Schneider XW+ 6848 Inverter

[Northernliving]

Greetings. First post here. A friend recently gave me 3 Schneider XW+ (not Pro as originally posted) 6848 inverters and 4 Conext MPPT 100 Amp 600VDC Solar Charge Controllers. They were pulled from a working system with a MFG date around 2017. I have second lake home in Maine with 100 amp service. I’d like to use 2 of these inverters as a whole home battery backup in the event of a power failure. Long term after renovating the home, I’ll add solar. I’d like to know where I might start looking for batteries. Ideally, if I could find someone to help with the system design/battery sale, that would be perfect. Schneider has a battery guide. https://solar.schneider-electric.co...i-ion-Battery-Solution-Guide990-6359_rev-.pdf Am I limited to these batteries? Any suggestions on an engineering design house?

Many thanks.

 

[BentleyJ]

Signature solar and SOK are making some nice rack mounted, modular batteries that have several good reviews from members of this forum. These would be the best value proposition assuming there is a location at you lake home where that form factor will fit nicely.

 

[Northernliving]

Hey, Thanks BentlyJ. I tried calling Signature before posting, but they are very backed up and couldn't take my call. I'll give SOK a go. I've also tried to do some battery sizing. I'm mostly concerned with the heat staying on. This is an old house (well, it's 100 year old retired Inn). My power bill from mid-December through mid-January was 450kWh. With LiFePO 48V batteries, it seems I'll need ~500Ah for every day I want to be able to last w/out power. Does that seem right? If so, these "free" inverters are going to get expensive! Please tell me I did something wrong with my calculations.

 

[MichaelK]

Hello NL, can you please introduce me to your friend? Anyone giving away Schneider equipment is someone I'd like to be friends with. BTW, if they have a 2017 manufacturing date, I think they might actually be the XW+ 6848 model.

These are the batteries I currently have with my system, twelve for 48V, which I am very happy with. Since they ship from Canada, and you must be up north, your shipping costs might be rather low.

4 CS 17P | Rolls Battery

www.rollsbattery.com

For a whole home system though you might be interested in something bigger, like this battery.

4 KS 25P | Rolls Battery

www.rollsbattery.com

 

[Mr-Sandman]

Welcome @Northernliving!

Good friend you have there, that's over $10k in equipment. Are you sure they are XW PRO 6848 and not XW+ 6848 I don't recall when they switched to the Pros but I had in my head it was shortly after 2018 or 19.

You are NOT restricted to the batteries on Schneider's battery list. Those are batteries that the XW's are compatible with in closed loop BMS communication. That's NOT required. The XW is completely programmable and will work with any "48v" battery system.

The Signature Solar EG4's are a good choice, I have 3 on my XW Pro 6848. They will NOT talk to the XW so they will need to be in open loop, like most batteries. That doesn't present any issue, you will define the voltages and they work fine. One important note. The EG4 LifePower4 batteries are having issues starting Schneider inverters right now. Pre-Charge timing issue I think. I would steer clear of those and get the EG4 LL or even better if you can wait, get the SOK rack battery that's for sale pre-order.

Doing 2 inverters adds a level of complexity to your system. Completely doable, but if your lake home is only 100amp main and you can verify your loads don't go over 6,800 watts continuous or 12,000 surge, I would lean on just doing one. Much easier install, won't need the external electronic disconnects "required with more than one XW in use with service potential over 60amps". Also will cut down on your batteries needed. You need a min of 2 EG4 batteries, preferable 3 per XW for the peak current draw you might see.

Your going to want a Schneider insight home gateway to configure and monitor those XW's.

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any more questions.

 

[BentleyJ]

450KWh / 30 days = 15KWh per day in usage. LFP batteries should normally only be discharged to 80%. So to get 15KWh per day USABLE battery power its 15/0.8 = 18.75KWh. That's the average, some days may be more or less.
Minimum you should have 20KWh worth of batteries, 25KWh would be better. The nominal voltage of LFP cell chemistry is 3.2V. Therefore, 25,000Wh / (3.2*16) = 488Ah so you were correct with the 500Ah figure.

