DIY solar battery storage

[Badger]

just a quick suggestion on mine i have ct clamps settings as pv not grid if i select grid it stops coms to meter but PV setting allows meter to comms

 

[Oldman22]

just a quick suggestion on mine i have ct clamps settings as pv not grid if i select grid it stops coms to meter but PV setting allows meter to comms

Mine has a meter select tab where i chose single phase meter. Also a separate CT install tab with a choice of grid or PV

 

[Badger]

Mine has a meter select tab where i chose single phase meter. Also a separate CT install tab with a choice of grid or PV

choose pv

 

[Berserkerboy]

Whoa!!
That appears to have worked. Yep. Red com LED on Acrel now flashing and inverter behaving as it should.
OMG! Thank you so much!!
I'm thinking that not having the second CT clamp to measure production has been the issue.
Just need to see that the battery charges okay on a sunny day.
I have a solic immersion diverter to heat our water. I'm thinking this will probably take precedence over battery storage. Hopefully, enough sunshine today to answer both questions..

 

[Badger]

Can someone help me with a few settings or the settings list of what they should be please

 

[johnb2713]

Can someone help me with a few settings or the settings list of what they should be please

Perhaps listing the parameters would help?

 

[Badger]

The power rate setting I'm. Not sure is that what the unit will. Supply. To the house from export

And the time of use stop or run not sure what that would be

Plus charge times I gather that is charging the batteries when they get low charge from grid not export, when our microinverters are exporting do I need to. Go. To. Specific setting to tell inverter to charge the batteries or does it just automatically know this export use

 

[Scott Charles]

I've seen something similar to this before.
We had an inverter not charge over 24% then after some messing about we had no charge to battery. After many calls to solis we found the hybrid solis range all have a bug in the firmware which causes charging anomalies when export is set to zero and grid charging off. There is not a fix currently available I was told they are looking to add it into a future version. The way we resolved it was to allow 100w of export.
Not sure if this is indeed your issue but hope it may help in some way.

 

[Berserkerboy]

The power rate setting I'm. Not sure is that what the unit will. Supply. To the house from export

And the time of use stop or run not sure what that would be

Plus charge times I gather that is charging the batteries when they get low charge from grid not export, when our microinverters are exporting do I need to. Go. To. Specific setting to tell inverter to charge the batteries or does it just automatically know this export use

Time of use is for charging from the grid or feeding back if you are getting paid. For instance, If you have an economy 7 account you may wish to charge the battery overnight so that you can use that power during the day when the cost from the grid is higher.
I want to self-use all the power that I can from the solar panels so don't want to charge the battery from the grid. I have therefore set the time of use to stop.
When you set the inverter to self use and time of use to stop it will store power when your panels are generating more than the house is using. It will then send any necessary power to the house once demand is higher than the panels are producing.
There are some excellent videos on youtube for setting up your inverter. Just search setting up solis hybrid inverter. The best one I think is PK on solis.

 

[Berserkerboy]

I've seen something similar to this before.
We had an inverter not charge over 24% then after some messing about we had no charge to battery. After many calls to solis we found the hybrid solis range all have a bug in the firmware which causes charging anomalies when export is set to zero and grid charging off. There is not a fix currently available I was told they are looking to add it into a future version. The way we resolved it was to allow 100w of export.
Not sure if this is indeed your issue but hope it may help in some way.

Yeah, I saw on youtube that setting to zero is not recommended.
I'm wondering: My G100 offer is for 3.68kw max export. The most my panels manage is around 2.5kw but there is 3.645kw of panels installed.
Do I have to set the inverter to 35w or less backflow? Or can I set it higher, say 2.5kw because the inverter is looking at what's going to the grid and will never add more as the time of use is set to stop?
My thinking is that the inverter will not be struggling so much to make sure that export doesn't occur, especially when the battery is full. As I have microinverters the inverter can't turn them off and at this point the inverter will see 2.5kw being exported.
Yet to see what happens at this point.

