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Schneider XW Pro Configuration Settings for a new system multi-unit install

D

Darcy Costa Rica

New Member
Joined
Jun 3, 2022
Messages
45
Good day,

I recently purchased a system that includes:

3 XW Pro Inverters
2 MPPT 100 600 Charge Controllers
2 MPPT RS Disconnect switches
Insight Facility
Conext Configuration SW Tool
2 battery racks with 61KWh of EG4-LL batteries
EG4 battery charger (new product)
12KW of Solarever panels

Now comes the fun part. Here is what I am trying to accomplish:

  • I am in Costa Rica and am just finishing a new house.
  • The power is very bad. Outages happen daily. They may be short, but several times per day my AIMS inverter (2KW for computer & electronics) beeps and jumps in to stabilize the power. People have constant appliance problems (ie. DEAD). I think power issues are a big part of the problem.
  • This is a small country and I have not found a Solar company in my area that works for me. Language is an issue. I'm from ??
  • Service is very difficult, so I like the idea of redundancy and separation of functions. One inverter down and I can adapt. One charge controller down and I can still generate 7KW.
  • Power is expensive here. Over 23c / KWh after using 200 KWh in the month.
  • Selling power to the Utility is very difficult and not useful. No money is paid back. Only credits are applied, and they expire every year. Registration and licensing for this can take years. I do not want any power going into the grid.
  • I have split my property into Grid panels (not critical) and PV panels. All the large power-consuming items are propane (2 on-demand gas water heaters, Cooktop, clothes dryer). I ran 240V to each of these items so I can convert them to solar if I have the sunshine and PV power. Only the wall oven is electric and it consumes about 4KW max.
  • My big spreadsheet of electrical items totals about 20KW if I turn on everything on the property that will be powered by the inverters. So, to avoid the issues of having 3 XW Pro inverters hooked up, I may only wire 2 and keep the 3rd as a backup.
  • My goal is to use the Grid to charge batteries, only if there is insufficient PV generation to recharge the batteries. This will happen in the rainy season. We get over 20 feet of rain here per year. Yes, that's correct.
  • I installed a 200 Amp Eaton Transfer switch to manually switch from Solar <--> Grid. I wanted independent control over how the property is powered.
  • There are 3 buildings:
    • Workshop with electrical room for inverters and batteries. The electrical room is Air Conditioned. All power enters here. A few loads in the Workshop are powered with the Grid (Welder and EG4 Battery Charger). The main PV breaker box in the electrical room can be manually switched from Solar <--> Grid with the Eaton Transfer switch. The main PV breaker box supplies the other two buildings...
    • House with large PV breaker box and very small Grid breaker box (currently powering nothing)
    • Garage with PV breaker box and small Grid breaker box (currently powering nothing)
  • I went to University about 100 years ago for EE, but my whole career was in software, so I remember enough to be dangerous. There are a lot of terms in this business that make me scratch my head.
So, I need to set the inverters so they cannot try to power the grid. If it goes down I do not want to fry any linemen or attempt to power my neighbours.

My guess is that I am not trying to do much that is different than many other people.

What do I need to set up on these inverters to get them powered up?

Many thanks!
 
pvdude said:
If your vendor did not already provide this as part of the order,
you will need a way to calibrate the inverters.

I used an old laptop w/ DB-9 serial interface.

The tool:

software to run it all:
View attachment 142911
Click to expand...
Many thanks. I have a USB to DB9 adapter, and I may have an old laptop with a DB9 port.

Did you calibrate because they were producing different voltages? What were the symptoms, or did you just measure the voltage individually and determine they were not close enough?

Thanks again.
 
Darcy Costa Rica said:
Good day,

I recently purchased a system that includes:

3 XW Pro Inverters
2 MPPT 100 600 Charge Controllers
2 MPPT RS Disconnect switches
Insight Facility
Conext Configuration SW Tool
2 battery racks with 61KWh of EG4-LL batteries
EG4 battery charger (new product)
12KW of Solarever panels

Now comes the fun part. Here is what I am trying to accomplish:

