Schneider XW Pro Enhanced Grid Support issues

[Hamish]

Just curious, did you get a chance to set it at 65v? Did it start operating as you'd hoped?

No joy. Does it have to be 65v or just anything >64v?

 

[n2aws]

I tried setting CSV>64 but the system is still selling power from the batteries. Same result as the last time I tried this. ??
Anyhow, thanks very much for that document. I have over 90 documents but I didn't have that one. It is very informative.

I am not sure where to go from here. In a previous blog someone mentioned that sometimes the xw gets stuck in off grid mode. I fixed that once by doing a complete power down of the system and then Rebooted when I brought it back up. I think I will try that this morning along with the gsv=66 trick.

tried setting CSV>64

@Hamish Is this a typo? It needs to be 65. 65 and higher enables enhanced grid support.

If it's a typo, and you actually used 65.. something is off in your setup. Enhanced grid support would not be selling battery power to grid, under any scenario I am aware of. If it's not a typo, update it to 65 (as mentioned in several of my posts and the linked document) and see if the behavior changes.

 

[n2aws]

No joy. Does it have to be 65v or just anything >64v?

65. I'm not sure where "64" came from. But, 64 isn't a thing.

 

[Hamish]

No joy. Does it have to be 65v or just anything >64v?

No, my XW will not support closed loop with the Trophy batteries. The older, original XW's were not designed to be controlled externally (except from the SCP), as far as I know.

I've got to say that the XW has been bulletproof so far. Once I commissioned the system in 2011, it was not turned off until I did the expansion of the system earlier this year. Now I have 10.4kw of solar, with one array facing SE, one SW, and the newest facing directly south. My PV production curve during the day is fairly flat, with the XW showing a bit better than 6kw selling back to grid for a good part of the day, with almost 8kw total solar production at times. I have gotten 50+ kwh's/day during several days this summer. Yesterday, I got 36kwh's (I have too many trees blocking the low winter sun angle).

I did add a couple of fans to my system to help alleviate the heat buildup. Everything is mounted inside my house in a separate mechanical room, which also houses my solar water heaters and geothermal unit. It can get up to about 85 degrees in there even with the air conditioner on. I put a double computer type fan on top of the inverter, pulling air up through the unit, and a 9" diameter circular fan blowing across the SCC's. This made a BIG difference on the operating temps of the units. I don't see any temperature derating at all.

Interesting. I did exactly the same thing. I also added an exhaust fan in the ceiling, but that's another story. I think one of the reasons my previous XP failed was that the fans failed. Schneider does not like to invest in decent fans, and my neighbor also had one of the fans fail. So I basically don't trust the fans in these units, and augment them with additional fans. Of course, Schneider does not provide a source for parts, so if one of your fans does go, you have to do a lot of research to find a replacement. He found one somewhere in Denmark.

 

[Hamish]

@Hamish Is this a typo? It needs to be 65. 65 and higher enables enhanced grid support.

If it's a typo, and you actually used 65.. something is off in your setup. Enhanced grid support would not be selling battery power to grid, under any scenario I am aware of. If it's not a typo, update it to 65 (as mentioned in several of my posts and the linked document) and see if the behavior changes.

Not a typo: >64 means greater than 64. I.e. 65, 66, ...

I think something is off it the setup/firmware. I am in the process of doing a complete power down, waiting for the Caps to discharge, and when I bring it back up I will reload the firmware, do a factory boot and rebuild all the settings. This has been a major pain in the rear since the first of June.

 

[Hamish]

@Hamish Is this a typo? It needs to be 65. 65 and higher enables enhanced grid support.

If it's a typo, and you actually used 65.. something is off in your setup. Enhanced grid support would not be selling battery power to grid, under any scenario I am aware of. If it's not a typo, update it to 65 (as mentioned in several of my posts and the linked document) and see if the behavior changes.

It would be really nice, though not expected, if the Insight home had a way to report State transitions. As in when & why did it go into absorb mode. A plot of these state changes would be really, really nice. Helpful even.

 

[n2aws]

Not a typo: >64 means greater than 64. I.e. 65, 66, ...

I think something is off it the setup/firmware. I am in the process of doing a complete power down, waiting for the Caps to discharge, and when I bring it back up I will reload the firmware, do a factory boot and rebuild all the settings. This has been a major pain in the rear since the first of June.

I'd hold off until you change GSV to 65.

Once you've done that, if you still see it acting up, then do the factory reset. but, until GSV is set to 65v, it won't behave in "enhanced grid support" mode.

 

[Hamish]

I'd hold off until you change GSV to 65.

Once you've done that, if you still see it acting up, then do the factory reset. but, until GSV is set to 65v, it won't behave in "enhanced grid support" mode.

