what inverter generator can be started by growatt spf3000tl lvm-es?

[mcmullen7242]

Hello i recently put together a solar system to run my greenhouse on my offgrid farm as well as my tiny home. I am trying to find an inverter generator that is compatible with my inverter/charger and that can be turned on by the inverter when my battery bank hits a certain voltage. Has anyone successfully done this yet? any recommendations on settings? I currently have a predator 3500 super quiet but with my load being about 10amp and sometimes shortly going just under 15 amps, i can only charge the minimum 10amp at a time so my generator and inverter dont disconnect. My battery bank is about 7kw which takes a good bit to charge at only 10 amps. I am hoping to find an inverter generator that has 7kw-8kw continuous so that i can charge 40A at a time while also powering the load as needed with this inverter. On a side note, my batteries are the 3.8kw powerwalls from big battery that are a few years old and use the sb50 connectors, they are paralleled using an sb50 y connector leading to one sb175 and then from the 175 it is connected to my inverter. with this setup i cannot use a seperate battery charger hooked up to my generator and then to my battery terminals

for settings on my current setup i am using:
setting 1: UTI (this is because my current generator needs to be manually started and turned off and whenever i start it, it needs to be priority)
3: GEN
11: 10A
13:56.4V
14: SNU

the settings i was thinking of using when getting new inverter generator with autostart:
1: SBU
3: GEN
11: 40A
12: 50V
13: 56.4V
14: SNU

 

[mcmullen7242]

I am also wondering how i can connect the generator to my inverter while being able to use the generator at full power, which i was hoping to be able to charge 40amps and also run my 15amp max load. is there a way to wire up my generator to the ac input and being able to draw this many amps?

 

[dianea]

I have nearly the almost the exact same setup, a Harbor Freight Predator 3500 Inverter generator, but the Growatt SPF5000ES. Setting #11 AC1, is the amperage charge at the battery from the inverter. I can have it set for 40, keeping the generator at its peak. Yours should do 40A also. Unfortunately, since the way the Growatt is programmed, it won't current limit the generator, so I have to turn #11 AC1 down to 10A when running the air conditioner or I'll trip the breaker on that poor generator.

Fun engineering fact: if the output of the generator and the output of the Growatt are close to phase and are paralleled, the Growatt will current limit as the generator syncs together. The Growatt will act as a four quadrant regenerative inverter and charge the DC bus, charging the battery. Usually, a syncroscope is recommended when doing this as the generator is acting as a peaking generator... When the battery is fully charged, the Growatt will fail with "high DC bus voltage" as it's not quite programmed to deal with all this abuse. Yes, I test things to destruction and the Growatt is quite impressive as they put a lot of engineering into it.

 

[mcmullen7242]

thanks for your response! i was looking to upgrade to the duromax 9000 inverter generator with remote start but have a few questions. how do i hook this up to my inverter while being able to draw 50 amps from the generator because the outlets are only 30 amps on the generator. is any generator with a remote start able to be auto started by the inverter? and is there something i should put in between the genny and the ac input to prevent backfeeds?