Sunny island 6048

[MurphyGuy]

I figure I'm less likely to get lightning damage, due to location and because utility feed is underground from an underground transformer. Half a block away the (12kV?) input goes up a pole and is above ground beyond that. I'm in the process of installing a hefty TVS system since discovering that my Delta lightning arrestors happily let 5000 Vrms go by; they obviously aren't the "Varistor" claimed on vendors site. Rumor has it they just contain sand; that is the "silicon oxide" part of "silicon oxide varistor"

I will also add varistors on the DC side. There are small ones on input of some of my Sunny Boys but SMA recommends more. I also have the Delta sand-filled bottles there.

I have manual transfer switches in a few places, so I can put the house direct on grid if Sunny Island is down. Was going to do that with the Sunny Boys as well, interrupting RS-485 so it would know Sunny Island was no longer performing UL 1741 and Sunny Boy should resume doing that. But because 10000TLUS doesn't respond correctly to RS-485 I didn't, it is only on Sunny Island's output.

It isn't quite there yet, but I want to set up UPS operation for the house (keep internet going for work at home), also my lab. Sunny Island will detect brownout and protect things from damage (which I've seen before.) I need to set up load shed of heating/cooling loads at about 10% DoD so they don't drain the small battery.

I have a load shedding contactor on my unit that shuts down the house at around 3.3 volts per cell. Better to have a controlled crash rather than the SI's or the BMS forcing shutdown.

I don't trust any of those lightening protection devices when it comes to thousands of dollars of inverters..

 

[manmont]

His SB6.0-US40 (also latest US41) models don't have an RS485 interface. That would be why SMA document SB-OffGrid-TI-US-en-21 says they are usable in a Sunny Island off-grid but not grid-backup system, and why he manually reprograms to island (off-grid) mode.

Those Sunny Boy have a "Speedwire" or Ethernet interface compatible with Sunny Boy Storage (400V battery) inverter.

When I asked SMA what could be used with Sunny Island, they said that the newer Sunny Boy (also some older models which don't correctly implement backup mode) could be used in "island" mode behind Sunny Island for grid backup, because Sunny Island provides the UL 1741 anti-islanding function.

That differs from what SB-OffGrid-TI-US-en-21 says:

"PV inverters without backup operation
For PV inverters without backup operation, the country data set must be set to the locally typical value for grid-tie
PV systems as per UL1741. The PV inverter is then configured for operation on the utility grid. In the event of a utility
grid failure, the Sunny Island is unable to derate the PV inverters by means of Frequency-Shift Power Control (FSPC).
If there is an excessive supply of energy, the PV inverters will switch off."

I suggest asking SMA directly, and saving their email reply if it tells you to do something different from what they've published.

Thank you,
How do setup the SB-xx-41 on Island Mode?

 

[Hedges]

Thank you,
How do setup the SB-xx-41 on Island Mode?

Here's the manual:

https://files.sma.de/downloads/SBxx-1SP-US-41-IA-xx-10.pdf

During first 10 hours of operation, "Island" may be one of the modes which can be set with switches. Maybe not this model, don't see mention of that - earlier models had it.

"Select the inverter configuration option. Please note that the SMA Grid Guard code for changing the grid-relevant parameters must be available after completion of the first ten feed-in hours or installation assistant (see "Application for the SMA Grid Guard code" available at www.SMASolar.com)."

It appears various Ethernet (Speedwire?) and WLAN (WiFi?) networks are supported. Maybe just a browser, but I used Sunny Explorer for my older model.

Notes on off-grid configuration:

https://files.sma.de/downloads/SB-OffGrid-TI-US-en-21.pdf

If you have a Speedwire interface, use a router to connect inverter to a laptop with Sunny Explorer installed.

"Parameter name Value Set country standard Either Island mode or depending on power frequency, Island mode 50 for 50 Hz power frequency or Island mode 60 for 60 Hz power frequency"

I see in the manual that an RS-485 interface is also available for this model Sunny Boy. That may only provide functions for meters, not for grid backup switching as it does in earlier models.

"SMA RS485 Module The inverter can be retrofitted with the SMA RS485 Module."

 

[MurphyGuy]

Thank you,
How do setup the SB-xx-41 on Island Mode?

Login as installer, go to Device Parameters tab, click "Edit Parameters", scroll down to "Grid Monitoring". The first option in the list is Country Code where it should be currently set to UL1741/2016/120 . There's a drop down box below it. If the box is not available to click on, you'll need a Grid Guard Code. Otherwise, click the drop down menu and select Island Mode 60hz.

make sure to click "Save Changes" before exiting.

Don't leave it like this if you reconnect to the grid or you might be liable for the death or injury to a line worker... BIG TROUBLE.

