Today my 'UPS' was finally installed and working. My Quattro manages AC Out 1 and AC Out 2 so all heavy loads are dropped on a grid failure. No ESS configuration yet.

Grid - Energy Meter - Quattro -> AC Out 1 and AC Out 2.

On the Venus GX interface I currently see only total power from grid and total power to loads. I was wondering if there is a way to see seperate power for AC Out 1 and AC Out 2? Attached two screen prints of the Current and one I modified to show the Wanted.

Is this possible on either Venus GX, VRM Portal or even via Modbus?

Ingo

4 minutes ago, Ingo said:

if there is a way to see seperate power for AC Out 1 and AC Out 2?

I don't think the hardware has the capability, as in no separate sensor for AC-out.

Is this not what you are looking for?
Like AC-out1 = Critical loads?

16 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Is this not what you are looking for?

He has the non-essential loads on AC-out-2. That's a bit different to how you and I do it. If you use an energy meter (eg Carlo Gavazzi ET112) and just connect your non-essential loads directly to the grid, then the non-essential loads can be calculated as whatever the grid meter says minus what the current sensor on the Multi's input side says. :-)

31 minutes ago, plonkster said:

I don't think the hardware has the capability, as in no separate sensor for AC-out.

Would the addition of another energy meter on AC Out 2 provide the ability?

1 minute ago, Ingo said:

Would the addition of another energy meter on AC Out 2 provide the ability?

Sadly no. At present energy meters can only be used for three things, 1) a grid meter, 2) a meter for an unsupported PV-inverter (old ones that does not yet support sunspec), or 3) for a generator.

I actually don't know how the Multi handles AC-out 2. Never comes up as I rarely use it. I think it just bundles the two outputs together.

Thanks, that is acceptable. I do however have a separate energy meter downstream on the non-essential loads feed but it would have been great to view it all in one place.

I hate to reply to my own post but it then seems that there is no benefit from having heavy loads on AC Out 2 as opposed to connecting it to the Grid inbound feed? What are the Pro's and Con's of the two methods?

4 minutes ago, Ingo said:

no benefit from having heavy loads on AC Out 2 as opposed to connecting it to the Grid inbound feed?

Oh there is. It saves you the additional cost of the energy meter, because the current sensor on the input sees all power used by the house and so ESS can compensate for all of it. But outside of this, there is no real benefit for an ESS system.

For non-ESS systems, where you use PowerAssist (a portion of the power is taken from the batteries to prevent tripping an upstream breaker, typical issue for campervans/boats with weak shore power connections), the same applies: PowerAssist can be used to boost loads on AC-out-2, without powering them during an outage.

12 minutes ago, Ingo said:

... no benefit from having heavy loads on AC Out 2 as opposed to connecting it to the Grid inbound feed ...

Jip, in a home setup with the inverter connected to ones DB, I have been wondering the same about my AC-out2 out: What is the use?

Simplest setup, for home use, connect all loads to the DB and just the critical loads to AC-out1.

Edited September 26, 20186 yr by Guest

It seems I am going to rewire it slightly different soon. The energy meter in my case is a precursor to a PV connection on AC Out 1 to also measure feed back to the grid when available.

I also realized, if you have a beefy generator to drive heavy loads then AC Out 2 would get power in my case as well. Having just a small 10A generator I used the relay assistant to disconnect the AC 2 Out relay anyway when running on the generator for extended outages.

3 minutes ago, Ingo said:

The energy meter in my case is a precursor to a PV connection on AC Out 1 to also measure feed back to the grid when available.

Tell me more?

Why not enable ESS also? It is simple enough.

ESS is on the cards. The grid-tied inverter will come once the big hole in my wallet has decreased in size 

Just now, Ingo said:

ESS is on the cards. The grid-tied inverter will come once the big hole in my wallet has decreased in size 

ESS was for me a good replacement of a grid tied inverter, came very close.

Two MPPT's later (panels as mismatched) and I'm sorted.

Now the grid tied inverter idea is less attractive, and IF I wanted to feed back, I would, but the charges are not in my favour yet.

Ok, I had a good long think about this and I think running the non-essential loads directly off the grid might not work in my case. For every other case I think it's a good idea though.

So here is my analyses: When I built my house way back when I thought I wanted to, at some point in the future, take advantage of a battery backup and solar power solution. That day has now come. So what I did was to pull in two Live feeds and one Neutral feed from the council termination point. The two live feeds are obviously just joined so power is distributed over both. Everything in the Main DB is wired with separate Earth Leakage on each feed with essentials being some lights and other junk and the non-essential feed the heavy stuff like the pool etc. Little did I know that the one single Neutral feed will come back to haunt me. 

Below is a drawing of the current Quattro configuration with both feeds running from AC 1 Out and AC 2 Out and it works perfectly, except for the annoying part that I can't see the load as separate values but just one Total Load value.

The thing that bugged me from the word Go was the single Neutral path. Let's focus on the setup as-is right now (above the wavy line). When on grid power the Neutral is connected to both AC 1 and 2 out (hardwired in the Quattro) and works fine. When on my small generator, only AC 1 Out is powered and all is well (Relay assistant kicks AC 2 Off). Here comes the snag. The generator is a Honda EU30i that produces power in a 120-0-120 configuration like many other small generators, this means the Neutral line carries 120V. Combined with the Live wire of 120V you end up with ~240V in total - it works. Because the Generator Neutral is disconnected from the Grid there will never be any feed back to the grid or even a N-E 120V short in the one generator coils as Neutral and Earth is joined in the street box, right?

If I now move my non-essential loads to the Grid line (below the wavy line) Then everything will work perfectly fine until the grid fails and I start the generator. Because my single AC 1 Out Neutral line is essentially conneted to the Grid Neutral (via the Main DB downstream) I now have the potential of feeding 120V back into the Grid through the bottom Neutral line. The only option I have is to add a huge contactor on the Grid feed ingress, powered by the generator, to disconnect both Live and Neutral (well Neutral at least) to prevent any possible feedback.

When the Grid comes back online my Generator still takes priority (AC 1 In) and the contactor will still be in an Open state. Shutting down the generator will release the contactor and the grid will power the Quattro and non-essential loads again. If I had a second Neutral feed I could have completely separated the essential and non-essential feeds with no worries about the Generator essential feed's Neutral getting into contact with the Grid Neutral via the Main DB downstream.

Or I can just leave it on AC 2 Out and live with the fact that I can't see separate load values 

Does this make sense?