Just setting the GSV to 65 didn't do it. Then what I did was a complete grid power down, MPPTs, including batteries, came up batteries first MPPT second and grid last. Then I reset the inverter to factory. Then I went in and made sure all the settings were as before including setting GSV to 65. While doing this I noticed the battery type had been reset to custom. Previously it was Li-Ion. I left it at "custom" and went into where they hide the battery type: Top > Setup > Left menu > BMS Setup > Discover 6055. I left that as is, and went into the XW, > config, > Advanced, > battery settings, > battery type and left it at custom. I don't know if it was the Hocus Pocus with the batteries or the complete reset which solved the problem, assuming it is solved. For now it is working as it should and I will let it cook overnight and check it again in the morning.

 

[Hamish]

Just setting the GSV to 65 didn't do it. Then what I did was a complete grid power down, MPPTs, including batteries, came up batteries first MPPT second and grid last. Then I reset the inverter to factory. Then I went in and made sure all the settings were as before including setting GSV to 65. While doing this I noticed the battery type had been reset to custom. Previously it was Li-Ion. I left it at "custom" and went into where they hide the battery type: Top > Setup > Left menu > BMS Setup > Discover 6055. I left that as is, and went into the XW, > config, > Advanced, > battery settings, > battery type and left it at custom. I don't know if it was the Hocus Pocus with the batteries or the complete reset which solved the problem, assuming it is solved. For now it is working as it should and I will let it cook overnight and check it again in the morning.

 

[n2aws]

Just setting the GSV to 65 didn't do it. Then what I did was a complete grid power down, MPPTs, including batteries, came up batteries first MPPT second and grid last. Then I reset the inverter to factory. Then I went in and made sure all the settings were as before including setting GSV to 65. While doing this I noticed the battery type had been reset to custom. Previously it was Li-Ion. I left it at "custom" and went into where they hide the battery type: Top > Setup > Left menu > BMS Setup > Discover 6055. I left that as is, and went into the XW, > config, > Advanced, > battery settings, > battery type and left it at custom. I don't know if it was the Hocus Pocus with the batteries or the complete reset which solved the problem, assuming it is solved. For now it is working as it should and I will let it cook overnight and check it again in the morning.

This is great to hear!

 

[Hamish]

This is great to hear!

Not so fast. I did all that and set GSV to 65. Overnight it stopped working. That is to say, the batteries were drawn down to 3%. Nothing seemed correct. I have done the power down, reload firmware, reboot, power up, power down blah blah blah. At this point the cc's shut down after almost exactly 2:15 minutes. Independently of that, the inverter either goes to the "000" or "---" state. I have checked all the settings Thrice, and I had my IT department check them as well. I have about had it with this POS. Three months ago, I was about || this close to having it ripped out and replacing it with Outback equipment. I am almost there again. If this was a car, I would invoke the Lemon Law.

I will try to calm down and try again, wasting yet another day.

 

[BentleyJ]

This has become an ongoing issue with a fairly long thread. Have you posted a wiring diagram and/or pics of the system? I did a quick thread review, but didn't notice it being posted. You did post a PDF of some of the settings. This is really a strange issue. Its one thing to have Enhanced Grid Support not work correctly. This is an isolated, somewhat known problem that has been discussed.
If the batteries are being drawn down to 3% that means the inverter is blowing right past Low SoC and/or Low Volt Settings. If that is true, its the first time I've ever heard of such a thing with Schneider.

There has to be an answer. Maybe you do have a bad control circuit board. This is one of those mysteries begging for a solution.

Your menu settings may have changed since the PDF was posted but I did notice Peak Load Shave was enabled and Amps was set to 0. However, since the Start/Stop timers were both set to 12:00 it should be inactive. Maybe try disabling Peak Load Shave or setting Amps to 30. Just wild guessing at this point but its easy enough to try.

 

[n2aws]

Not so fast. I did all that and set GSV to 65. Overnight it stopped working. That is to say, the batteries were drawn down to 3%. Nothing seemed correct. I have done the power down, reload firmware, reboot, power up, power down blah blah blah. At this point the cc's shut down after almost exactly 2:15 minutes. Independently of that, the inverter either goes to the "000" or "---" state. I have checked all the settings Thrice, and I had my IT department check them as well. I have about had it with this POS. Three months ago, I was about || this close to having it ripped out and replacing it with Outback equipment. I am almost there again. If this was a car, I would invoke the Lemon Law.

I will try to calm down and try again, wasting yet another day.

Like @BentleyJ said, something is obviously wrong here.

If you have GSV set to 65, the system should essentially *never* use the battery, unless it's a legitimate power outage (just to be sure, you never lost grid power, right?)

