Schneider XW Pro Enhanced Grid Support issues

[Roman59]

What charges your battery?

Two CC Schneider 60/150....5.9K in pv

 

[400bird]

Ok, and what specifically are you looking for the inverter to do?

 

[RCinFLA]

CT transformers have accuracy and tolerance in their reported current and its phase relative to AC voltage (need phase info to know if current is going in or out AC input port). A safety margin is usually held by inverter when no-selling is selected that prevent supplementing AC input for AC input currents less than about 4-5 amps No supplementing of AC input will occur when grid AC input feed drops below 4-5 amps of incoming current from grid. This is to ensure CT accuracy does result in some continuous grid back feed. Victron inverter will not let you set AC input assists level trigger to less than 5 amps.

Inverter has some response time to react to load shaving and grid voltage fluctuations. If grid voltage suddenly dips a bit there will a little back feed until inverter readjusts inverter output to the grid voltage fluctuation.

These slight, short time period grid back feed leaks will not trigger a smart meter report for back feeding. A water pump motor will back feed grid during a portion of AC cycle due to its inductive load power factor and can also momentarily back feed when there is a momentary grid voltage dip.

Possible poor power factor of AC loads makes AC power input or output flow determination a bit more complicated. Because a poor reactive power factor load will have positive and negative AC current flow during portions of the AC cycle, the inverter must time average the calculated power to determine net power flow direction. This slows down response time.

On initial AC input connect, the inverter has pass-through relay open. It adjusts inverter to match AC input voltage it measures on AC input side of pass-through relay and slowly slews inverter frequency/phase to match that of AC input. This is done open loop based on factory calibration of frequency/phase measurement. If phase calibration is off, when it thinks everything is aligned and closes pass-through relay there will some current surge from slightly misaligned phase. The inverter should do a fine phase alignment adjustment to minimize the phase misalignment by current sensing.

Frequency/phase alignment is done slowly so not to perturb any AC out loads, like a refrigerator or water pump AC motor. This requires the AC input source to be fairly phase stable or the inverter will not be able to track AC input phase wobble. This is a common issue with fixed rpm synchronous generators when the generator's AC output freq/phase is wobbling due to an unstable rpm governor control.

When connected to a synchronous generator and a sudden AC out surge load occurs, some of the surge is supplied by inverter and some of the surge is supplied by generator. If the synchronous generator bogs down from the surge load and drops engine rpm it also shifts its output frequency. If this freq/phase shift is too fast, the inverter phase tracking being limited in reaction time, will not be able to follow the generator phase shift. This may cause inverter to release from generator because of current surges due to phase misalignment.

When an inverter has AC input load shaving it can take up more of AC out load preventing generator overload. The inverter has some reaction time for sudden load surge current so for a few milliseconds some of the surge may leak through to AC input.

Victron's 'dynamic' AC input load shaving starts the load shaving earlier than user set AC input current limit when the increase rate of load current is high, like on an AC motor surge current during startup. After current stabilizes, the inverter backs down its supplementing if stable current is less than user set load shaving limit. The is supposed to give the Victron inverter a jump on handling surge loads preventing generator overload.

 

[Roman59]

Ok, and what specifically are you looking for the inverter to do?

That when I sell to the grid I don't draw amperage from my batteries

 

[RCinFLA]

That when I sell to the grid I don't draw amperage from my batteries

DC coupling PV to batteries then using inverter to sell AC power to grid always puts 120 Hz ripple current on batteries. The peak-to-peak ripple current is twice the average inverter DC current, 120 Hz AC sinewave current centered on average DC current is swinging from near zero to twice the average current.

Even when there is no net average current into or out of battery, the large ripple current stresses and creates heating of battery due to battery's internal impedance.

The batteries are effectively a large filter capacitor to take the PV illuminated based constant current PV feed to the sine square power profile of single-phase AC power.

 

[400bird]

That when I sell to the grid I don't draw amperage from my batteries

The short version is set the grid support voltage higher than battery voltage.

Edit to add that the MPPT much have charge settings that are higher than grid support voltage.

The inverter will sell any energy it can get that is above the grid support voltage setting. If you enable grid support when the battery is above that setting, the inverter will dump that to the grid. Try enabling/adjusting grid support in the morning when battery voltage is lower.

Longer versions involve requests to see all your settings.

 

[Roman59]

The short version is set the grid support voltage higher than battery voltage.

Edit to add that the MPPT much have charge settings that are higher than grid support voltage.

The inverter will sell any energy it can get that is above the grid support voltage setting. If you enable grid support when the battery is above that setting, the inverter will dump that to the grid. Try enabling/adjusting grid support in the morning when battery voltage is lower.