 

[Berserkerboy]

My inverter is only charging the battery at 12A. So around 600w..
It appears to be a temperature related problem. We have 8 degrees here at the moment. However, BMS is showing battery temp of 0.0 degrees and a low temp condition.
Presumably the Fox LV5200 should be sending the correct temperature to the Solis inverter?

 

[Andy1733]

What voltage do you have?

 

[Berserkerboy]

53.6v

 

[Berserkerboy]

What voltage do you have?

Just out of interest. What temperature is your inverter showing from the battery?
I'm thinking the Fox LV5200 battery is not sending the correct reading to the inverter via CAN..

 

[Andy1733]

My v is 50.2v. and battery temp is 6.4 Deg. Inverter 19.5 deg

 

[Berserkerboy]

My v is 50.2v. and battery temp is 6.4 Deg. Inverter 19.5 deg

Ah, thanks for that. Deffo an issue with battery temp reporting. I've not seen an option to see the inverter temp.
I'll have to contact Fox. They were quite good getting back to me last time I contacted them.

 

[Berserkerboy]

Solis finally contacted me 4 days ago to ask for my inverter number. No update since then though..
However, I have noticed that when SOC gets to 40% then charging at 50A is enabled. So at least that is working to an extent.
But, and this is a big issue. If I turn the power off to the meter I get a METCOMMSFAIL message on the inverter. The inverter should shut down as per G100. However, it seems to carry on working and somehow still balance the house grid consumption down to 0w despite no data. All very odd, and obviously I can't use the system until this is resolved and am able to commission the system.
This inverter is a Solis RAI-3K-48ES-5G. Not sure I would recommend Solis to anyone. Very poor service.

 

[Andy1733]

Has anything changed. Have you checked the connection between the battery and inverter. Is the com lead ok?
Just run through what's happening again

 

[Berserkerboy]

Has anything changed. Have you checked the one rooms between the battery and inverter. Is the comuni action lead ok?
Just run through what's happening again

Thanks for your reply.
The issues I have:

Solis RAI-3K-48ES-5G paired with Fox LV 5200 battery.

I have had to set the meter as being on the PV rather than the grid, otherwise there are no comms with the inverter and it just discharges at 3kw back to the grid. I think this may be because I don't have the 2nd production CT installed. I can't put this on because the inverter is too far away from the CU and the CT leads are not to be extended according to Solis. In any case, I have not seen anywhere that the production CT HAS to be installed.

Secondly, the inverter doesn't get the temperature from the Fox LV5200 and will only charge at 12A until 40% SOC at which point it will then charge correctly at 50A. At all times the inverter is showing a low battery temperature of 000.0 deg. Fox have said if there was a problem with their battery a temperature of -30 deg would show. So definately a Solis issue.

Thirdly, failsafe doesn't appear to be working. However, I had a thought in the shower last night..
I have only tested the failsafe by turning off the power to the meter and expecting the failsafe to kick in. However, the data link hasn't been broken and perhaps the CT connected to the meter is still seen by the inverter. This would explain how the inverter was still able to balance the house usage to zero from the grid.
I will test again by actually disconnecting the data link when the battery has charged up a bit later on.

So long as the failsafe works then I can commission and would say I have a reasonably functioning system. I am primarily interested in maximizing self-use. Despite only charging at 12A until SOC reaches 40% I am not exporting excess power, as the immersion diverter uses anything above this amount. By the time the immersion switches off due to reaching 70 deg the battery is over 40% SOC and charging correctly at 50A.

Anyhoo. I'll post my findings later on.

 

[Andy1733]

Well m8. If you have set everything up as it should be according to the Solis manual and the only difference is the CT clamp/ settings I would sort that out and try to install it correctly according to manufacturer instructions

Something I have learned about inverter is they are a sensitive little sole. if one setting is not correct it can cause a shed load or irregular problems.

For 1/2 hour work I would install and extend the 2nd CT clamp and change the setting back to what the manual says.