  • I am in Costa Rica and am just finishing a new house.
  • The power is very bad. Outages happen daily. They may be short, but several times per day my AIMS inverter (2KW for computer & electronics) beeps and jumps in to stabilize the power. People have constant appliance problems (ie. DEAD). I think power issues are a big part of the problem.
  • This is a small country and I have not found a Solar company in my area that works for me. Language is an issue. I'm from ??
  • Service is very difficult, so I like the idea of redundancy and separation of functions. One inverter down and I can adapt. One charge controller down and I can still generate 7KW.
  • Power is expensive here. Over 23c / KWh after using 200 KWh in the month.
  • Selling power to the Utility is very difficult and not useful. No money is paid back. Only credits are applied, and they expire every year. Registration and licensing for this can take years. I do not want any power going into the grid.
  • I have split my property into Grid panels (not critical) and PV panels. All the large power-consuming items are propane (2 on-demand gas water heaters, Cooktop, clothes dryer). I ran 240V to each of these items so I can convert them to solar if I have the sunshine and PV power. Only the wall oven is electric and it consumes about 4KW max.
  • My big spreadsheet of electrical items totals about 20KW if I turn on everything on the property that will be powered by the inverters. So, to avoid the issues of having 3 XW Pro inverters hooked up, I may only wire 2 and keep the 3rd as a backup.
  • My goal is to use the Grid to charge batteries, only if there is insufficient PV generation to recharge the batteries. This will happen in the rainy season. We get over 20 feet of rain here per year. Yes, that's correct.
  • I installed a 200 Amp Eaton Transfer switch to manually switch from Solar <--> Grid. I wanted independent control over how the property is powered.
  • There are 3 buildings:
    • Workshop with electrical room for inverters and batteries. The electrical room is Air Conditioned. All power enters here. A few loads in the Workshop are powered with the Grid (Welder and EG4 Battery Charger). The main PV breaker box in the electrical room can be manually switched from Solar <--> Grid with the Eaton Transfer switch. The main PV breaker box supplies the other two buildings...
    • House with large PV breaker box and very small Grid breaker box (currently powering nothing)
    • Garage with PV breaker box and small Grid breaker box (currently powering nothing)
  • I went to University about 100 years ago for EE, but my whole career was in software, so I remember enough to be dangerous. There are a lot of terms in this business that make me scratch my head.
So, I need to set the inverters so they cannot try to power the grid. If it goes down I do not want to fry any linemen or attempt to power my neighbours.

My guess is that I am not trying to do much that is different than many other people.

What do I need to set up on these inverters to get them powered up?

Many thanks!
Click to expand...
Because you have power quality issues, and no ability to sell power back to the grid you have a very NON-typical problem that you need to solve. Most of us have good grid power when the grid is on. In this case we would hook the AC Grid into our inverters AC1 input. Most of the time the inverter would be in "Pass Through Mode". The inverter essentially does nothing and the grid power just flows through a relay into your house. It is only when the grid goes down that the AC power from the grid is disconnected from the house and our inverters will switch to "Inverter Mode". This standard configuration will not work for you because the power from your grid is not clean. What you want is a system where the inverters are always suppling good clean AC power from your DC bus into your house, just like a full off grid system. Schneider actually started off as an off grid system, so it will work great for this. In addition you want to be able to charge your system from the grid when it is needed and grid power is available.

My recommendation is this:

1. Use two of your inverters plus the charge controllers to setup what is essentially an off grid system. These two inverters will have no direct connection to the electric grid. These 2 inverters will be joined together as a Master and slave. All the power they supply will be good clean power using your DC to create AC with the inverters. These two inverters will be hooked into your insight controller along with your charge controllers. These 2 inverters are beasts and together they should easily handle the loads you have described. You did the right thing by going with gas for your BTU hungry appliances.
2. Set your remaining inverter up as follows. Hook it to the power grid on AC1. Hook the DC battery terminals up to your PDP DC bus. This inverter will serve only as a grid powered battery charger. There will be nothing connected to the AC out. You may need to turn off the backup mode on this inverter only so the inverter doesn't try to turn on when it loses grid power. It wouldn't draw much, but better if you can just turn it off.
3. Don't hook this inverter up to the same insight controller because it is is performing a totally different task. You might be able to use the same insight controller to program this box. It is just that you would then have two masters on the same insight box. I am not sure how that would work. You might be able to program it and then disconnect. I would set this up to charge the batteries based on voltage. If batteries drop below 53 volts, start a charge cycle. You should be able to push 100 amps into your batteries easily to bring them up to 55.7. Use the the 2 stage charge at 100 amps bulk and then the bulk exit at 55.7 with absorption at 55.7.

I think this would solve your power quality issues and would give you the ability to charge from the grid if needed. You could adjust the charge start voltage or even lock out charging during certain times to avoid using the grid power for no reason. You should be able to run 2-3 days with no sun. Maybe set the charge time block so that it only runs at 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM in the afternoon. This way the charger would only run if the solar had not filled the batteries up by 2:00 PM. I think the setting above would get you going, but you might need to experiment and adjust things to keep you batteries near full each night while not using excessive grid power at night if you don't need to.