Longer versions involve requests to see all your settings.

Thank ... I'll follow those recommendations and then I'll let you know

 

[pvdude]

The short version is set the grid support voltage higher than battery voltage.

Edit to add that the MPPT much have charge settings that are higher than grid support voltage.

Thank You!
After recent 1.17 Insight upgrade, inverters began switching between "AC passthrough" and "Grid support" at low usage time of day (sunset)
Inverter status just toggles back and forth between the two.
I changed the MPPT "Float voltage set point from 54.0 to 54.5, toggling ceased!
Grid suport voltage is 54.0.
(FLA batteries)
Note - no sell back, grid use is for load support when PV is not available.

 

[Hamish]

I have installed a Schneider XW Pro Inverter with their MPPT 100 600 charger and Lithium Smart batteries. I have the latest firmware. The unit works great from a performance point of view, seems quite efficient based upon heat it dissipates and is incredible at handling surges! I have a 6 HP 240 V compressor and it starts it without the slightest hesitation. However, I am also selling to the grid. I wanted to do their Enhanced Grid Support. Meaning… keep batteries charged, use the power from the PV to run the house and sell any extra to the grid. I scoured the documents and the WEB and could not get information for it to work properly… meaning: It would only sell to the grid at the rate of the “max sell amps”! The impact of which was to discharge the battery at a high rate until the batter SOC (or voltage.. depending on mode) would be reached and then it would stop using energy from the PV, the house would be fed from the grid, the battery would then be recharged to above the SOC limit and then the cycle would start all over again! Constant large current cycling of the battery about every 55 seconds.

I called technical support multiple times and all they gave me was the manual information and said it should work… but it did not.

In searching the WEB, I found multiple people encountered this problem but no one including Schneider had a solution! Well, I stumbled upon the solution… They say that the Grid Support voltage should be set to 64 Volts in order to enable the Enhanced mode. That does not work. I have verified this on my system and the exact system of a friend of mine (we bought same equip. at the same time).

The answer is to run it in the SOC mode but have the Grid Support voltage at the float voltage of the charge controller! Then it works beautifully!!! Just a note: the charger settings on the MPPT must be the same values as on the Inverter.

I wasted about 25 hours with this issue and Schneider was no help at all. I believe that at this point I understand the system better than their technical support people.

If any of you struggled with the same issue… I hope this will help you!

I have more than 25 hours into this problem. Thank you so very much for giving me the "key."

 

[Hamish]

I have installed a Schneider XW Pro Inverter with their MPPT 100 600 charger and Lithium Smart batteries. I have the latest firmware. The unit works great from a performance point of view, seems quite efficient based upon heat it dissipates and is incredible at handling surges! I have a 6 HP 240 V compressor and it starts it without the slightest hesitation. However, I am also selling to the grid. I wanted to do their Enhanced Grid Support. Meaning… keep batteries charged, use the power from the PV to run the house and sell any extra to the grid. I scoured the documents and the WEB and could not get information for it to work properly… meaning: It would only sell to the grid at the rate of the “max sell amps”! The impact of which was to discharge the battery at a high rate until the batter SOC (or voltage.. depending on mode) would be reached and then it would stop using energy from the PV, the house would be fed from the grid, the battery would then be recharged to above the SOC limit and then the cycle would start all over again! Constant large current cycling of the battery about every 55 seconds.

I called technical support multiple times and all they gave me was the manual information and said it should work… but it did not.

In searching the WEB, I found multiple people encountered this problem but no one including Schneider had a solution! Well, I stumbled upon the solution… They say that the Grid Support voltage should be set to 64 Volts in order to enable the Enhanced mode. That does not work. I have verified this on my system and the exact system of a friend of mine (we bought same equip. at the same time).

The answer is to run it in the SOC mode but have the Grid Support voltage at the float voltage of the charge controller! Then it works beautifully!!! Just a note: the charger settings on the MPPT must be the same values as on the Inverter.

I wasted about 25 hours with this issue and Schneider was no help at all. I believe that at this point I understand the system better than their technical support people.

If any of you struggled with the same issue… I hope this will help you!

I and my installer have wasted a lot more than 25 hours over the last 3 months. I tried the 64 volt trick and of course it did not work. I tried setting grid support voltage to the floater voltage voltage and that did not work. I have a whole list of " tricks" from various manuals and blogs, some of which seem magical and others that seem reasonable but do not work. Nothing seems to work. I am beginning to think there's a fundamental flaw in the latest firmware. For my next trick, I plan on shutting everything down, disconnecting all power, and leaving it to cook overnight. Then I will reboot all the components one by one to factory defaults. Then I will go through and correct those parameters that aren't right.

