Honda EU7000is voltage regulation

[waterflea]

New system, just commissioned last week, tried to get the generator (Honda EU7000is) to charge the batteries through the inverters. (2 XW Pro's) Amperage levels
climbed to 60-70A on the inverter display and inverters shut down. Talked to Schneider TS and they said voltage was too high coming out of the generator (252V).
Can the generator voltage be controlled or something in the system be changed to make this work. I know other people are using this generator.

 

[seneysolar]

Are you sure you're not overloading the generator? 70A battery charging on both inverters?

 

[waterflea]

Maybe, but the generator never misses a beat. It's the inverters that stop the whole process from continuing. Like I said, this is a new commission and all new to me so any help would be appreciated. There is some talk on these threads about tweaking the inverter parameters to better
qualify the generator output but I'm not sure how to do that or if that's the answer.

 

[seneysolar]

Well assuming the inverters are 48v, and both are trying to charge, 70A of 48v dc is maxing out the 7000w generator. Youll want to lower the charge rates, at least thats where id start.

A quick way to troubleshoot this is run 1 inverter at a time, if voltage is indeed too high, the same thing will happen to each individual inverter.
If it works just fine, voltage is probably acceptable and you are just reaching the output limit of the gen when powering both inverters.

 

[RCinFLA]

Inverters should take 252 vac. 255 vac is common peak voltage for utilities when they overestimate the day's peak load demand and stoke their generators up too much.

I'm surprised the EU7000is is not shutting down first.

The XW pass-through relays are rated for 60 amps and will shut down inverter if exceeded by too much.

Make sure you set the AC input current limit (80% of XW's AC breaker setting) Set gen port breaker size setting for 30 amps. If AC input current limit is set you don't have to worry about setting charger too high as it will automatically back down to stay within AC current limit.

 

[waterflea]

When working with Schneider TS, he had me put the slave inverter in standby and just try the master. Nothing really happened. The generator was running but the inverter wouldn't ramp up and cutout like before. It just wouldn't accept the incoming charge from the generator at all, where as
before it would run up to 60-70 amps and drop back to normal operating mode.
During the night the system reached it's cutoff point of 50 volts and shut down completely. So this morning after jumping through hoops to get one of the six batteries to come off protection mode, they are all taking a charge from a remote battery charger run off my generator. Set at about
10 amps, I'm not sure how long it will take to get batteries charges up. Would it be safe and advisable to up that amperage?
I don't think I can get into InsightHome to check and tweak these settings until batteries are charged and system is running again. But let me ask you, where would I find, in InsightHome, the AC breaker setting and the other settings you mention?
Thanks for your time and patience.

 

[Cmiller]

You will probably have a pretty hard time getting 2x XW inverters to work well with a Honda EU7000is. Even a single XW can bring that gen to it's knees! With a single inverter, generally a safe "breaker size" setpoint is 20A. As RCinFLA noted, the XW will derate that to 80%, or 16A. This setpoint will have that specific generator handling it fairly easily (with a single inverter), but any surge load such as a washing machine startup, or well pump startup, will always cause the inverter to disconnect, then after 30 seconds it will reconnect again.

252V shouldn't be too high for the XW's.

Remember that with 2 inverters you will need to halve that 20A breaker size. So set it to 10A on each XW.

A single XW can charge up to 120A, which is 5760 watts @ 48V, or 6480 watts @ 54V. (54V is closer to where you will be at during charging.) You will hardly ever see it going over about 110A though, mostly because of internal temp causing charger derating.

That EU7000is is only rated for 5.5kw continuous, and it has 2 separate inverter boards internally, one for each leg. So that only gives 2750 watts pr leg, with really no imbalance forgiveness! So you will want to have hardly any loads on, whatsoever during charging, as any imbalance will quickly overload the gen!

Something that often helps a little bit, is to turn off the eco-throttle switch. That way the gen runs full speed, and can handle small surges easier. (Such as fridge startup, LED lighting startup, etc.)

It is do-able with a single XW, but may not be with a double stack setup.

 

[Cmiller]

where would I find, in InsightHome, the AC breaker setting and the other settings you mention?
Thanks for your time and patience.

If you open the web browser based page either via direct connection to the InsightHome wifi access point at 192.168.100.1 or on your home network. You will go to devices>click on one of the inverters> configuration> AC settings. There you will have AC1 and AC2 breaker sizes. You will need to adjust whichever input that you have the gen connected to, of course.

 

[BentleyJ]

This is a duplicate post, this issue was asked about in the other thread titled. XW Pro Commission. Please try and avoid this practice, its confusing and tends to waste time with multiple members responding to questions that have already been answered.

 

[waterflea]

Sorry Bentley, Schneider TS led me to believe my problem was a generator issue not a commission issue, so I started this post asking for ways to regulate the voltage from the generator and it progressed from there. The other post is just a continuation of my commissioning trials and tribulations. If I could get decent answers from Schneider or AltE, the company I bought the components from, I wouldn't have to bother you with any of this. Schneider TS seems to know nothing about there product and AltE TS won't get in touch despite numerous tries to reach them. It's been frustrating, sorry to ruffle your feathers.

 

[RCinFLA]

Max 240vac output from Honda EU7000is is a little under 23 amps continuous.

XW AC input breaker setting = 20A/80% = 25 amps.

For two XW's, divide by two so each unit AC input breaker should be set lower than 12.5 amps.

XW's have separate AC input limits for its two AC inputs (grid and generator). You can leave grid AC input at max and just set gen port breaker size to lower amperage limit, assuming you are feeding generator into gen port.

