SW4048 as an AC grid source for XW pro?

[ghostimage]

Hi gang. I'm trying to find a working solution to a situation at hand. Currently I have XW6848Pro with aging 520ah agm bank. About ready to commission a 280ah LFP diy battery. However I do want to use both battery banks. Also have 100 600 mppt and 60 150 mppt, delivering 5000w and 3300w from solar. With the option to add another 60 150 mppt with 1200w. I just purchased sw4048. Here is what I'm thinking. I will feed 4048 and Lifepo4 bank into XW pro ac1 input. As a grid support. Is it something that makes sense.
I thought about dc to dc charger but the price of a good one is just as much as a sw 4048. I'd rather have something I could use as a backup as well. Hence sw choice. Plus it will incorporate nicely into my Schneider ecosystem.
It would be nice not to separate into two ac panels. I want XW to handle heavy lifting with SW acting as a generator/grid. That way it would deliver 30a to my main ac panel with XW kick in if demand goes over it, thus my lifepo4 will do main work and agm will act as a reserve.
Thoughts?

Thank you.

 

[BentleyJ]

What you are suggesting would be an interesting arrangement as long as the SW will produce stable AC power that the XW Pro will accept and not have random disconnects due to fluctuations. You mentioned Charge Controllers and decided against a DC DC Charger so you will use charge controllers for the batteries?
The only downside is if the XW Pro needs to charge its batteries using the internal charger then its really wasteful. Using DC to charge the SW batteries then turn it into AC then fed it to the XW that converts it back to DC to charge batteries then later with heavy loads the XW converts DC from the batteries back to AC. Wonder what the round trip efficiency is going to be in this case?

 

[ghostimage]

Yes. Charge Controllers for batteries. Iam hoping that most of the charge that agm will need will be float. I was monitoring my loads throughout the day. And on the average my draw rarely exceeds 30amp. Maybe I can restrict or omit charging from ac1 source. And charge agm from ac2/generator. I have to root through xw manual to dial in some settings.
Problem with dc to dc charger:
Here is the one I was looking at
48v dc to dc charger
20a tops. And 1600$. Limited control, lack of versatility.

 

[BentleyJ]

I'm using the XW+ and the Charger Enable/disable and Charge Block functions are non specific to the AC source. Not sure about the XW Pro they made a few changes. Let us know how it works out.

 

[ghostimage]

I have a lot of homework to do before SW arrives. Hoping to finish charging lifepo4 pack even if I have to start a generator. And start on roughing some wiring for SW and the battery. Weather is not cooperating today.

 

[ghostimage]

Sw Have arrived this afternoon. Before I start hooking it up. Here is my basic layout.
Here is what I'm thinking. Put Genset on ac2 input of SW so it can charge LFP batts or pass power to the inverter output. Mppt 60-150 will charge battery and power for SW inverter.(all applicable fuses and breakers in place)
Put SW output on AC2 input of the XW with bat charging manual only. Generator breaker at 30a , support set "On" on the XW (not sure about support amps yet will have to experiment)

 

[BentleyJ]

Of course the charge controllers are wired directly to the battery banks (or to a PDP if one is used) not the inverters, but we get the idea. Looks like it should work.

 

[Jennifer]

Andy from Off Grid Garage did several videos about this topic, using Victron products.

 

[OzSolar]

Hi gang. I'm trying to find a working solution to a situation at hand. Currently I have XW6848Pro with aging 520ah agm bank. About ready to commission a 280ah LFP diy battery. However I do want to use both battery banks.

We have several customers with 15+ year old systems that are doing complete rebuild with new batteries and inverters so I've three projects that I need to hammer out this very issue out for right now.

No one wants to throw away batteries with usable life left but these same batteries also essentially zero value to try sell used used.

My best solution so far has been to "split" a dual SW inverter (our Outback VFX) 120/240 inverter system into one inverter dedicated to charging the old battery bank and the other inverter hooked up to the AC IN of the inverter.

 

[ghostimage]

Of course the charge controllers are wired directly to the battery banks (or to a PDP if one is used) not the inverters, but we get the idea. Looks like it should work.

That is correct. Thank you. I'm just not 100% on settings to get it working smoothly. Will report once I'll wire everything.

 

[ghostimage]

Andy from Off Grid Garage did several videos about this topic, using Victron products.

Thank you for the video links. I will check it out. I've watched quite a few of Andy's videos. Good info there.

 

[ghostimage]

We have several customers with 15+ year old systems that are doing complete rebuild with new batteries and inverters so I've three projects that I need to hammer out this very issue out for right now.

No one wants to throw away batteries with usable life left but these same batteries also essentially zero value to try sell used used.

My best solution so far has been to "split" a dual SW inverter (our Outback VFX) 120/240 inverter system into one inverter dedicated to charging the old battery bank and the other inverter hooked up to the AC IN of the inverter.