Of course it would be nice to be able to save and reload parameter sets, but when I try to upload a previously downloaded configuration, it hangs my Chrome browser. I am not surprised. I am reduced to opening all the tabs and then printing that page. I can then go back and reset all the parameters, one by one, tedious, and not helping my current frame of mind.

My xw Pro and batteries are new. But now I am researching other products like Outback. LOL.

 

[n2aws]

I and my installer have wasted a lot more than 25 hours over the last 3 months. I tried the 64 volt trick and of course it did not work. I tried setting grid support voltage to the floater voltage voltage and that did not work. I have a whole list of " tricks" from various manuals and blogs, some of which seem magical and others that seem reasonable but do not work. Nothing seems to work. I am beginning to think there's a fundamental flaw in the latest firmware. For my next trick, I plan on shutting everything down, disconnecting all power, and leaving it to cook overnight. Then I will reboot all the components one by one to factory defaults. Then I will go through and correct those parameters that aren't right.

Of course it would be nice to be able to save and reload parameter sets, but when I try to upload a previously downloaded configuration, it hangs my Chrome browser. I am not surprised. I am reduced to opening all the tabs and then printing that page. I can then go back and reset all the parameters, one by one, tedious, and not helping my current frame of mind.

My xw Pro and batteries are new. But now I am researching other products like Outback. LOL.

I've heard other forums post that resetting the inverter to factory defaults, and re-configuring it solved odd "gremlins". I've never needed to do it myself, but just throwing it out there.

 

[Hamish]

I did the full shutdown and factory reset procedure. The system is now running but continues to draw power from the battery when the solar panels are producing more than enough. Enhanced grid support should not be doing that. My system is intended as a backup system and should only draw power from the battery if the grid and solar are not sufficient.

 

[n2aws]

I did the full shutdown and factory reset procedure. The system is now running but continues to draw power from the battery when the solar panels are producing more than enough. Enhanced grid support should not be doing that. My system is intended as a backup system and should only draw power from the battery if the grid and solar are not sufficient.

One sec, I want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding.

You want the batteries to stay nearly 100% most of the time, you are able to sell to grid (ie, you have a net metering agreement). and don't want it drawing from the battery unless it's a grid outage, correct?


If so, I'd do this:
- Enable grid sell (under inverter > configuration > control)
- Enable grid support (Inverter > configuration > grid energy management > grid support > enable
Under grid support, also set:
- Set Grid Support voltage to 67v
- Grid support SOC to 100%
- Grid sell amps to max
- Grid peak load shave enabled
- Load shave amps to 0

Make sure your MPPT's are set to 3 stage.

When your batteries are fully charged and the mppts switch to float mode, the generated power will be sold to the grid. And it shouldn't consume battery unless there is a power outage.

Please know that the above assumes insigh firmware 1.18b41. and XW Pro firmware 2.04b29

If the batteries are below 100% SOC, it'll prioritize recharging the batteries over supporting loads or selling to the grid

 

[BentleyJ]

Load Shave Amps is the value used to determine when the inverter starts to supplement loads using battery power. So If it is set to 0 then NO current will be drawn from the grid and the inverter will try and satisfy all loads from the batteries. This is exactly the opposite of what Hamish is wanting to do.

 

[JBertok]

It sound like the XWs are holding the DC voltage higher than the MPPTs are, and the MPPTs are tapering off.
They're not watching the Charge Controllers as expected.

Can you verify the absorption and float setpoints are identical between the MPPT 100 600 and the XW Pro.
If it was working right the XW Pro should be holding the DC voltage just a bit below what the MPPTs are trying to push it to though the entire 3=stage charging sequence, with an exception that if there is a sudden 2V increase it could disrupt it.

 

[n2aws]

Load Shave Amps is the value used to determine when the inverter starts to supplement loads using battery power. So If it is set to 0 then NO current will be drawn from the grid and the inverter will try and satisfy all loads from the batteries. This is exactly the opposite of what Hamish is wanting to do.

If load shave is 0 amps, and SOC is set to 100%, it will use PV generated power to support the loads only when the battery is full.. When the PV power goes away (dark, clouds, etc) then it stops supporting the loads and uses the grid to satisfy those. Enhanced grid support prioritizes the batteries.

Thats how mine is setup, and right now.. I have a good amount of cloud cover. See the screenshot below. you'll notice that 100% of the available PV power is going into the battery, and isn't being used to supply the 200w of load. When it gets to 100% SOC, it'll support loads and sell to grid.

