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Only use battery if Utility and Solar insufficient


HeinDuPlessis

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Hi I have a Growatt inverter and I would like to keep the battery fully charged in case of load shedding at night. My options are "Solar First, Utility First or SBU Priority".

 

Can anyone tell me what to set? Unfortunately the max battery voltage before charge is 51.2v so that leaves me with only 50% battery effectively at times.

 

Any help appreciated. I'm attaching inverter manual's settings page.

GrowattSettings.pdf

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Thanks, utility charge at setting 14 certainly helps, but my batteries still run down to 51.2 before it will charge again, up to 54 and if no solar is available, it consumes it again down to 51.2. With a bad timed load shed I'm only at 50% battery.

 

Just wish there was a setting to only use battery if no solar or utility is available.

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On 2021/01/15 at 5:03 PM, HeinDuPlessis said:

Can anyone tell me what to set?

The option 'Solar First' means that the inverter will only draw on the battery when solar is available but not sufficient to power the loads. Once your solar production drops down to 0, it will switch over to utility. This means that you will only drain your batteries for the duration in the evening between solar not being sufficient anymore to power your loads and completely reaching 0 (apart from short periods during the day when you solar might drop for a short period due to clouds, etc). 

Try that setting and check how much is left in your battery by the time it has switched over to utility. I would expect that should still be sufficient to get you through a normal loadshedding

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1 hour ago, HeinDuPlessis said:

that setting does not prevent the inverter from drawing from the battery if the load is more than what the solar can deliver, particularly end of day

Correct (as I also wrote)

But only for as long as your solar system is producing any PV watts. As soon as your PV production drops to 0, it will switch to utility. As I mentioned, you need to check in your situation (battery capacity and load) how much your batteries actually get drained during that time

If I am not mistaken the Growatt is not able to blend PV and Utility, so if PV is less than your loads, it can only take the balance from the batteries

Only other option would be time-based switching (not sure if Growatt is capable of that)

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The spf5000tl version doesn't blend. But the have an spf5000es which blends and a sph model which is a true hybrid, price is also up there with synsynks.

 

For the non hybrid models you have to do things manually like change to utility mode an hour or 2 before loadshedding to charge up the batteries if you are worried. It works if you are at home.

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I would check if your inverter is compatible with ICC. If yes, then you have an option for both time-based switching between SBU and Utility as well as a conventient way to manage your system from anywhere whenever required (instead of having to physically stand in front of your inverter)

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