gertc Posted January 23, 2016 Share Posted January 23, 2016 Hi all I hope you can help me. I have an Axpert system made up of 3x 5kva inverters in parallel with a 300ah battery bank and 27x 260w panels connected to it. My goal is to go totally of grid and everything seems to be working fine except in the mornings. Once the sun rises and the panels start to generate electricity it uses the power from the panels to charge the battery bank and powers the load using grid power until the batteries are full again (the default 54v). Then it switches to splitting the pv power between the load and the batteries and stops using the grid power. How can I prevent it from switching to the grid in the morning and continue to use the batteries until there is enough solar power for the load and battery charging? I am using jdp's software to monitor the system but are not using it to change between grid and solar at the moment. I also switched off the software to make sure it does not interfere, but had the same results. Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks Gert PS, my current settings: 1 Sbu 2 40 amp 3 UPS 4 Disabled 5 AGM 6 Enabled 7 Enabled 9 50 Hz 11 2 Amp 12 46v 13 54v 16 Only Solar 18 On 23 Bypass disabled 26 56.4 V 27 54 V 29 42 V 31 Enabled Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Posted January 23, 2016 Share Posted January 23, 2016 A simple but not elegant solution is to plug the grid into a timeswitch. I have done that and works well. But dangerous if you dont get sun ie batteries drop to below threshold Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gertc Posted January 23, 2016 Author Share Posted January 23, 2016 OK, thanks. Was this the only way you could get it to work? Perhaps I can put a switch there that my home automation system van then switch based on battery level. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Posted January 23, 2016 Share Posted January 23, 2016 Of software (edmundp and jdp) both have working versions either available or soon to be available. Need a BMV 702 or 700 as well... Regards M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gertc Posted January 23, 2016 Author Share Posted January 23, 2016 I am currently hooking up a BMV702 and I am running jdp's software. How would I set it up to achieve this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gertc Posted January 23, 2016 Author Share Posted January 23, 2016 Hi Jaco The evening portion works fine, or when the batteries is dropping to low (I have just finished installing the BMV thus have not used this yet). My problem is in the morning when the sunrises and the panels start generating watts the inverter uses that to charge the battery and use grid for load until the batteries reach 54v. I would like to avoid using the grid at all except in emergencies when then batteries drain too low. Hope this is clear? Gert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gertc Posted January 23, 2016 Author Share Posted January 23, 2016 PS Is there anway to I can get a feed off your software to integrate into my home automation system (Homeseer). A regularly update CSV with current values would work great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gertc Posted January 23, 2016 Author Share Posted January 23, 2016 it is at the default = 46V Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gertc Posted January 23, 2016 Author Share Posted January 23, 2016 Will do re home automation. Charge priority is set at solar only. I have tried solar first as well with the same effect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gertc Posted January 23, 2016 Author Share Posted January 23, 2016 The output source priority is set as SBU (setting 1), I thought you asked the charger source priority - this is set as solar only (setting 16) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GustavoMalaga Posted January 23, 2016 Share Posted January 23, 2016 Hi gertc, I have pretty much the same settings as you, and on summer time I never used grid power. Judging by the size of your system, maybe you are using too much power early in the day? You could lower setting 12 and 13, I would start by lowering setting 13 to 51V to see how long you stay in grid in case the batteries lost too much power due to a high load demand. Also please revise setting 26 and 27, it looks like you have AGM batteries? I would change setting 5 to user and look in your batteries documents what are the correct absorb and float voltages, because it seems to me that you not charging the batteries to 100%. How long have you been running jdp software? If more then a week you can start seeing your usage pattern and make changes to other settings... Also the BMV will help you see how well the batteries are being charged/discharged. Hi all I hope you can help me. I have an Axpert system made up of 3x 5kva inverters in parallel with a 300ah battery bank and 27x 260w panels connected to it. My goal is to go totally of grid and everything seems to be working fine except in the mornings. Once the sun rises and the panels start to generate electricity it uses the power from the panels to charge the battery bank and powers the load using grid power until the batteries are full again (the default 54v). Then it switches to splitting the pv power between the load and the batteries and stops using the grid power. How can I prevent it from switching to the grid in the morning and continue to use the batteries until there is enough solar power for the load and battery charging? I am using jdp's software to monitor the system but are not using it to change between grid and solar at the moment. I also switched off the software to make sure it does not interfere, but had the same results. Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks Gert PS, my current settings: 1 Sbu 2 40 amp 3 UPS 4 Disabled 5 AGM 6 Enabled 7 Enabled 9 50 Hz 11 2 Amp 12 46v 13 54v 16 Only Solar 18 On 23 Bypass disabled 26 56.4 V 27 54 V 29 42 V 31 Enabled Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gertc Posted January 24, 2016 Author Share Posted January 24, 2016 Thanks Gustavo Appreciated the feedback - I will try the settings on 12 & 13. On 26 & 27 - I have Sonic Gel batteries and if I look at their manual and it seems like these are the values for their cycle and and float values - any reason why you are suggesting different values here? GustavoMalaga 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gertc Posted January 24, 2016 Author Share Posted January 24, 2016 jdp - in AICC is there a reason that I cannot use both the time and SOC setting to change the mode, i.e. between 5pm and 8pm and otherwise when reaching 50%? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GustavoMalaga Posted January 24, 2016 Share Posted January 24, 2016 I searched for your brand of batteries and on this case the default values work well, I mentioned that because most of the time the default values are too low for the batteries to fully charge. Thanks Gustavo Appreciated the feedback - I will try the settings on 12 & 13. On 26 & 27 - I have Sonic Gel batteries and if I look at their manual and it seems like these are the values for their cycle and and float values - any reason why you are suggesting different values here? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gertc Posted January 25, 2016 Author Share Posted January 25, 2016 Thanks - appreciate everybody's help. In summary, for future readers of this post, the Axpert went into line mode in the morning if the battery SOC was too low. I am not quite sure what the formula is that it uses, but it happens even if the battery volts are above the 'back to grid' setting (46v in my case). My solution was to use jdp's software with a Victron BMV 702 battery meter to more intelligently manage the batteries. Next step will be home automation integration to also manage the load. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 25, 2016 Share Posted January 25, 2016 Gert, just one errata: Victron BMV 702. If someone searched for it, it may cause confusion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gertc Posted January 25, 2016 Author Share Posted January 25, 2016 Thanks - fixed it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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