I Have installed a victron  easysolar 5kva 48 volt system with two 3.5 pylontechs and 15 panels 

i have a pool and washing machine on the ac 2 non essential loads , when eskom drops they switch off however for the rest of the time they run off panels or batteries and utility , as far as i am concerned the non essential loads should run off panels or utility never battery . . Am i correct in this assumption what have i done wrong .Everything else is working as always except this reversion to batteries

 

32 minutes ago, CAMERON SMITH said:

i have a pool and washing machine on the ac 2 non essential loads

Victron works like this, It cant differentiate between Solar DC and Battery DC, so it will use what is available. The benefit from keeping it on AC out 2 is that excess PV will be used to reduce the load, but on the other hand, that same load might deplete your batteries during a cloudy day. To stop that completely is to connect the non essentials directly to the grid before your Inverter.   

10 hours ago, Jaco de Jongh said:

It cant differentiate

Well, yes and no. All DC is tied to one bus, so indeed, whether it comes from the PV modules or the batteries is all the same to the inverter. It is possible to do some tricks by looking at the reported current from the battery and then adjusting power levels to prevent discharge BUT... this is never completely accurate, because the inverter has no current measurement on the DC side (it is estimated from the AC values), and even if the battery has a current measurement it is also not always that accurate, often completely inaccurate once you're below 2 ampere or so.

But none of this really matters to the question at hand. This is merely a difference in philosophy. The default philosophy in an ESS system is that you do everything in your power (!) to keep the grid meter at zero (or if you have no grid meter, then the input of the inverter) and to maximise self consumption. If it takes using the battery to do so, then you use the battery.

You can however implement your own control loop using modbus or MQTT.

3 minutes ago, plonkster said:

10 hours ago, Jaco de Jongh said:

It cant differentiate

Well, yes and no

This I was told by our resident Victron engineer, I am merely passing on the lessons learned.... 🤣