 

[Northernliving]

Welcome @Northernliving!

Good friend you have there, that's over $10k in equipment. Are you sure they are XW PRO 6848 and not XW+ 6848 I don't recall when they switched to the Pros but I had in my head it was shortly after 2018 or 19.

You are NOT restricted to the batteries on Schneider's battery list. Those are batteries that the XW's are compatible with in closed loop BMS communication. That's NOT required. The XW is completely programmable and will work with any "48v" battery system.

The Signature Solar EG4's are a good choice, I have 3 on my XW Pro 6848. They will NOT talk to the XW so they will need to be in open loop, like most batteries. That doesn't present any issue, you will define the voltages and they work fine. One important note. The EG4 LifePower4 batteries are having issues starting Schneider inverters right now. Pre-Charge timing issue I think. I would steer clear of those and get the EG4 LL or even better if you can wait, get the SOK rack battery that's for sale pre-order.

Doing 2 inverters adds a level of complexity to your system. Completely doable, but if your lake home is only 100amp main and you can verify your loads don't go over 6,800 watts continuous or 12,000 surge, I would lean on just doing one. Much easier install, won't need the external electronic disconnects "required with more than one XW in use with service potential over 60amps". Also will cut down on your batteries needed. You need a min of 2 EG4 batteries, preferable 3 per XW for the peak current draw you might see.

Your going to want a Schneider insight home gateway to configure and monitor those XW's.

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any more questions.

Ha! Yes, he is a great guy - a commercial electrician who installs lots of solar stuff and these were replaced with more efficient units, so he offered them to me as he knew I was looking at backup power options for our lake house and I would really like to go with solar. These units are the WX+ 6848 units. I was mistaken. They aren't the PROs. Mfg date is Nov 2017. I thought I read in the documentation they could be used together with a power distribution panel. It would be ideal to have the entire house on a backup, even though very few critical items would be running while I'm not there (furnace, water line heater, refrigerator, security and wifi system). If the place were to freeze, it would be a mess. I don't think my loads would go over 6,800 watts continuously.

The units came with a Conext ComBox and a Conext SCP box. Don't know if that's for the solar charge controllers or something different. Still trying to sort out what the parts all do! I don't think it's the home gateway you are referencing.

Thanks for the information on your batteries. That's very helpful. I read through the thread on the EG4 LifePower 4 batteries and the starting issues. That's when I realized I need some help!

I'm sure I'll have some more questions as learn more. I'm really excited about this solution and appreciative of all the help! Attached is a picture of the spec decal on the inverters as well as the Conext boxes that came with it.

 

[Northernliving]

Hello NL, can you please introduce me to your friend? Anyone giving away Schneider equipment is someone I'd like to be friends with. BTW, if they have a 2017 manufacturing date, I think they might actually be the XW+ 6848 model.

These are the batteries I currently have with my system, twelve for 48V, which I am very happy with. Since they ship from Canada, and you must be up north, your shipping costs might be rather low.

4 CS 17P | Rolls Battery

www.rollsbattery.com

For a whole home system though you might be interested in something bigger, like this battery.

4 KS 25P | Rolls Battery

www.rollsbattery.com

Thanks MichaelK. I was mistaken and you are correct. These are XW+ inverters. I'll look into the batteries.

 

[Mr-Sandman]

You will use the SCP and ComBox for configuring and monitoring. ALL of the Schneider equipment communicates via XANBUS, their networking protocol. The Insight Home is the new version of the Combox. The ComBox should work just fine for you.

You can certainly use more than 1 XW 6848 in your system, they can be configured in a Master Slave setup. The only issue that creates is the built in transfer switches in the units are 60 amps each and since they don't open or close at the exact same time when networked, they can't handle the 100amp main circuit current if they ever had that much flowing thru them it would be a problem for the 60amp relays.
They make external relays for use in multiple XW installation that solves that issue. If you for sure never will exceed 60amps, then this isn't an issue. In this case I'd probably change the main breaker to 60 amps or install a new 60 amp breaker to feed each XW just to make sure you never exceed the internal transfer switch ratings.