The only thing is you might want to get a separate insight box just to control the inverter you are using as charger. If you run both your inverter and charger on the same insight box, I think it is going to get confused about how to interpret the current in and out. Maybe it doesn't work at all to have two masters. I am not sure about this. It might work OK, but I am sure. I know it would work fine on two separate insight controllers. One would track only your charging from the grid. The other your charge controllers, inverters and loads. Also you don't mention having a PDP box, but for this system you absolutely want that box. You would want 2 of the inverter wiring connection kits. Wire up 2 of the inverters according to the wiring diagram for a dual inverter system. Just don't connect the Grid AC1 to the first two inverters. For the third inverter hook the incoming grid power to the AC1 Grid In and your inverter DC connection to the DC bus in the PDP panel (using your third DC circuit breaker in the PDP panel). With the second wiring connection kit, a lot of the wires won't be used. I think the DC circuit breaker is part of the wiring kit. In the AC breaker area you can wire this up as if it were a two inverter system. You won't need the third AC breaker kit. Use one of the grid in breakers to connect the Grid AC to the AC1 Grid in of the third inverter.

Also buy a Brother Label Maker to label all the wires on both ends. You don't want screw ups either now or in the future.

You could PM me if you have more questions. I think the gear you have should work great for your requirements. It is just a matter of hooking it all up correctly.
 
Last edited:
The Schneider adapter is DB-9 on one end and RJ-45 on the other.
I just plugged in the XANBUS cable, launched the application, all good.
 
FYI,

I wouldn't worry too much about calibration just yet. Get your inverters powered up and measure the voltage. If two of them are within 0.6 volts use those two as your inverters. You may not even need to do the calibration. It certainly won't hurt, but you have bigger fish to fry.

My biggest struggle in all this was quite literally getting these boxes lifted on to the wall. There are no handles and they are extremely heavy.
 
pvdude said:
The Schneider adapter is DB-9 on one end and RJ-45 on the other.
I just plugged in the XANBUS cable, launched the application, all good.
Click to expand...
Just to make sure I understand this clearly, the Schneider adapter as pictured in their listing has two components, a DB9-RJ45 adapter with unknown pinout, and a CAN-USB interface, do you yourself use both of them? Or just the DB9 adapter in a serial port on the computer?
 
wheisenburg said:
Because you have power quality issues, and no ability to sell power back to the grid you have a very NON-typical problem that you need to solve. Most of us have good grid power when the grid is on. In this case we would hook the AC Grid into our inverters AC1 input. Most of the time the inverter would be in "Pass Through Mode". The inverter essentially does nothing and the grid power just flows through a relay into your house. It is only when the grid goes down that the AC power from the grid is disconnected from the house and our inverters will switch to "Inverter Mode". This standard configuration will not work for you because the power from your grid is not clean. What you want is a system where the inverters are always suppling good clean AC power from your DC bus into your house, just like a full off grid system. Schneider actually started off as an off grid system, so it will work great for this. In addition you want to be able to charge your system from the grid when it is needed and grid power is available.

My recommendation is this:

1. Use two of your inverters plus the charge controllers to setup what is essentially an off grid system. These two inverters will have no direct connection to the electric grid. These 2 inverters will be joined together as a Master and slave. All the power they supply will be good clean power using your DC to create AC with the inverters. These two inverters will be hooked into your insight controller along with your charge controllers. These 2 inverters are beasts and together they should easily handle the loads you have described. You did the right thing by going with gas for your BTU hungry appliances.
2. Set your remaining inverter up as follows. Hook it to the power grid on AC1. Hook the DC battery terminals up to your PDP DC bus. This inverter will serve only as a grid powered battery charger. There will be nothing connected to the AC out. You may need to turn off the backup mode on this inverter only so the inverter doesn't try to turn on when it loses grid power. It wouldn't draw much, but better if you can just turn it off.
3. Don't hook this inverter up to the same insight controller because it is is performing a totally different task. You might be able to use the same insight controller to program this box. It is just that you would then have two masters on the same insight box. I am not sure how that would work. You might be able to program it and then disconnect. I would set this up to charge the batteries based on voltage. If batteries drop below 53 volts, start a charge cycle. You should be able to push 100 amps into your batteries easily to bring them up to 55.7. Use the the 2 stage charge at 100 amps bulk and then the bulk exit at 55.7 with absorption at 55.7.

