I am busy with a requirement for my house and am a bit stuck on one component for which I need some guidance.

What I have is a Quattro fed by both Utility power (AC In 2) and a 2300W generator (AC In 1). I have a Grid Tied Inverter (Fronius) on AC Out 1 to drive Critical loads and I have my heavy loads, that can be dropped in the event of a utility failure, on AC Out 2 . All of this is backed up by batteries. The reason for the configuration is so I can have Solar power drive Critical loads even on Grid failure.

The whole solution should work fine but for one thing I can't work out (yet). If the Utility power fails early morning (no sun), the Heavy Loads are dropped and Critical loads are powered from the batteries. If the batteries are starting to run low I want to start my generator to help. All Ok so far. Now the sun comes up and the Grid Tied inverter starts to generate power and the supply of power is now more than the load.

Solar 10A

Load 4A

Feed In back to Generator 6A

What will happen to my Generator with feed in from the Grid Tied inverter? Will it go Poof and/or can I prevent that while still have the ability to feed back to the grid when Utility power comes back online? Yes the 6A will initially be used to charge the batteries but once they are full then there is 6A going back into the Generator. I'm just trying to avoid fireworks if left to someone not 'tech-savvy'.

Thanks,

Ingo

50 minutes ago, Ingo said:

Grid Tied Inverter (Fronius) 

 

50 minutes ago, Ingo said:

I prevent that while still have the ability to feed back to the grid when Utility power comes back online?

Hi Ingo, can you please upload a manual , or share the model of this inverter. I want to see if there is any answers to your question in the manual.

@plonkster is our walking manual.

He'll be here shortly.

58 minutes ago, Ingo said:

I have is a Quattro 

I only see this now, So you have a Victron Quattro switching between Grid and Generator, feeding A Fronius GTI. 

I cant see how the Inverter will know what he is fed with. 

We need to call @plonkster closer..  

9 minutes ago, Jaco de Jongh said:

Victron Quattro switching between Grid and Generator, feeding A Fronius GTI.

Close ... Fronius is the grid tied inverter, Quattro is the "UPS" that starts the generator, switching off non-critical loads during failures to protect the batteries if there is insufficient incoming power to keep all going.

Fronius and Victron are a matched system, part of the VenusGX / CCGX configurations. 

OR ...

Victron is set up to be the "Eskom feed" i.e. grid reference for the Fronius grid tied (or is that now Victron tied) inverter.

The possibilities are endless. :-)

Edited September 10, 20186 yr by Guest

7 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Quattro is the "UPS" that starts the generator, switching off non-critical loads during failures to protect the batteries if there is insufficient incoming power to keep all going.

And switching between the supplies by the look of it. 

See I am interested in learning a bit more about the Blue world. 

1 hour ago, Ingo said:

What will happen to my Generator with feed in from the Grid Tied inverter?

A fix for this is scheduled for the 2.21 release of the CCGX firmware. See here. Only trouble is that the 2.20 release is about a month late, and 2.17 will be released tonight as a bugfix release, so 2.17 goes out, then we finish 2.20, and only then when the first candidate 2.21 release comes out will this actually work correctly. Not my first choice but code freezes are essential for making stable releases.

The work is already done though, but that part of the code is not open source.

In practice, if you feed energy into your generator it should speed up a bit and change the grid frequency, and that will cause the PV inverter to back off and even shut down if you go above 53Hz.

Just for reference, the generator is a Honda EU30i inverter generator if that makes any difference (works great!!). Yes, there is a Venus in the system + ET112 inline from Grid to Victron. Almost like below except Victron controls the heavy loads disconnect and the Generator is a second input to the Victron inverter as mentioned before. Yes, the problem is Fronius does not know the actual Grid is Off. Good news is that the Fronius inverter is a 'Part II' of my installation so I am not in a hurry to do all now. I just want to make sure that I put everything in place so I can do it in hassle-free a few months time.

2 hours ago, Ingo said:

I just want to make sure that I put everything in place so I can do it in hassle-free a few months time.

Talk to me when you get there, or at least watch the blog or follow them on Facebook so you know about new firmware releases. If you have an account on VRM (which you probably will if you have a Venus-GX) you should also receive emails, although you won't receive emails about candidate releases (beta versions) if you only follow the main releases.

Thanks, will keep an eye on the blog and this forum.

Last question on this: Any preference for Grid and Generator connections to AC-In-1 or AC-In-2 ?

1 hour ago, Ingo said:

Last question on this: Any preference for Grid and Generator connections to AC-In-1 or AC-In-2 ?

It should not matter, you set the type on the CCGX, but it is convention to put the grid on 1 and the generator on 2. I think that is also the default configuration on the CCGX.

<ThumbsUp>

On 2018/09/11 at 9:31 AM, plonkster said:

It should not matter, you set the type on the CCGX, but it is convention to put the grid on 1 and the generator on 2. I think that is also the default configuration on the CCGX.

I think it's the other way round, please confirm.

I read in the manual that grid should be on 2 and generator on 1. Since 1 has priority, the idea is that once you start your generator you actually want to use it.

29 minutes ago, Barezzi said:

I read in the manual that grid should be on 2 and generator on 1

Your correct if you look at the manual, but while I configured my system I saw that it can be changed around, so I put Grid on 1 and  2 on Generator. 

 

 

Oh great! @Jaco de Jongh I plan to replicate your system at home. Have you experienced any overload in battery mode?

Looking at my loads, i see that on a few afternoons my base loads may exceed 6kw.

Edited December 24, 20186 yr by Barezzi

5 minutes ago, Barezzi said:

Have you experienced any overload in battery mode?

Not yet, think I might have touched 5kw once, but still a lot in reserve. 

On 2018/12/24 at 10:56 PM, Barezzi said:

I think it's the other way round, please confirm.

Correct! One of my colleagues corrected my thinking recently. You put the generator on input-1 because the Quattro prioritieses 1 over 2. This means you can force it to use the generator simply by starting it.