Yeah. I'm planning on running the Lead into the ground. I don't think my capacity after 7 years is the same. I probably should do a capacity test. It's all the same though. It is what it is.
Seems it is the same thing I'm trying to do. A bit of a round about at first however it still provides redundancy.

 

[ghostimage]

Ok. I hooked up some stuff today with mixed success.
LFP is powering SW > AC2 input of XW and to the main panel. Everything was on the same xanbus network. For the life of me I could not get them to work together. I was getting f66. Which is association error/mode error. I tried both inverters as stand alone, different ac inputs/loads designations, xw as master, sw as slave. It would not budge. I gave up on that for the time being. I isolated sw of the network and it worked. Xw qualified sw output. I set generator support enabled on xw support amps 15a. I'm did great. My agm only saw 0.5a load (inverter and network itself I assume) load was entirely supported by sw. My agm were pretty much changed today so I tried enable a charger. I've limited charge rate to 20% and it finished absorption and went into float. I left it all at that for tonight. Of cause in the app it shows as if I'm running generator so it'll mess my consumption/production statistics. I'm going to fool around with settings some more tomorrow. If anyone has some suggestions about configuration of both inverters on the same network I would be thrilled to hear some ideas.
Thank you.

 

[BentleyJ]

You probably tried this already regarding the Xanbus error but I didn't see it specifically listed above. Since there are 2 inverter/chargers they probably need to have different device numbers even though they are different model numbers. The default value is 0 on both units unless one was changed manually.

 

[ghostimage]

You probably tried this already regarding the Xanbus error but I didn't see it specifically listed above. Since there are 2 inverter/chargers they probably need to have different device numbers even though they are different model numbers. The default value is 0 on both units unless one was changed manually.

Yes sir. Good suggestion. Sorry I forgot to mention that. I have set device numbers. XW is 1 and SW is 9. The error was saying AC association is what was at fault. There are only few settings there and it still would give me an error. I will try again tomorrow and post some more pics of the fault and my settings maybe you guys can spot my mistake.

 

[ghostimage]

Didn't get to play with the. settings of the inverter today but wired and mounted 4 more panels. Now all charge controllers are working. Woo-hoo! The panels get quite a bit of shading from the branches but something is better than them sitting in a basement.
I'm rethinking my approach with the inverters a little bit. I have sw on ac2 input now. I think of moving it on ac1/grid side, as I would like to experiment with with grid support mode. There are a lot more features available. Hopefully xw will have no problem qualifying sw.
The only problem the manual is like an Egyptian scroll to me. I'm reading the sections of the manual about ac features again and again and it is somewhat escaping me and a bit confusing. ? Given I'm an amateur and it seems that literature is fairly well written.


Wine is going down alot better than a knowledge tonight ?.

 

[ghostimage]

Ok so I did something despicable. I called Schneider support. Wich is dumb me should have done to begin with. Sw and xw CAN NOT be on the same xanbus network, period. It is pretty meh if you ask me. For some particular applications (mine for example ?) it would be quite handy ( hey Schneider are you listening?). I get it, from moneys stand point of view it makes perfect sense. They want you to buy more XWs not cheaper sw.
Anyway, for me to achieve my goals here I would have to keep em on the separate networks. Designated insight home and all. So that's what I am going to do. With redundancy in mind it will be ok. Definitely not an ideal solution and far from being elegant but will work. I'm in a bit over 2k with sw and insighthome, another XW would set me back ~3.8k said and done. I hope it helps someone who ventures down the same path. So far my set up is in the dumb mode. I have inverter block set up on Sw from 8am to 7pm. During this time My Scc charges lifepo4 pack. And at night it turns on and supports Xw and keeps Agm bank afloat. Once I get my second insighthome, I will configure sw as grid and enable enhanced grid support on Xw and see if I can get it to work a bit more harmoniously. That's it for now, and happy New Year!
Cheers, Ghost

 

[Allgood-Energy]

Sw Have arrived this afternoon. Before I start hooking it up. Here is my basic layout.View attachment 126450
Here is what I'm thinking. Put Genset on ac2 input of SW so it can charge LFP batts or pass power to the inverter output. Mppt 60-150 will charge battery and power for SW inverter.(all applicable fuses and breakers in place)
Put SW output on AC2 input of the XW with bat charging manual only. Generator breaker at 30a , support set "On" on the XW (not sure about support amps yet will have to experiment)

This is AC coupling and the frequency shifting would have to work between the inverters. I would carefully read the manuals for both of these inverters. The SW may work just as a gen would, not sure. Grid tie maybe a problem.

 

[Jennifer]

 

[timselectric]

My system is designed to do exactly this.
6 AIO's powering non critical loads. And also feeding the AC input of 2 AIO's that feed the critical loads.
This gives me some combined output for the critical loads, during normal daytime operation. Thanks to SUB mode. And just their rated output at night, and when SHTF.