I think this would solve your power quality issues and would give you the ability to charge from the grid if needed. You could adjust the charge start voltage or even lock out charging during certain times to avoid using the grid power for no reason. You should be able to run 2-3 days with no sun. Maybe set the charge time block so that it only runs at 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM in the afternoon. This way the charger would only run if the solar had not filled the batteries up by 2:00 PM. I think the setting above would get you going, but you might need to experiment and adjust things to keep you batteries near full each night while not using excessive grid power at night if you don't need to.

The only thing is you might want to get a separate insight box just to control the inverter you are using as charger. If you run both your inverter and charger on the same insight box, I think it is going to get confused about how to interpret the current in and out. Maybe it doesn't work at all to have two masters. I am not sure about this. It might work OK, but I am sure. I know it would work fine on two separate insight controllers. One would track only your charging from the grid. The other your charge controllers, inverters and loads. Also you don't mention having a PDP box, but for this system you absolutely want that box. You would want 2 of the inverter wiring connection kits. Wire up 2 of the inverters according to the wiring diagram for a dual inverter system. Just don't connect the Grid AC1 to the first two inverters. For the third inverter hook the incoming grid power to the AC1 Grid In and your inverter DC connection to the DC bus in the PDP panel (using your third DC circuit breaker in the PDP panel). With the second wiring connection kit, a lot of the wires won't be used. I think the DC circuit breaker is part of the wiring kit. In the AC breaker area you can wire this up as if it were a two inverter system. You won't need the third AC breaker kit. Use one of the grid in breakers to connect the Grid AC to the AC1 Grid in of the third inverter.

Also buy a Brother Label Maker to label all the wires on both ends. You don't want screw ups either now or in the future.

You could PM me if you have more questions. I think the gear you have should work great for your requirements. It is just a matter of hooking it all up correctly.
Click to expand...
Thank you for this recommendation. It is a very interesting idea. I also have the EG4 Chargeverter that I could hook up to the grid and use to charge the batteries in case they drop too low. But, it would not be automatic. Much of this will depend on how much I can generate from the 30 solar panels to charge the batteries. In Costa Rica, the sun is a monster, but in the rainy season, it is common to have some days without sun.

As stated in my signature, I have the PDP and it makes the wiring much easier.
 
Just saw this post... Seems like you want to use the internal charger of the XW Pro set to correct parameters for your battery. Enable "Backup mode" Then for the Grid support settings just make sure that Sell Amps = 0. That way you will never sell to the grid. I had set this up exactly like this when I first installed my system and before my PV array was installed. Essentially, at that point the XW Pro was acting like a giant UPS system for the whole house. Once my PV was installed, I disabled the charger on the XW Pro and thereafter my battery was charged from the Solar charger.
In your case, you could just leave the XW Pro charger off and turn it back on during rain season. Or, you would have to set the hours to charge to be during the night when there is no solar.
 
Darcy Costa Rica said:
In Costa Rica, the sun is a monster, but in the rainy season, it is common to have some days without sun.
Click to expand...
Just an FYI, no sun does not mean no solar. I get a surprising amount of solar here even when it is cloudy. It does depend on cloud thickness of course and sun angle. Clouds plus low sun angle affect solar the most. On cloudy days, I don't get enough to run the Air Cond or Drier, but enough for lights computers and things like that. I may get 1000 to 3000 watts when full sun is 9000. My typical usage is 500-800 watts when nothing big is running. I'm not familiar with when Porto Rico's rainy season is, but at least here my problem months are Dec and Jan. A low sun angle, plus clouds too. In the winter my heater runs a lot. Just the fan is 300 watts. Not huge, but probably 3-5 KWH a day. You should get more solar there during the winter due to latitude.
 
Yes, I am getting up to 3.5kWh of charging under full clouds. Costa Rica is not Puerto Rica. Similar but Costa Rica is a Country and much further south. I set up one inverter as a grid charger for times when I am concerned about battery levels. The other two inverters are not connected to the grid and run the whole property. It is working well, but I still need to tweak some things to get more power from the solar array. I made a mistake when connecting the PV strings to the charge controllers. Too much on one and not enough on the other. I was watching voltage but did not pay attention to the watt limit. One charge controller is pumping out 100A, but has too many panels attached to it. The other charge controller is doing 50 amps, and could use more panels.
 
Ok, I am very familiar with Costa Rica, I just somehow misread your location. I am glad things all worked out for you. Hopefully it will be even better once your strings are a little more balanced. I have thought about retiring in Costa Rica. I hear that if you live some place with a little altitude is is not quite so hot and humid. The government there also is democratic and stable, unlike a fair amount of the other south of the border countries.

