ABarelyFunctionalHumn

I dont no sadly. I have Arco Invincible III's NMC batteries - so BMS is communicating with Inverter so SA is just reading off inverter. Not the most accurate - but its all I got 😕

Seems my issue might be related to the "To Grid" Battery Voltage being set to 54 which seems quite high to me. The voltages in my screenshot is what was configured by the solar installers. When I look at battery voltage at the time my inverter switched over to grid: You cna see at about the same time - Battery voltage had reached 54v before kicking back over to grid. So I have dropped that down to 52v to see. I have Lithium NMC batteries so using a SOC to voltage table is quite hard for a 48v NMC as a lot of the guides are for LIPO batteries. So HOPEFULLY - if my guesstimations are right 52v should hopefully be around 40% SOC. We shall see.

Very interesting. Took a look at my settings:

I just had a thoguht and went to go look at what ouput mode was reflecting on the inverters themselves. They showed SBU. As I started to walk away I heard the relay click over and I immediately thought "thats odd?" I check on Solar Assistant - the correct Output mode now shows: It almost seems that me just flicking through the inverter settings, (not changing anything just going into the menu interface) and then exiting the menu interface which seems to have "commited" the SBU settings. Its very strange.

I have 2x Rebel Max Inverters (just voltronic rebrands). I am currently running on beta software on Solar assistant (27-09-2023). But this issue has been like this for the past 2 versions or so I feel. So what happens is - if I am up late at night and I know its going to be quite a sunny ay the next day, I switch the inverters to SBU to run the household off the batteries to run them down to about 50% or so - because we produce power in excess, if we dont do this - we are essentially dumping power. I changed the output source priorty to SBU (from USB). This does what I expect, starts drawing power from the batteries instead - all is well. Then the weirdness kicks in - for some reason or another - the inverters start drawing from the grid again (despite me not changing it back to USB), this isnt because the batteries have fallen below their SOC settings (or at least I dont think so - continue reading on). You can see it suddenly start drawing power from the grid again in the screenshot below - at about +- 05:50: You can see shen I switched to SBU to run off of battery power as there is no Red Grid Power line. and then just suddenly a spike. Now when this happens - SolarAssistant home page that shows you which state your inverter is in shows: Grid Tied (SBU). Now I have seen this before - because the (SBU) in brackets, I interpret it as showing a "pending" state, because when its in full SBU mode it doesnt show "Grid Tied" but "SBU tied" as its status. But when you go into the power management tab, it says the inverter is in SBU state (despite the whole system not functioning that way): And to round off all of this absolute weirdness - if restart your RASPI while all of this weirdness is going on... when the RASPI comes back - it REFUSES to connect back to the inverts (I have mine connected via USB (Micro USB in the inverter, USB A to the RASPI). The only way to get the RASPI to connect back to the inverters is to do a hard reset of the Inverters and let everything boot up again. This eventually goes away on its own - but its incredibly annoying because it does come back again.

Just coming back here to update you all on what seemed to work for me - someone tried to explain it to me - but Im far too smoothbrained to give you all any type of technical explanation. Essentially what I have done is: I have set the AC output setting to SBU (Yes thats correct), this made it behave the way I wanted it to, but we set it to only use the first 20% of the batteries (so if 100% charged, to go to 80% before charging back up again) - because this permanent cycling between charging and discharging forces the inverter to feed off the solar (is how I understand it.), and then after 7pm, I have set a Priority Timer, to change the AC output setting to SUB so that if the batteries are charged at night, to not use them at all, and to only use the grid (when its available) so we arent pointlessly using battery power during the night. When I spoke to someone about why SUB doesnt do what it says on the tin - i.e. use solar first when its available and then Utility - the answer was something akin to: Well, once your batteries are full, you have told the system that you prioritize using the grid first and value the power in your batteries more, than paying for electricity - so it uses utility after your batteries are charged. So as unhelpful as that is - I hope whoever finds this thread gets some level of help.

So I have not paid these much attention because attached to these settings was the clarification of: "when "SBU Priority" is selected in settings menu 01." And because SBU is not selected in Menu 1 I didnt think these would be applicable? However the settings on my inverter are as follows: Menu 12: Battery Voltage to Switch to Grid Mode (SBU Priority) = 50Vdc Description of Menu 12: Voltage set-point to switch to Off-Grid mode to Grid Mode when "SBU Priority" is selected in Settings Menu 01. This may be a percentage for some battery types selected in Setting Menu 5. Menu 13: Battery Voltage to Switch to Off-Grid Mode (SBU Priority) = "Full" (Checking the menu You can set Voltages between 48Vdc and a max of 64Vdc, otherwise there is a "full" button) Description of Menu 13: Voltage set-point to switch from Grid Mode to Off-Grid mode when selecting "SBU Priority" in settings menu 01. Menu 5: Battery Type = User Defined Description of Menu 5: Settings Menus 26, 27 and 29 can only be modified if "User-Defined" is selected Here. Menu 26: Boost Battery Charging Voltage = 58.1 Vdc Menu 27: Floating Battery Charging Boltage = 58.0Vdc Menu 29: Low battery Voltage Disconnect = 44.2Vdc Hope this helps EDIT: Menu 13 - manual says: The battery is considered fully charged when the float charging phase is reached.

Hey Jaco, Thanks for the reply - very interesting - didnt know about Solar assist. As far as I can see yes - the batteries are connected to the BMS port via - what looks like an ethernet cable - but I have no idea how to manipulate that BMS via the phocos inverter or the batteries themselves - but the inverter does report on battery state of charge - but as per your screenshot of Solar Assist - I dont see a way to manipulate the SBU/SUB state via the inverter? Although in saying that, when the technician was out he did say "when the batteries are over 80% it will switch to SUB" but I dont want any switching, I want full SUB all of the time (subject to daylight and loadshedding) Any idea how to set that type of threshold outside of Solar Assist and via the Inverter?