 

[BentleyJ]

That makes sense when adding SoC into the mix. This is a variable I don't have available with the XW+. So if you needed to actually have Peak Load Shave kick in at say 4pm for TOU the SoC setting would have to be reduced to less than whatever the battery is presently at.

It sounds like the problem described in the post was due to Enhanced Mode not working correctly on his inverter.

 

[n2aws]

That makes sense when adding SoC into the mix. This is a variable I don't have available with the XW+. So if you needed to actually have Peak Load Shave kick in at say 4pm for TOU the SoC setting would have to be reduced to less than whatever the battery is presently at.

It sounds like the problem described in the post was due to Enhanced Mode not working correctly on his inverter.

I would agree with this.

I don't currently have TOU setup, so I can only speculate there, but it sounds reasonable.


In my particular scenario, I don't have a net metering agreement. so, I have a wattnode and only "sell back" enough juice to the main panel, to satisfy house loads. but the settings are identical (the system doesn't know if I have an agreement or not, so it's "selling back" regardless as if I did, it's a couple other settings elsewhere, that enable the zero sell aspect.

 

[Hamish]

I have installed a Schneider XW Pro Inverter with their MPPT 100 600 charger and Lithium Smart batteries. I have the latest firmware. The unit works great from a performance point of view, seems quite efficient based upon heat it dissipates and is incredible at handling surges! I have a 6 HP 240 V compressor and it starts it without the slightest hesitation. However, I am also selling to the grid. I wanted to do their Enhanced Grid Support. Meaning… keep batteries charged, use the power from the PV to run the house and sell any extra to the grid. I scoured the documents and the WEB and could not get information for it to work properly… meaning: It would only sell to the grid at the rate of the “max sell amps”! The impact of which was to discharge the battery at a high rate until the batter SOC (or voltage.. depending on mode) would be reached and then it would stop using energy from the PV, the house would be fed from the grid, the battery would then be recharged to above the SOC limit and then the cycle would start all over again! Constant large current cycling of the battery about every 55 seconds.

I called technical support multiple times and all they gave me was the manual information and said it should work… but it did not.

In searching the WEB, I found multiple people encountered this problem but no one including Schneider had a solution! Well, I stumbled upon the solution… They say that the Grid Support voltage should be set to 64 Volts in order to enable the Enhanced mode. That does not work. I have verified this on my system and the exact system of a friend of mine (we bought same equip. at the same time).

The answer is to run it in the SOC mode but have the Grid Support voltage at the float voltage of the charge controller! Then it works beautifully!!! Just a note: the charger settings on the MPPT must be the same values as on the Inverter.

I wasted about 25 hours with this issue and Schneider was no help at all. I believe that at this point I understand the system better than their technical support people.

If any of you struggled with the same issue… I hope this will help you!

Insight Home/Facility v1.18 is out. It is supposed to fix the enhanced grid support problem. v1.17 was also supposed to fix that problem. Neither of them fixed it as near as I can tell. Thank you Schneider solar.

 

[n2aws]

Insight Home/Facility v1.18 is out. It is supposed to fix the enhanced grid support problem. v1.17 was also supposed to fix that problem. Neither of them fixed it as near as I can tell. Thank you Schneider solar.

When you guys say enhanced grid support doesn't work, What specifically are you thinking it does or should do, and what is it actually doing?

Because, for me.. enhanced grid support has worked for me (or at least the way I expected it to) for a while now, even before 1.17.

Maybe this is an issue of, just having different ideas/expectations about what it does?

 

[Hamish]

When on Grid Support, it will export battery energy even if more than enough solar power for the load. If I turn off GS, it will not export to grid. I suspect this is a feature. It has always seemed to me like there should be a grid support-conserve battery option. Maybe I missed that.

On-Grid
XW Pro 6848
MPPT 80-600 x 2
Discover 42-48-6650 Li-Ion x3
Generac 6730 20KVA
300-w panels.x24

 

[n2aws]

When on Grid Support, it will export battery energy even if more than enough solar power for the load. If I turn off GS, it will not export to grid. I suspect this is a feature. It has always seemed to me like there should be a grid support-conserve battery option. Maybe I missed that.

On-Grid
XW Pro 6848
MPPT 80-600 x 2
Discover 42-48-6650 Li-Ion x3
Generac 6730 20KVA
300-w panels.x24

Apologies, I'm still not clear on what the issue is, or what you are trying to get it to do that it's not doing.

If you want it to export excess PV energy to the grid after the batteries are full, thats what enhanced grid support does.

