMS of the EG4, and I can read my SOC in Insight Home, but it is woefully unreliable, so I set my charging profile to trigger on voltage. One time my battery shutdown due to low voltage when the SOC was still showing 90%.

 

[BKY2003]

In a post somewhere the EG4 tech said the XW6848 would need to be set to an EG4 protocol to have full Close loop coms.

 

[hwy17]

Add a separate grid to battery charger. Could be just 100W or whatever anything would eventually wake the battery up.

 

[wheelman55]

LinuxGeek. Closed loop means that the XW communicates with the battery BMS via XANBUS to set charge parameters to maximize charging. Think plug and play.

Dave Angelini helped me with our system. One of his requirements, once I got the system wired, was to run the battery down until the system shut down to confirm that it would restart once the power was back (in our case the next morning via solar). Dave had me do this 3 or 4 times.

I don’t see why this would not work with using the grid as your power instead of solar? As long as you are closed loop?

I got this from AI on my iPhone. “It/they” claim that EG4 can work closed loop with the XW inverter.

Click on this link:

Google Search

Maybe a call to EG4 can clear it up?

Good luck!

 

[Offthewall]

I don’t see why this would not work with using the grid as your power instead of solar? As long as you are closed loop?

Because the grid is connected to the inverter which cuts off when batteries are low…

Hwy17’s solution would be the easiest way.

 

[Texas-Mark]

For this outage, a neighbor came to my rescue and restarted my battery and inverter after the grid returned.

What exactly needs to be done to restart things? I use some time delay momentary contact relays connected to the mains to restart certain things that require manual intervention (i.e. press a button) after loosing power. Of course the button needs to be something you can parallel to.

 

[BKY2003]

was to run the battery down until the system shut down to confirm that it would restart once the power was back

At what SOC on the battery does the system shut down. Is it the LBCO on the XW6848 that is controlling this shut down? Thanks

 

[wheelman55]

OK. I’ll explain the best that I can. Someone with more technical insight might pipe in with a more eloquent explanation.

Each of the 3 Discover batteries has a capacity of 7.4kw. The BMS limits this to 6.6kw useable.

When the battery gets to a certain SOC, the BMS in the battery shuts the battery down.

The battery and the Schneider gear talk to each other. The Schneider gear knows that the BMS shut the battery down. When electricity is available again (via solar for us), the Schneider gear knows to recharge the battery.

The firmware in the batteries as well as in the Schneider gear work together.

How did I do?

 

[wheelman55]

Because the grid is connected to the inverter which cuts off when batteries are low…

Hwy17’s solution would be the easiest way.

My inverter cuts off when the battery gets low and restarts with solar production in the morning.

Why would this be different with the grid coming back on?

 

[hwy17]

Why would this be different with the grid coming back on?

In this case the battery only charges from the grid through the XW. As long as the battery is dead the XW can't wake up and if it can't wake up it can't start charging.

Your charge controller must have black start capability. What is it? I'm honestly not sure if my Schneider 100 600 can do that.

Or your XW is shut down for LBCO instead of battery shutoff, and in that case the battery still keeps the CC alive.

On my system I have separate charge and discharge circuits so when the battery shuts off the loads my charge sources remain connected. But currently I have to manually intervene in those cases to restore the load circuit, I never enabled any auto recover.

 

[wheelman55]

We are:

XW+ 6848 NA
Connext MPPT 80 600
Connext Mini PDP
Connext SCP
3 X Discover AES 42-48-6650 w- XANBUS LiFeP04 batteries
Running closed loop.

I’m not an expert. I do know that everything turns off until the solar starts production in the morning, then everything turns itself back on. It could be that the leftover/not accessible charge in the battery bank does keep things alive.

Dave Angelini, who is very active on the NAZ forum, is an expert on Schneider gear would have these answers. Dave specializes in off grid. He has done consulting work for Schneider on XW from maybe the inception and has recently consulted with them on the development of their new AIO and battery. Unfortunately Schneider didn’t take his advice to make the new AIO and battery more off grid friendly.

Anyway…good conversation here.

 

[LinuxGeek]

This is all wonderful insight. Thank you.
Based on your descriptions, I am running closed loop, as my inverter can read the BMS, know the state of charge as reported from the BMS and can kick off a charge cycle based on SOC.
I need to see if the Schneider 100 600 can wake the EG4 battery or the XW Inverter if either shuts down.

 

[Solar Guppy]

This is all wonderful insight. Thank you.
Based on your descriptions, I am running closed loop, as my inverter can read the BMS, know the state of charge as reported from the BMS and can kick off a charge cycle based on SOC.
I need to see if the Schneider 100 600 can wake the EG4 battery or the XW Inverter if either shuts down.

The charge controller (Schneider 100 600) is directly connected to the battery and should have no issues charging, even when discharge is turned off.