 

[daklein]

Loop area creates inductance, and wrapping ferrous metal around a conductor (between the conductor and return path that completes the loop) creates inductance. A wire that goes a way a distance by itself but then routes current back right next to itself does not do that. (for instance, using romex 2 wire + ground to to to a switch.) Current through a wire creates magnetic field, but equal and opposite current in an adjacent wire cancels it.

If your wiring creates any inductance instead of having only low-impedance paths (current out and back adjacent to each other), then you would get spikes and dips in voltage. If so, reduce/eliminate loop area by using wires that are together, not routed separately.

Thanks, good thought. I don't think there's any large loops. On my list is to draw a line diagram showing the whole system, I need it anyway.

From the outside service to the main panel in basement is in 2 or 3" EMT, ground bonded at both ends. Big 2/00 or so alum for L1,L2,N. The ground wire in this section is smaller now that I think of it, #6.

The long run from basement grid panel out to SMAs in garage is in PVC, all #6 wires together: AC2 grid L1,L2,N,G, and AC1 L1,L2 back to basement loads panel.

 

[madsci1016]

You guys with Lithium batteries, what BMS are you using? Batrium has been hell. There's a design defect with the batrium shunt for Sunny Islands I've verified with 3 setups now. They omitted any sort of filtering in the design, and the Sis put about a 20khz switching noise on the DC bus. Long story short, 120A draw/charge is read as 100A by the shunt. Error exists between 70A to 120A.

RECbms is hard to find documentation for. Does any REC model support SMA communication? Do you have to buy a certain REC part number? And where do you buy it in the USA?

Has anyone found lead acid settings in the SIs that are close enough for LiFEPO4? That's what I'm trying now, by the Soc calculated by the SIs is a bit wonky.

 

[toms]

I changed from Batrium to REC for various reasons. You need to order the REC SI BMS.
All the info and documentation i needed was on the REC website.
I use a Sunny Island 8.0H. Set it to lithium mode for charging and the REC controls things.

 

[madsci1016]

I changed from Batrium to REC for various reasons. You need to order the REC SI BMS.
All the info and documentation i needed was on the REC website.
I use a Sunny Island 8.0H. Set it to lithium mode for charging and the REC controls things.

From whom did you buy it from?

 

[toms]

I bought it from

Off Grid & Caravan Solar Systems - Secure Energy Independence

We take the burden off your shoulders with quality off grid solar panels and professional advice. Count on our huge range of solar, battery, inverter solutions for mobile applications delivered Australia wide.

www.solar4rvs.com.au

 

[madsci1016]

So I did a thing:

Victron shunt feeding the SunnyIsland in Lithium Ion mode. Plan is to use a much less sophisticated BMS to just read cell voltages and trip the main breaker for emergencies, otherwise the Victron will control the SunnyIsland.

Dumped the whole CANbus from the SunnyIsland. it looks like a lot of data is available. Gonna try to write a full driver for the Venus OS so we can use the free Victron web portal to log/see all the data instead of getting an old Sunny Webbox.

 

[toms]

nice work ?

 

[Hedges]

DC Solar Bankruptcy - so THAT's how I got such a deal on a pallet of Sunny Islands. Finally took the plunge 15 years after going grid tie.

...

What I'm working on now is imbalance of current feeding through paralleled Sunny Islands. Cables are precisely matched (matched conduit lengths and branches like headers.) Long 60' wire runs expected to balance it, but only 0.020 ohms. Suspect breaker resistance.

Square D QO270 resistance variations between units was the balance issue. Now have Schneider 2-pole 63A supplemental breakers instead; those are well matched.

I now have the house running on Sunny Island UPS, for near seamless transfer during grid failure. I put in a manual transfer switch so house is either on Sunny Island, or direct to grid (flip a switch if Sunny Island fails to return to PG&E).

In the middle of the day with 10 kW backfeeding from PV, I threw the disconnect switch. Sunny Island ran frequency up to 65 Hz, knocking AC coupled Sunny Boy off line (if not such a mismatch between production and consumption, that may not have happened.) Computer, clock, UVerse, VOIP stayed up. (Without UPS function, VOIP tends to hang, requires power cycle to reconnect after UVerse returns.) Frequency dropped to 61.99 Hz, SB 10000TLUS delivers 100W to supply minimal loads.

Close switch so SI can once again see the grid. After 5 minutes monitoring, SI raises frequency to kick SB offline, lowers to 60 Hz and synchronizes to grid, connects. Then SB comes back online and resumes delivering 10 kW to grid.

Power failures and rolling blackouts? Bring 'em on!

I still plan to implement various load shedding so A/C etc. running in the day is disconnected at night rather than running down battery.

 

[madsci1016]

Fun. I'll never get to play with AC coupled like that.

If during your disconnect test you kept running your battery down, would the SIs brought frequency back down to kick the solar back on and start charging the battery? Or are you not setup for that type of islanding mode?

