3 minutes ago, hoohloc said:

So! Goodwe doesn't have Utility Charge current setting? I didn't know that, I honestly thought this applies to all inverters. It shows we learn every day and please note that I give advice or comments based on my real life experience working with Growatt. I have no experience with other inverters, so all my references will be based on growatt 😝

He asked where the setting was and you provided a snipped from a growatt manual? I would not consider that helping...

2 minutes ago, P1000 said:

He asked where the setting was and you provided a snipped from a growatt manual? I would not consider that helping...

That's your opinion and I doubt OP feels the same 😜 

My opinion, I see it as helping because atleast he has an idea of what to look for. On his inverter the setting might be 13 or 20, but if you know what to look for, you will find it.  

5 minutes ago, hoohloc said:

That's your opinion and I doubt OP feels the same 😜 

My opinion, I see it as helping because atleast he has an idea of what to look for. On his inverter the setting might be 13 or 20, but if you know what to look for, you will find it.  

You are leading him further from the correct answer, so not helping at all. There are no "settting 13 or 20" on a Goodwe. There is no LCD interface even, everything is set with the app, where settings have names and not numbers...

3 hours ago, P1000 said:

You are leading him further from the correct answer, so not helping at all. There are no "settting 13 or 20" on a Goodwe. There is no LCD interface even, everything is set with the app, where settings have names and not numbers...

Lets agree to disagree and avoid further derailing the threat.

@Jaco Kotze you are getting 1294W from the Utility, your house is using 966w that is why you have only 328w to charge your batteries. To increase that 328W, you need to cut power to the house and use the 1294w available to charge the batteries or increase the 1294w by increasing the utility charge current because you can not change the 230v you get from the utility. The only variable that you can change is the current draw and if your inverter is limited to 5,6A, then tough. If you can find a way to increase that charge current and get more input power to your inverter, your only option is to isolate the power going to the house. I honestly do not see any other option. The inverter can not generate extra power, you get what you put in and nothing more. @P1000 has the correct answer, hopefully he will share. 

BTW, setting 13 or 20 was just an example, as explained, I have no clue how Goodwe works but I bet the basic operating principles of all inverters are the same 

16 hours ago, Scorp007 said:

This is the important value as we need to know what goes into the battery. No need to do funny calcs what it is from the grid side.

All inverters show the battery charge.....................

This is far from truth, unfortunately you need to know your input from the grid side to determine your charge on the battery side if you are drawing from the grid. Same applies if you are drawing from PV. The inverter is not a generator and therefor you can not ignore the input power. 

I know nothing about the Goodwe but I thought I would just google the problem

Not sure if the installer can lock down those screens. In that case you might need to contact your installer.

https://es.goodwe.com/Public/Uploads/sersups/ES USER MANUAL.pdf

Read the manual, saw some info on page 25

 

I believe this is the manual for the software

https://tr.goodwe.com/Public/Uploads/sersups/GW_PV Master_User Manual-EN.pdf

Page 30

Edited March 11, 20224 yr by iiznh
found better link

On 2022/03/10 at 3:25 PM, hoohloc said:

Again, read the original post and answer what has been asked. Forget about what I'm smoking because I aint going to share. The op asked how he can quickly charge his batteries, increasing the AC charge current will definitely increase the rate of charging as your input power to the inverter will be higher at higher current. School physics will tell you that the input power equals the out put power plus losses. Now if you have 10A x 230v, your input is 2300w, increasing the AC charge current to 30A will give you 30 x 230 =6900W and that is a what will be available for the inverter to use to convert to DC and charge your battery. The OP has Pylons, he needs a solution to his problem, not Hubble or 1C 🤣

Er buddy I don't think you quite understand how this work.

60A at the battery side is not the same as 60A at the grid side.

1000w at battery side (which is 48v) will be ~20A.
Pulling that 1000w from the grid (which is 220v or 230v but I calculate at 220v) will be ~4.5A.

So by that calculation, you can set your batteries anything up to 100A it will only pull at 21A on the grid side. That is, if you have enough pylontechs in the stack to handle 100A.