If you have GSV set to 65, and it used battery power while the grid was connected.. You probably need to involve Schneider support. This is likely not just a "settings" issue.

 

[Hamish]

@Hamish something you said didn't make sense to me, was that the BMS was setting your recharge SOC to "98%" when you wanted it at 100%. It kept bugging me, so this morning I went through and re-read your post. In re-reading it, I see i missed a fundamental part. You wanted your recharge SOC at 100%.

I suspect it's not the BMS resetting your recharge SOC to 98%, but the XW firmware itself. If you set recharge SOC to 100%, this would mean to *always* have your batteries recharging. which is likely not good for your batteries. Thus, I suspect it's an undocumented "self preservation, so you don't shoot yourself in the foot" feature in the firmware itself. I did look through the XW documentation to see if there was any mention of it, but I didn't see any. But fundamentally "recharge SOC 100%" just doesn't make any sense in any use-case I can think of. In fact, taking this a step further.. "recharge soc 100%" would be functionally equivalent to a float charge. in which case, you'd enable 3stage charging, not 2 stage. (I'd advise against it since you want to sell to the grid). but honestly, I think this boils down to you wanting to do something with your inverter, that you probably *shouldn't* do.

Thanks again for the App Note link you sent. I missed (forgot? one little thing causing problems getting it into Enhanced Grid Support.
Note when you reboot MPPT, it enters BULK. Enhanced Grid Support will not kick in until MPPTs enter FLOAT.

XWPro/XW-Enhanced-Support-Mode-Application-Note

“Once the MPPT solar charge controller switches to float stage, all PV system

power will supply the loads.”

 

[n2aws]

I missed (forgot? one little thing causing problems getting it into Enhanced Grid Support.

I mentioned this in post 38

 

[Hamish]

Just setting the GSV to 65 didn't do it. Then what I did was a complete grid power down, MPPTs, including batteries, came up batteries first MPPT second and grid last. Then I reset the inverter to factory. Then I went in and made sure all the settings were as before including setting GSV to 65. While doing this I noticed the battery type had been reset to custom. Previously it was Li-Ion. I left it at "custom" and went into where they hide the battery type: Top > Setup > Left menu > BMS Setup > Discover 6055. I left that as is, and went into the XW, > config, > Advanced, > battery settings, > battery type and left it at custom. I don't know if it was the Hocus Pocus with the batteries or the complete reset which solved the problem, assuming it is solved. For now it is working as it should and I will let it cook overnight and check it again in the morning.

Still no joy.

 

[Hamish]

My On-Grid Schneider XWPro 6848 continues to harvest energy from the 3 Discover 6650 Batteries even though there is plenty of grid and/or solar available. It cycles between Recharge SoC% and 98-100% Soc. Why is it even harvesting ANY energy from the batteries?

FYI: Grid Support Voltage = 66v, GS & SoC Enabled. How do I even know if the system is in Enhanced Grid Support?

 

[BentleyJ]

Why are you concerned about a 2% hysteresis? That's actually very reasonable. As far as I know even in enhanced mode the charge controllers are not a PID type, they need some kind of "dead band". Just like a thermostat on an HVAC system, it cannot keep the room temp at an exact value. It swings a little both ways.

 

[Philip53]

Why are you concerned about a 2% hysteresis? That's actually very reasonable. As far as I know even in enhanced mode the charge controllers are not a PID type, they need some kind of "dead band". Just like a thermostat on an HVAC system, it cannot keep the room temp at an exact value. It swings a little both ways.

My older (original), grid tied XW6048 has always done this. There are times during good PV production, and with a full charge, the batteries will show a few amps in and out. I always thought this was 'normal'.

 

[CopperTopper]

I am having the exact same issue with a XW6848 pro, SCC100-600 and Grid Support Selling. The battery is a fortress e-vault with closed loop comms. This issue has been going on for over a month and I have tried everything and all Schneider does is want to down grade and upgrade the firmware and waste my time. I can not get the solar alone to sell without selling battery power with it. This is with the GSV above 65! I have also had issues with settings not saving when all my devices had the latest firmware. You would literally change a value, save it, wait for it to go from green go back a page or refresh and come back to the page you just adjusted and the original value would be there! This was with InsightLocal and the cloud. Schneiders response was to down grade the current firmware and then install the latest firmware (again, wasting more time to run out the clock) and that fixed the problem for maybe a day. All while trying to get the system to sell power to the grid. I currently have a older firmware version and I am not having issues with settings staying so I am leaving it because the newer versions did not do a damn thing in terms of Grid support and PV selling. I have attached screen shots of this behavior and all my settings that are relevant hoping in desperation someone can help. I have been doing this for 14 years and have numerous Schneider's in the field that never had issues until this nonsense.