Hi There Everyone, New here so apologies if this is the wrong section to post in - I am just very confused right now and decided to come here in hopes to find some answers or better yet a config solution I can apply to my Inverter to get it to work the way I want it to work. Current Set Up: 1x Phocos Hybrid Inverter 8KW Pure Sine Wave 3x Arco Invincible III Batteries - 3.2KWh each 10x 355W Canadian Solar Mono Panels. Now before I write anymore - can I just be very open and honest - my knowledge of the black magic that is electricity is limited - and I mean LIMITED. Like.... I can just about change batteries in a remote limited. This set up was put in place by a company that does solar installations - and its only a week old - we invested in a solar set up to beat loadshedding and help us start reducing our electricity bill - so there are still some teething issues with the config of the setup - and its this particular issue that is driving me a bit batty. So when the solution was initially installed it was set up to use batteries in the evening, once the solar panels stopped producing power - the problem is, the panels stop producing power at about 6/7pm and we are on battery power, so by the time it gets to the early hours (12/2am) there is no power as the batteries have been running the whole household for 8+ hours. So what we wanted was that once the batteries are full, the household runs off of the power being produced by the solar, and once we reach the evenings, we use Eskom to supply, and only if the eskom supply is unavailable do we use the batteries. Or in short - and in terms or power priority: Solar First Utility (Eskom) Battery When we told them about the power going out, they changed a setting, and it what we thought was the above - it turns out though, that once the battery was full, it drew all other loads from Eskom? Best way I can show you is the screenshot below: As you can see - its 10:44 in the morning, the sky is clear, full sunshine hitting the panels, but its not supplying my houses loads. Even if you turn on a big load, it just draws it all from eskom. Now interestingly - if its actively charging the batteries, then all loads are fed from solar first, and the remaining solar power will go to the batteries: But its only when the batteries are charging. We called the installer and they sent someone out to change some settings - but the person that came out has said that he has updated the settings, to tell the inverter that once the batteries are at over 80% charge then it will redirect all solar to the loads, and below 80% it will draw from the grid. But to me that seems like a pointless use of battery cycles? All I want is - charge the batteries to full on solar, and feed off the grid. Once battery is full, feed the house with the power generated from the solar panels, and at night, use the utility when available, otherwise use batteries - but the person setting the thing up said thats not quite how it works. So I am a bit fed up Ill be honesty - it seems like a very very simple request - and honestly - a basic inverter function. I was flicking around through the Phocos App - and came across AC Output Source Priority Setting, and there seems to be 4: USB (Utility, Solar, Batteries) AC input/utility will be provided to the loads as first priority. If there is excess solar beyond what is required for battery charging, this power is used to supply power to the loads instead. The battery is not discharged (Grid Mode). Solar and battery will provide power to the loads when AC input/utility is unavailable (Off-Grid Mode) SUB (Solar, Utility, Battery) Solar provides power to the loads as first priority. If solar power is not sufficient to power all connected loads, AC input/utility power will supply the loads simultaneously (Grid Mode). If no solar power is available (e.g. at night), AC Input / utility power is used exclusively. The battery is only discharged when the AC Input / Utility power is unavailable (Off-Grid mode). SBU (Solar, Battery Utility) Solar Powers the loads as first priority. If solar power is not sufficient to power all connected loads, the battery will supply power to the loads at the same time. The Any-Grid is disconnected from the grid at this time (Off-Grid mode.) AC input/utility provides power to the loads (grid-Mode) only when the battery voltage drops to either low-level warning voltage or the setting point in settings menu 12. When first applying SBU priority, it may take up to 10 minutes for the any-grid to switch to off grid mode. (Above descriptions were taken verbatim out of the app) Now in my mind and literacy level - its SUB that I want... I want solar to feed my draw to my house, and when production is exceeding draw, the difference is fed into the battery to charge it. I might want to change it in Winter that all solar is fed into the battery, and only once charged does it then start feeding our draw. No I am a bit too scared to change anything as I have no idea what setting interacts with what setting. For instance - there are some battery settings that interact with the above AC Output Source Priority: E.g. Menu 12: Battery Voltage To Switch To Grid Mode (SBU Priority): Voltage set-point to switch from off-grid mode to grid mode when "SBU Priority" is selected in settings menu 01. This may be a percentage for battery types selected in Setting Menu 5. E.g. Menu 13: Battery Voltage to switch to Off-Grid Mode (SBU Priority): Voltage set-point to switch from grid mode to off-grid mode when selecting "SBU Priority" in settings menu. CURRENT BEHAVIOR OF SET UP AT TIME OF WRITING: My unit was set to SBU after speaking to the installing technician, and the technician said that when the batteries are over 80% charged, it will send solar to the houses draw, and when it is below 80% it will run off the grid, and solar will charge the panels. This is a real pain, because when there is load-shedding at night, and the the batteries inevitably drop below 80%, when the power comes back on, the inverter pumps in power from the grid to charge the batteries and the inverter makes a noise for quite a while at night. I really have no idea why I cant just have what sounds like a very basic ask: Solar feed my house when I have a load drawing, eskom feed my house at night, and batteries feed my house when its night time and loadshedding has kicked in. I have changed the settings BACK to SUB - and the behavior is still happening as described above. I have looked at the phocos manual, and I can confirm I do not have any Priority Timings set that would override the SUB behaviour. Can anyone with experience in these Phocos units please guide me. Any-Grid_PSW-H_EN-manual_2020-02-26.pdf