SolarEdge - recharge battery from a generator?

[lhhf]

if Hurricane Helene has taught me anything, its the need to have a generator (and soft starters on my HVAC).

I have 17.2kw of solar going to a SolarEdge SE11400H-US HD-Wave inverter with BUI and a LG RESU16H Prime 16kWh home battery.

While I lucked out this time with having cloud-free days after the hurricane passed me in SC, and was able to run off of solar and charge my battery during the day, and it last nearly all through the night, if i didnt have all of that sun, i would have been screwed.

I have been looking at split phase generators to integrate into the system, but i cannot seem to find a definitive answer - can the generator charge the battery or does it simply power the breaker panel?

Ideally, the SE system would still power the house from the battery until its dead (after the sun goes down), then i can just use a generator for a few hours - just enough to recharge the battery, and be good until its depleted again. Is this possible??

TIA

 

[TechRider]

A lot of people like to use something like an eg4 chargeverter. You hook the chargverter to your batteries and the generator and it cleans up the dirty power and gives you DC.

 

[MattMan119]

Yes the charge better is the solution.. 240 or 120 ditty ugly power from a cheep generator and set the max to pull and charge batteries … lots of you tube tube videos on it and a dozen or more here at diy just do a search and should be a good reliable solution ..

 

[darkskies]

if Hurricane Helene has taught me anything, its the need to have a generator (and soft starters on my HVAC).

I have 17.2kw of solar going to a SolarEdge SE11400H-US HD-Wave inverter with BUI and a LG RESU16H Prime 16kWh home battery.

While I lucked out this time with having cloud-free days after the hurricane passed me in SC, and was able to run off of solar and charge my battery during the day, and it last nearly all through the night, if i didnt have all of that sun, i would have been screwed.

I have been looking at split phase generators to integrate into the system, but i cannot seem to find a definitive answer - can the generator charge the battery or does it simply power the breaker panel?

Ideally, the SE system would still power the house from the battery until its dead (after the sun goes down), then i can just use a generator for a few hours - just enough to recharge the battery, and be good until its depleted again. Is this possible??

TIA

I have the exact same setup. Mine does, as yours, if the suns out, it charges the battery. I haven't had much opportunity to test that, as usually, when I lose power, it is in the Winter and snow doesn't clear the panels really fast.

I have a generator, directly connected to the BUI, but have been told by SE that charging the battery from generator is not supported yet. Granted, I had expected that capability back in 2021, when I bought the system, so don't hold your breath.

It wasn't until last year that they got it to switch from battery to generator, when the battery hit a predefined level during an outage. But, there is no charging of the battery by generator (it does charge from PV, if sun's out). SE also seemed to indicate that, if on generator, and solar recharges the battery, it won't switch back to battery from generator. I guess I may be able to manually force it, but have not tried yet.

Lastly, I've been complaining that, when on generator, the system does not report any consumption, like it does on grid, or off-grid, but on battery.

No answers to your issue, from a SE standpoint, but just sharing what I know from opening numerous cases with SE.