 

@Jaco Kotze

I remember when I didn't have solar, my batteries only charged at ~300W too from the grid in backup mode. Now that I have solar, when I do put it into backup mode, it starts charging slowly and then goes up pretty damn quick. However I remember my installer also set another setting on my inverter.

First thing you need to be 100% sure about, is that BMS of the batteries are communicating correctly with your inverter. As in, does pvmaster show you the health of your batteries (SOH)? If not, then that BMS connection is not working. That is how I know at least, my cable was changed by someone at 1 point and it stopped working. Was annoying. However I suspect it should be working if it cuts of instead of depleting the batteries.

While pvmaster is horrible, it does work once you understand it uses udp and the updates are slow to the app, so patience is unfortunately required.

What does the  Charge and Discharge current limits show in your PV master app under Parameters tab?

As for the default charge/discharge current, it gets set by the battery you chose in basic settings. Make sure you choose the battery parameter that closest match your installed batteries. So for a stack of 4x US3000 mine sets charge limit to 90A and discharge limit to 100A. The BMS then goes and override that to 100A charge limit and 125A discharge limit. Which is why its important to BMS connection works.

Lastly, I think the setting the installer enabled, is the "Battery activated" setting, which is really only needed if you deplete your batteries, where the BMS turn them off. The inverter then has a method wake them up to get them charging again. 

 

 

nvm. wrong info.

Edited March 11, 20224 yr by Tinuva

I think he just needs to add solar panels and the battery charging problem will go away. Thats what fixed it for me.

Batteries charging at 52A from grid. Eta 1h as can be seen at bottom. 

 

On 2022/03/11 at 7:37 PM, Tinuva said:

Batteries charging at 52A from grid.

@Tinuva, what is your breaker/trip switch rated at on the AC side of the inverter? Wiring mm2?

20 hours ago, FixAMess said:

@Tinuva, what is your breaker/trip switch rated at on the AC side of the inverter? Wiring mm2?

60A main switch and 63A EL. Standard I believe on 1phase unless you somehow get 80A from utility.

No idea about the cable, but I remember the installer talking about the price of the extra thick at the time of install as I had it running from Kitchen to other side of house, garage where inverter is installed.

I am sure its fine, as this house had a 4kW element in a geyser for years without issues. Like I said, charging batteries at 100A will max pull 21A on grid side. Also, I have never seen the batteries charge at higher than 50A so I think its all well within spec.

On 2022/03/11 at 1:40 PM, hoohloc said:

This is far from truth, unfortunately you need to know your input from the grid side to determine your charge on the battery side if you are drawing from the grid. Same applies if you are drawing from PV. The inverter is not a generator and therefor you can not ignore the input power. 

Yes you are right that it comes from the grid or PV.

I still feel your inverter is controlling what goes to the battery and needs to be within the spec on the charging and discharging side.

Unless a big battery bank we normally charge below the maximum what the grid can perhaps provide. In the case of some Growatts models it could be 100A from grid and PV combined. This 100A is at 48V.

On 2022/03/13 at 12:08 PM, FixAMess said:

@Tinuva, what is your breaker/trip switch rated at on the AC side of the inverter? Wiring mm2?

Standard 60A breaker and 63A EL. Pretty standard for single phase I think. 

The cable, don't know the exact # offhand, but installer went on how it was extra thick and expensive. Fairly certain it is to spec.

The one geyser in this house was always a 4kW element, so this house pulled 20A+ @220v many times before I got solar.

 

Edited March 15, 20224 yr by Tinuva

On 2022/03/10 at 8:24 PM, hoohloc said:

Just out of interest on the AC charger of the Growatt.

Can you confirm that it can use 30A charging rate from the DB?

On 2022/03/16 at 10:23 AM, Scorp007 said:

Just out of interest on the AC charger of the Growatt.

Can you confirm that it can use 30A charging rate from the DB?