The way it works is:
you set your grid support volts to 65.
You set your inverter to 2 stage charging (or disable it completely)
you set the Schnieder SCC (it must be schnieder, and connected via xanbus) to 3 stage. Set your bulk, absorg, and float voltages to whatever makes sense for your batteries.

When the sun is shining, the system will prioritize charging the batteries. Once your SCC switches to float mode AND the batteries "rest" down to float voltage, the XW Pro will begine exporting the energy being generated.

The last part is key. A lot of people think it's not working because they set float lower than bulk/absorb. So the SCC charges the batteries to (for example) 56v, but then the SCC switches to float at 54v. While the batteries are above 54v, the SCC doesn't want to "overcharge" the batteries, so it produces no power. When the batteries hit roughly float volage, the SCC will start producing energy from the available PV.

Depending on your battery chemistry, it can take a while to let batteries drop to that float voltage. So my recommendation would be to set bulk/absorb/float all to the same voltage. If thats not an option, enable the settings and watch it for a while. see if it starts exporting when the voltage drops after the SCC's have switched to float.

If that helps, cool. If not, please write a detailed description that includes 2 things. 1) What you expect the system to be doing. and 2) What it's actually doing. Please make sure to include config details/parameters.

 

[Hamish]

According to the release notes for the latest firmware, there are issues with the Enhanced GS. However, the give a "workaround".. which does not work!
I am still using closed loop SOC control, however, they still use voltages to do the actual control of how much power they take from the DC bus and how much they export after supporting the house loads. So what one would think is a completely SOC-based control is not so... it is a hybrid mode. Once the magic trick is known, mainly having the Grid Support voltage be the same as the Float voltage then it works magically. All their instructions say to have it not at Float but at a magic number "64". When I did that it just kept oscillating with the high discharge/charge cycles.

But with Discover BMS, battery type=Discover 6650, the XW must be set to 2-stage charging, thus no float stage at night. At night, XW periodically draws power from batteries, then recharges. I could set Recharge % to 100, but BMS overrides and sets it to 98%.


On-Grid
XW Pro 6848
MPPT 80-600 x 2
Discover 42-48-6650 Li-Ion x3
Generac 6730 20KVA
300-w panels x24

 

[Hamish]

Apologies, I'm still not clear on what the issue is, or what you are trying to get it to do that it's not doing.

If you want it to export excess PV energy to the grid after the batteries are full, thats what enhanced grid support does.

The way it works is:
you set your grid support volts to 65.
You set your inverter to 2 stage charging (or disable it completely)
you set the Schnieder SCC (it must be schnieder, and connected via xanbus) to 3 stage. Set your bulk, absorg, and float voltages to whatever makes sense for your batteries.

When the sun is shining, the system will prioritize charging the batteries. Once your SCC switches to float mode AND the batteries "rest" down to float voltage, the XW Pro will begine exporting the energy being generated.

The last part is key. A lot of people think it's not working because they set float lower than bulk/absorb. So the SCC charges the batteries to (for example) 56v, but then the SCC switches to float at 54v. While the batteries are above 54v, the SCC doesn't want to "overcharge" the batteries, so it produces no power. When the batteries hit roughly float volage, the SCC will start producing energy from the available PV.

Depending on your battery chemistry, it can take a while to let batteries drop to that float voltage. So my recommendation would be to set bulk/absorb/float all to the same voltage. If thats not an option, enable the settings and watch it for a while. see if it starts exporting when the voltage drops after the SCC's have switched to float.

If that helps, cool. If not, please write a detailed description that includes 2 things. 1) What you expect the system to be doing. and 2) What it's actually doing. Please make sure to include config details/parameters.

I expect it to NEVER sell battery energy to the grid.
On-Grid
XW Pro 6848
MPPT 80-600 x 2
Discover 42-48-6650 Li-Ion x3
Generac 6730 20KVA
300-w panels x24

 

[n2aws]

I expect it to NEVER sell battery energy to the grid.
On-Grid
XW Pro 6848
MPPT 80-600 x 2
Discover 42-48-6650 Li-Ion x3
Generac 6730 20KVA
300-w panels x24

#1) I can't imagine a BMS is overriding your grid support SOC settings.
#2) Enhanced grid support specifically prioritizes the batteries, so it shouldn't sell to the grid *from* batteries.

If it's exporting from batteries to the grid, there is a reason. there is something misconfigured somewhere.

If I set the settings I described in my previous post, my XW won't even send energy to support the critical loads, until the battery SOC is at 100% and the SCC's go to float. If it won't send power to even support the protected loads, it certainly wouldn't send it back to the grid.

That said, I've repeatedly asked for your settings. I'm not sure anyone can help without them.