If Schneider tech support told you your issue is 252vac and did not mention breaker amperage setting, then you talked to someone that did not know much about their product.

 

[Cmiller]

Max 240vac output from Honda EU7000is is a little under 23 amps continuous.

XW AC input breaker setting = 20A/80% = 25 amps.

For two XW's, divide by two so each unit AC input breaker should be set lower than 12.5 amps.

XW's have separate AC input limits for its two AC inputs (grid and generator). You can leave grid AC input at max and just set gen port breaker size to lower amperage limit, assuming you are feeding generator into gen port.

If Schneider tech support told you your issue is 252vac and did not mention breaker amperage setting, then you talked to someone that did not know much about their product.

From personal experience on probably 50+ single XW with Honda EU7000is combination setups, I will say that setting the breaker size (one a single XW) to 25A will probably not work great! The biggest issue being when surge loads kick in you run a risk of actually overloading the gen. The XWs do a pretty good job of curtailing charge rate when loads go up, but they normally don't "catch" the surge loads. We usually don't recommend that our customers set up this specific generator with an auto start, because even at a lower amp setting for the breaker, they overload way too often. And when you auto start them and they overload, they continue to run, but don't put out any power anymore, so you burn a bunch of gas doing nothing...

Sorry kind of running off topic. My point is just that in my personal experience with quite a number of specifically XW/EU7000is setups, it seems that a breaker size setting of 20A works the best. I realize that the gen is capable of doing more than that (20 x .8) 16A of current, but it seems to give a nice balance of leaving headroom for surge loads, while still being able to get some charging done.

On a side note as well, I may be wrong, but IIRC the efficiency of inverter generators also drops a bit when you max them out.

 

[RCinFLA]

Hybrid inverter has a reaction time to surge loads so some of a motor startup surge will leak through to generator. Sometimes you have to back down the maximum AC input current limiting a bit more to keep generator from too much overload causing inverter to disconnect from generator.

This is more of an issue with synchronous generators that bog down, reducing engine rpm's causing freq/phase shifting which hybrid inverter phase tracking is not fast enough to follow causing hybrid inverter to release from generator.

A hybrid inverter's decision to release from a generator is based on peak inverter surge current. A generator that quickly shifts in phasing causes a sudden hybrid inverter overload surge current causing an immediate disconnect. This is why a synchronous generator's rpm governor control stability is so important. Any rpm variance in synchronous generator directly correlates to AC output freq/phase variance.

Inverter-generators do not change freq/phase when hit with a surge. Their AC sinewave voltage peaks are clipped. This is more 'friendly' to hybrid inverter as the hybrid inverter just fills in much of the peak current shortfall. Depending on inverter-generator's overload shutdown reaction time the generator may shut down its output which will, in-turn, cause hybrid inverter to release from generator.

When operating an inverter-generator in ECO mode with reduced engine rpm to support AC load, and AC load is suddenly increased, the inverter-generator output AC sinewave voltage peaks will be clipped off during the period of time necessary for engine rpm to increase to support the additional AC load.

Victron hybrid inverters have a feature called 'adaptive' load shaving. It starts inverter supplementing of AC load before AC input current limit set by user by measuring rate of change of surge current increase. In theory, it allows inverter to get a jump on supplementing AC load surges. How well it actually works is debatable as there is still a detection and reaction time for the surge. Once AC current stabilizes the inverter battery power supplementing of AC load is backed down if stabilized AC current is less than user set AC input current limit.

 

[Browse]

Can you put a Chargeverter between the Honda and the Battery pack, bypassing the inverters? This would allow the Honda to run at a constant level without having to worry about surges on the load side.

 

[Cmiller]

Victron hybrid inverters have a feature called 'adaptive' load shaving. How well it actually works is debatable as there is still a detection and reaction time for the surge.

It actually works quite well. I played around with it on an install where we changed from a Trace inverter to a Victron Multiplus-2 3000. (I think maybe lightning fried their old inverter...??? Can't remember all the details.) Anyway, they had a 3,000 watt "straight" generator (not inverter), and after playing around with the settings for a bit, I was able to start up their old wringer washer washing machine while charging from gen, and the inverter would respond quickly enough that it would not disconnect from the generator!

Customer was impressed, as was I!

 

[Cmiller]

Hybrid inverter has a reaction time to surge loads so some of a motor startup surge will leak through to generator. Sometimes you have to back down the maximum AC input current limiting a bit more to keep generator from too much overload causing inverter to disconnect from generator.

This is more of an issue with synchronous generators that bog down, reducing engine rpm's causing freq/phase shifting which hybrid inverter phase tracking is not fast enough to follow causing hybrid inverter to release from generator.

In my experience it seems hat the inverter generators still experience a momentary voltage drop, which causes the inverter to drop out.

Turning off eco throttle always helped, but usually the inverter would still drop out on surge startoff loads.

 

[waterflea]

So BentlyJ was kind of right....it didn't start out that way but as soon as I figured out that it wasn't a generator issue, this post started to duplicate an on going post I started about the commission of this system. If you're interested, the title of the other post is "Schneider XW Pro commission". With help from both posts, I have tweaked a few things and it seems to be working. I am posting procedures and results over there and would appreciate any and all input. Thanks for all your help.

 

[jimf909]

Can you put a Chargeverter between the Honda and the Battery pack, bypassing the inverters? This would allow the Honda to run at a constant level without having to worry about surges on the load side.

Yes. It adds a component to the system but it eliminates any problems of the generator and inverter not playing well together. This also allows the use of a cheaper non-inverter generator.