I have heard a lot of people talk about solar assistant. Are there problems that it is solving for you? Do you think it is work getting? I am grid tied and only use my system for those very rare power failures.
 
wheisenburg said:
Ok, I am very familiar with Costa Rica, I just somehow misread your location. I am glad things all worked out for you. Hopefully it will be even better once your strings are a little more balanced. I have thought about retiring in Costa Rica. I hear that if you live some place with a little altitude is is not quite so hot and humid. The government there also is democratic and stable, unlike a fair amount of the other south of the border countries.

I have heard a lot of people talk about solar assistant. Are there problems that it is solving for you? Do you think it is work getting? I am grid tied and only use my system for those very rare power failures.
Click to expand...
Yes, we just finished building a house at 1,234 feet elevation on the south pacific coast area. You need to be up a little to get the convection breezes day and night, plus it is less humid. Costa Rica is not without its challenges, but it is stable, friendly, and beautiful. I am using Home Assistant, not Solar Assistant. I think it might be possible to integrate Home Assistant with Insight but I am not there yet. I have 145 devices hooked to my network and I am trying to get them all working in a new house. (y)
 
wheisenburg said:
My biggest struggle in all this was quite literally getting these boxes lifted on to the wall. There are no handles and they are extremely heavy.
Click to expand...
I installed a bar for a hoist right above them. You also don't want them installed anywhere that if they fall they do immeasurable damage.
In other words, never install heavy stuff above lithium batteries
 
Some considerations for your installation:
- If you install all three inverters and the two MPPTs, I'd recommend an Insight Facility over an Insight Home. The reason being is that you have a device limit to XANBUS of 8, and the Inverters each count as 2 devices in single or split-phase mode.
- Three inverters grid-connected in hybrid mode requires the use of an external transfer relay because the internal relays of the XW Pros are sized enough only to support a 2-inverter split-phase installation. When going to 3 inverters, more substantial switching is needed. This part is Schneider 865-BCS-2200. The guide attached to this post explains the limitations of the internal relays and the necessity of the external relay.
- Grid Forming capability and automatic failover in response to a grid outage is supported, but the process of detecting a grid outage takes the inverters several cycles of AC to confirm, and that is enough time for all the clocks in your appliances, and your router and PC to be rebooted. I recommend installing APC battery backups for critical devices. (DO NOT buy CyberPower!) When the XW Pros switch back to enabling the grid when power is restored, there is no disruption and it's instantaneous.
- The XW Pros can be configured for zero-sell to the grid. As with all grid-interactive synchronizing inverters, a very small amount of wattage will still occasionally feed back into the grid. It's not enough to trigger an intervention from most utilities.
- The XW Pros support a mode called Enhanced Grid Support which will allow your batteries to reach a full charge each day regardless of load. Prioritizing the batteries getting topped is necessary for the BMS in LiFePO4 batteries to maintain balance. Enhanced Grid Support int he XW Pro, in combination with Peak Load Shaving, gives you enough adjustability to prioritize your power to however you see fit.
- You'll want you whole house on the load panel attached to the outputs of the XW Pros. A transfer switch feeding that panel is necessary to bypass the XW Pros when the inverters are in maintenance mode, like for Firmware Upgrades which will take over an hour for three inverters. (Note that the PDP has provisions for inverter bypassing using a PDP circuit breaker toggling lockout for single inverter, or a sliding lockout plate for dual inverters , but PDP bypass is not supported for triple-inverter installations thus requiring an external transfer switch.)
- Invest in an AC Power Adapter for Insight when doing firmware updates. Normally, Insight is powered by XANBUS and an AC Adapter is described as optional, but when the inverters are shut down you lose power to XANBUS and thus Insight - this is unnerving, especially while doing Firmware upgrades to the Inverters.

A Conext Configuration Tool is no longer needed to calibrate the outputs of multiple XW Pros in a multi-inverter configuration.
The functionality for this was added to Insight with version 1.17 (Build 079) which allowed the deprecation of the Configuration Tool.

Under Configuration (Advanced), scroll down to AC Advanced Settings.
1720414635816.png
The password is XWproGridCodes
The following dialog will come up, and here's the info from the tooltip:
1720414778182.png
You'll find step-by-step instruction for measuring and calibrating the AC output voltage of the XW Pros in the attached guide. The guide will reference the Configuration Tool, but Insight is used for that now instead.
 

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