 

[madsci1016]

O yeah and check this out:

 

[Hedges]

Fun. I'll never get to play with AC coupled like that.

If during your disconnect test you kept running your battery down, would the SIs brought frequency back down to kick the solar back on and start charging the battery? Or are you not setup for that type of islanding mode?

Yes, I tried that previously with various numbers of GT inverters and switching oil-filled radiators on and off.
For a while with battery partially drained, it kept frequency low so GT delivered maximum power. With default settings, frequency was around 58 Hz, which works for their GT inverters in "grid backup" or "island" modes, but not with strictly UL 1741 grid-tied units. (Settings can be changed so it stays within grid frequency specs for the low end.)

With battery full, it varied frequency between 61 Hz and 62 Hz to have GT deliver exactly what the loads required.

It was with these tests that I discovered SB 10000TLUS doesn't do what it's supposed to in "grid backup" setting. It tolerates the wide frequency range, but doesn't throttle output, produces full power up to 64.5 Hz then goes off line. SMA told me to use "island" instead, saying that was OK because SI handles UL 1741.

I also tried varying pool pump speed with VFD, and saw "IGBT Error" from (transformerless) SB 10000TLUS. I was thinking it saw the high frequency switching noise, but maybe problem was the simple rectifier/capacitor front end of my VFD. A good power-factor corrected one (switching supply front end charging capacitor) would fix that. I'm planning to swap out my transformerless Sunny Boys for transformer type, which I expect to be immune.

 

[Olibri]

I was considering a new post, but given that this thread exists I will try here first:

I have been running a 2xSMA 6048-US setup running latest FW w/under-sized batteries (10KWh LiFePO4 w/internal BMS) for a few days now and while it is fully functional, I am having a heck of a time with configuration. I keep trying configurations in the manual, but nothing really seems to work the way that I expect. Granted, my battery knowledge was near 0 when I started. Some questions if anyone has answers or pointers:

1. Has anyone gotten the "Other" battery to work? Without an external BMS I cannot configure all of the battery parameters. I received battery specs from the seller yesterday and am eager to get it setup correctly.
2. Right now I want to run the system with battery as backup primarily powered from the grid. The SIs are in Grid mode and feed excess back to the grid, but every time the Boost absorption timer expires it switches to battery powered mode and drains the battery pretty quickly, so I am getting a lot of unnecessary cycles on my battery. I really just want to run from grid with battery available to ensure that my AC-coupled 9KW PV generates electricity on a grid failure. I did try enabling Silent mode this morning, but it just seems to just drain the battery and feed the grid. To reduce the cycles I have increased the AptTmBoost to 10h which is the max.
3. I have set the Grid mode to Start. I thought that Auto would be correct, but what I find is that in this mode it drains the battery very low during absorption time to the point of getting brown-outs before the grid kicks on.
4. Currently I am in VRLA battery mode (since #1 above isn't working) and although I have 48V 208Ah battery, If I set BatCpyNom to 208Ah then I get a max voltage that is too high, so when charging the battery I get an overvoltage failure F121. I set BatCpyNom to 186 Ah and get a max voltage of 56.1V which works, but is still a bit less than the recommended max voltage. Why is the max voltage apparently set based on current?
5. I am not clear on the ChrgVtgXXX parameters. Do you add these to the nominal battery voltage for charging? Currently they are just the VRLA defaults. I wonder if I need to adjust these to get the correct charge/discharge behavior to maximize my battery lifetime.

To summarize, my main problem is that I want to use grid power when the grid is available and I cannot stop the SI from using the battery. I also want to maximize my battery's lifetime which presumably would mean keeping it full or near-full.

 

[Hedges]

I use SI6048 for grid backup with AGM, all PV is AC coupled on Sunny Boy.
I understand that if someone has DC coupled PV and wants to feed the grid, charge controller has to put a voltage on battery which is higher than Sunny Island wants.

Your setup probably has a "float" voltage below charge voltage of lithium so no charge current.
Maybe you need to set that higher, at a voltage barely above lithium resting voltage so little to no charging, but not lower so Sunny Island doesn't draw it down.

I thought there was a separate parameter to enable Sunny Island driving into grid from battery, separate from just letting Sunny Boy do it.
But maybe just GdMod = GridFeed enables both.

"Feed-In Operation
Whether energy is fed from the stand-alone grid into the utility grid is controlled using the parameter
"232.08 GdMod".
The wire size to the utility grid must be appropriate for the maximum current. This ensures that the
Sunny Island can feed into the utility grid with a full battery and at full solar irradiation.
In all cases, make sure to consult your grid operator if grid feed-in is possible.
If GdCharge is set, no energy is fed into the grid. If GridFeed (Default) is set, energy is fed into the
grid.