 

[Bluedog225]

Have the Signature Solar battery issues been resolved?

 

[Mr-Sandman]

Have the Signature Solar battery issues been resolved?

No, it has not... I would avoid the EG4 LifePower4 batteries for now. The more expensive EG4 LL "LCD Screen models" do work ok. That's what I have.

 

[Koldsimer]

Have the Signature Solar battery issues been resolved?

I wish.... still no answers over a month into this fiasco. Latest word is they are still waiting on the xwpro but i'm guessing even if it shows up it's gonna collect dust until they figure out the growatt 5000ES inverter safety issue.

So yeah, OP I would definitely look into the SOK batteries.

 

[traymor]

Very interested in this thread. This is my exact setup! Just unboxed and working towards hanging parts. For starters this will just be grid-tied but I do have 64 280Ah Eve cells for the next phase of the project.

 

[Northernliving]

Very interested in this thread. This is my exact setup! Just unboxed and working towards hanging parts. For starters this will just be grid-tied but I do have 64 280Ah Eve cells for the next phase of the project.

I'll look forward to learning of your progress. What is the Generac panel used for. Are you using a back up generator Is this a commercial install, or private residence?

 

[Mr-Sandman]

Very interested in this thread. This is my exact setup! Just unboxed and working towards hanging parts. For starters this will just be grid-tied but I do have 64 280Ah Eve cells for the next phase of the project.

WOW!!!! That's a lot of pretty Schneider equipment. Going to be a large system!

Just FYI, you may know they but you did mention "For starters this will just be grid-tied". The XW's REQUIRE a battery to even turn on. You'll have to hook a 48v battery up to them even for grid-tie. I used (4) deep cycle marine batteries on mine to get it up and running. I grid-tied exported for over a month with these before my EG4's batteries finally came in.

 

[traymor]

I'll look forward to learning of your progress. What is the Generac panel used for. Are you using a back up generator Is this a commercial install, or private residence?

I picked up the ATS unopened at our local Habitat outlet about a year ago. Just lucked into it and couldn't pass it up. Don't think I will need it, but it looks nice. This is for my personal residence, no generator, just batteries and panels. Going to be a slow process for me, rapidly learning that Schneider is not necessarily user friendly.

 

[traymor]

WOW!!!! That's a lot of pretty Schneider equipment. Going to be a large system!

Just FYI, you may know they but you did mention "For starters this will just be grid-tied". The XW's REQUIRE a battery to even turn on. You'll have to hook a 48v battery up to them even for grid-tie. I used (4) deep cycle marine batteries on mine to get it up and running. I grid-tied exported for over a month with these before my EG4's batteries finally came in.

I have a couple of options for a startup battery but haven't figured out if there is a minimum size needed for operation. I'm sure there is a spec somewhere in all the manuals. Any suggestion?

 

[Mr-Sandman]

I don't know what the min spec is, but (4) 12v 100ah marine batteries in series worked for me. I don't think you want any less than that. I wouldn't plan on those batteries being much of a backup in a power out situation, but that should power everything and provide the DC buffer needed for selling to grid operations.

 

[BentleyJ]

I started up a XW+ 6848 with 12V x 4 gel cells and it did work but they are too small to accept input from the charger. One of the triggers to initiate a charge cycle is a power outage so upon start up it may go into Bulk charge. If the battery is too small you will immediately get an over voltage alarm because there isn't enough time for the device to adjust the voltage and current. Basically there is nowhere of the initial charge surge current to go. Even if this happens, you can go to the menu and disable the charger then clear the alarm. At that point you should be free to navigate the menus and adjust the settings. The good news is these inverters have a lot of options. The bad news these inverters have a lot of menu options and the user manual is a little confusing and actually has a couple of mistakes. Specifically regarding Peak Load Shave, Sell Back, HVCO, behavior.

 

[MichaelK]

The XW+ installation manual specifically mentions installing at least a 400Ah battery. One of the reasons for a large battery is to reduce the negative effects of ripple current. And of course, big inverters powering big loads need a big battery bank to feed them.