It can use more. While experimenting a while back, I had the setting on 63A but the 40A breaker on the Inverter tripped. Meaning I was drawing 40A or above. Funny enough, my 32A breaker on the DB, supplying the inverter did not trip

 

On 2022/03/17 at 11:26 AM, hoohloc said:

It can use more. While experimenting a while back, I had the setting on 63A but the 40A breaker on the Inverter tripped. Meaning I was drawing 40A or above. Funny enough, my 32A breaker on the DB, supplying the inverter did not trip

 

Very impressive. Charging at over 40A from the grid means 9.2kW ignoring the PF.

On 2022/03/17 at 11:26 AM, hoohloc said:

It can use more. While experimenting a while back, I had the setting on 63A but the 40A breaker on the Inverter tripped. Meaning I was drawing 40A or above. Funny enough, my 32A breaker on the DB, supplying the inverter did not trip

 

That is not a legitimate way to measure or verify current use.

On the goodwe don't use back up mode. This is meant for lead-acid batteries run as a UPS and trickle charges. 

If you use ECO mode you can create rules that say "charge the batteries at this % of rated charge current from this time to this time". You still can't exceed (in your case) Pylontech's recommended charge current, but you will do much better than in backup mode. I do this during load shedding if the weather is bad and I think my batteries might not have sufficient charge when our power goes off. PV is low, the schedule says we go down at 14:00, so I charge from 12:00 to 14:00.

The other option is to go for self-defining the batteries, but if Pylontech find out about that (and they will able to see it in the logs the BMS keeps), they may void the warranty. 

On 3/10/2022 at 5:18 AM, Jaco Kotze said:

Hi all

How do I increase my battery on-grid charge rate. At this point I am not charging fast enough to handle stage 4 of load shedding. I tried changing modes on this pvmeter but make no difference. I am now on battery backup (UPS) mode.

 

Inverter is a Goodwe GW5048D-ES on 2 x Pylontech 3000C's

 

Jaco

 

Hi @Jaco Kotze !
I recommend that you upgrade to version 3.4 of the software. It has many more features, fewer errors and another way of showing essential and non-essential loads in a graphical way that is closer to reality.
Regards !

23 hours ago, Bobster said:

On the goodwe don't use back up mode. This is meant for lead-acid batteries run as a UPS and trickle charges. 

If you use ECO mode you can create rules that say "charge the batteries at this % of rated charge current from this time to this time". You still can't exceed (in your case) Pylontech's recommended charge current, but you will do much better than in backup mode. I do this during load shedding if the weather is bad and I think my batteries might not have sufficient charge when our power goes off. PV is low, the schedule says we go down at 14:00, so I charge from 12:00 to 14:00.

The other option is to go for self-defining the batteries, but if Pylontech find out about that (and they will able to see it in the logs the BMS keeps), they may void the warranty. 

Interesting. While I know about eco mode, when I change to backup mode on my goodwe I can easily charge them at 50A (I have 4x US3000). Just look at my screenshot further up, thats backup mode.

32 minutes ago, Tinuva said:

Interesting. While I know about eco mode, when I change to backup mode on my goodwe I can easily charge them at 50A (I have 4x US3000). Just look at my screenshot further up, thats backup mode.

OK... data wins. I am just repeating what a guy at Goodwe explained to me, namely that fast charging in backup mode was not going to happen for the stated reasons.

21 hours ago, Bobster said:

OK... data wins. I am just repeating what a guy at Goodwe explained to me, namely that fast charging in backup mode was not going to happen for the stated reasons.

You know what, I think maybe the key point is, if you do not have PV connected and is in backup mode, then the inverter trickle charge. That was the case for me, as I was awaiting the SSEG CoCT application, had inverter+batteries installed before the solar panels and it trickle charged.

Since I have PV installed, the backup mode has always charged really fast.

However, there is the setting I mentioned. The "Battery activated" setting in advanced/expert settings. I believe that also makes a difference to the charge rate.

On 2022/03/10 at 3:15 PM, P1000 said:

Charging his 48V battery at 100A will not draw 100A at the grid. What are you smoking?

Note that electrical circuits run on smoke.
Once the smoke gets out, the circuit stops working. 🙂

MANY novices only quote Amps and forget to add "at what voltage".

Amps * Voltage = Watts
100A * 48V = 4,800 Watts
4,800W / 230V = 20.87A (at 230V)