Grid feed-in from the DC side into the utility grid
In order to allow electricity to be fed from the DC side into the utility grid, the battery voltage in
a charged battery (on the utility grid) must be increased by external DC chargers or the
Sunny Island Charger above the nominal charging voltage."

 

[daklein]

I was considering a new post, but given that this thread exists I will try here first:

Olibri,
is your AC coupled PV set up on AC1 (island) or AC2 (grid) side of the SMAs? If it was an existing gridtied system, then probably on AC2? Or you've rewired to put it behind the SMAs on AC1?
Auto mode will let the SMAs connect to grid based on SOC thresholds that you set, and there are two configurable daily time ranges available.
Maybe try first without grid feed enabled? Unless all your solar is on AC1 which will fill up your battery and then you'd need to dump it somewhere.

 

[madsci1016]

I was considering a new post, but given that this thread exists I will try here first:

I have been running a 2xSMA 6048-US setup running latest FW w/under-sized batteries (10KWh LiFePO4 w/internal BMS) for a few days now and while it is fully functional, I am having a heck of a time with configuration. I keep trying configurations in the manual, but nothing really seems to work the way that I expect. Granted, my battery knowledge was near 0 when I started. Some questions if anyone has answers or pointers:

1. Has anyone gotten the "Other" battery to work? Without an external BMS I cannot configure all of the battery parameters. I received battery specs from the seller yesterday and am eager to get it setup correctly.
2. Right now I want to run the system with battery as backup primarily powered from the grid. The SIs are in Grid mode and feed excess back to the grid, but every time the Boost absorption timer expires it switches to battery powered mode and drains the battery pretty quickly, so I am getting a lot of unnecessary cycles on my battery. I really just want to run from grid with battery available to ensure that my AC-coupled 9KW PV generates electricity on a grid failure. I did try enabling Silent mode this morning, but it just seems to just drain the battery and feed the grid. To reduce the cycles I have increased the AptTmBoost to 10h which is the max.
3. I have set the Grid mode to Start. I thought that Auto would be correct, but what I find is that in this mode it drains the battery very low during absorption time to the point of getting brown-outs before the grid kicks on.
4. Currently I am in VRLA battery mode (since #1 above isn't working) and although I have 48V 208Ah battery, If I set BatCpyNom to 208Ah then I get a max voltage that is too high, so when charging the battery I get an overvoltage failure F121. I set BatCpyNom to 186 Ah and get a max voltage of 56.1V which works, but is still a bit less than the recommended max voltage. Why is the max voltage apparently set based on current?
5. I am not clear on the ChrgVtgXXX parameters. Do you add these to the nominal battery voltage for charging? Currently they are just the VRLA defaults. I wonder if I need to adjust these to get the correct charge/discharge behavior to maximize my battery lifetime.

To summarize, my main problem is that I want to use grid power when the grid is available and I cannot stop the SI from using the battery. I also want to maximize my battery's lifetime which presumably would mean keeping it full or near-full.

1) I tried "Other". It failed pretty quickly, error code something about an internal fault. They only added it in the newest firmware versions, it's undocumented, and clearly pretty buggy.
1b) If your battery has a BMS but it's not supported by the SMA, you've got a real problem. The SMA either needs to talk to the BMS over CAN bus, or you need to run the SMA in lead acid mode but with Lithium batteries. Which, frankly, sucks. I've tried it. That's why I wrote my own "BMS" to talk to my SMAs using a Victron shunt and Venus device.
3) Anything you do in the "Operations" menu is temporary. You need to fix your config, not issue temporary manual commands in "Operations".
4) Welcome to why I said it sucks above.
5) all those variable are per cell of a lead acid battery. So you have to times them by the numbers of cells in a 48V lead acid battery, which is 24.

The SMA SIs under factory default settings should act like a battery backup. As per the manual, if grid is present on AC2, it should always favor grid. Try Re-commissioning the system from scratch and touch no settings other than the required ones, and see if it behaves like you want.

 

[Hedges]

1b) If your battery has a BMS but it's not supported by the SMA, you've got a real problem. The SMA either needs to talk to the BMS over CAN bus, or you need to run the SMA in lead acid mode but with Lithium batteries. Which, frankly, sucks. I've tried it. That's why I wrote my own "BMS" to talk to my SMAs using a Victron shunt and Venus device.

Reminds me someone reports successful Sunny Island operation with DIY lithium and a particular BMS:

Help - I made the mistake of buying my own equipment but hiring installers. Battery issues.

Looking for any help I can get. I bought 2 x 12.5kw (25kw) LiFePo batteries from China. By themselves the batteries are great. They charge up to full just fine and thats where the problem begins. 36 x 330w Jinko Cheetah panels 2 x Sunny Boy 6.0 inverters. 2 x Sunny Island 6048 (in parallel)...

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