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Once you have a generator a 20 lb Cylinder will get you close to 30 KWHs of electricity. For most homes that will cover your daily consumption. Especially if you get at least a little solar charging. That for a cost of $70.00, about 50 for the cylinder and 20 for the refill. So adding one...

The problem here is that your grid tied inverters are designed to sync with the incoming wave form and then inject current back onto the circuit. When you are on grid this current just flows out to the grid which is able to absorb that excess current. When you are off grid that excess power...

See South Africa and Venezuela. It doesn't take any external threat. If you have mismanagement and corruption for enough years eventually things fall apart. We are heading that way. The USA is far from the country I grew up in. How long do we have left? I have no clue, but in the country I...

These heat pump dryers are more efficient. They also cost twice as much and they are far more complex and hence more unreliable. The same can be said for heat pump hot water heaters. Also, for a family, it does mean that it will take at least twice as long to do each load of laundry since you...

So after 1.5 years I finally got my AC coupled IQ8s to produce power off grid. Yeah!!!

Do you remember punched cards? That's how I learned to program.

With their newest firmware version 521-00005-r06-v02.61.01 the Enphase IQ8s are now able to AC couple with Schneider XW Pro inverters. I had a 35 panel IQ8 grid tied system installed in Aug of 2022. I added a battery backup to the system in Dec 2022. While the system did work fine as a UPS...

One other thing is that sol arc actually has essentially two 120 volt 7500 watt inverters internally one for L1 and one for L2. So a large load on one leg can trip the inverter. Because of its large transformer and low frequency operation, the Schneider is better able to handle unbalanced...

You can but a "Soft Starter". They are designed to reduce the surge cause when a motor is starting up. Of course there is no way to know in advance how much this will help, but in many cases they can cut the startup current to 33-50% of the normal value. It basically uses some electronics to...

You are correct. If you look at their wiring diagram they for AC coupling on the load side, they state "Do not use" for the generator input. The issue is that if PV inverters are outputting more power than your loads, the PV inverters will attempt to back feed the generator. The work around...

Some new Information I did some testing today and was able to sort out several issues. About a week ago I changed my settings to use the SOC control. At one point I was having problems with SOC not being reliable. This could have been due to a bad connector cable. My SOC does not seem to have...

When AC1 is connected to a working grid a relay is closed that connects AC1 and AC Out together. Since AC1 is 60 hz the GT inverters will run at 100% output (based on available sun of course). Unless you consume all of your PV power the system will export the excess back to the grid.

This is nit picky and you will find many panels where this is not done, but when using a 12-2 Romex cable for a 240 volt only circuit (no neutral needed), you really should "Redesignate" the white wires using red electrical tape. This makes clear in the panel (and even more important on the...

Yes, but the main purpose is shaving peak usage from the grid. They have something similar (and probably more useful) for "Generator Support". I think the main purpose of grid support is that there are apparently power companies that charge you more based on your peak usage.

If you look at the installation manual, they will tell you that if you AC couple on the load side, you cannot use the generator input. See their wiring diagrams and it will say "Do not use". There is no "magic traffic cop" that directs the electrons in these inverters from one place to...

What you are proposing here, is to put the Grid connection of your inverter onto both panels. If you connect your inverter to both panels, and the main breaker trips on one of the panels, you will have the grid connected to one panel, but not the other. If your inverter is hooked to both...

Unfortunately, AC installers generally charge enormous markups on their installations (and then add hourly installation labor on top of that). The manufacturers also charge premium prices for these variable speed units. Add that all up and it is hard to justify any kind of preemptive upgrade...

There are 26 inverters that were upgraded to the latest firmware. 9 are still on the older version. I have a ticket in to Enphase to upgrade the rest of the inverters. I did not actually check that all the upgraded inverters were producing power. Maybe once all the inverters have been...

My bad, I meant to say you CAN'T. Well you can, and it won't blow up. It just won't deliver any power.

I did actually update the Schneider XW Pro to the latest version. I also updated the Insight to version 18. I had some troubles with 18. It seemed to keep locking up. I had been on version 16. I backed it off to version 17 and I will see I am still getting lock ups. On version 18, I also...

It can do this, but there are two problems here us IQ8 AC coupled people are facing. One is finding a "Grid Profile" that allows the inverters to turn on at all. This seems to be a big problem with IQ8s. The second is how to make sure you don't operate the AC Coupled PV when the batteries are...

For most solar systems, summer is not the time you come up short. Yes, the A/C runs a lot, but PV production is very high. I am consistently exporting power in the summer. It is winter when my system produces less than I consume. So during winter a hot water heater and electric drier really...

I spent most of my money on women and wine. And like a fool, I squandered the rest...

I think a desire to sell way overpriced batteries may be interfering with some companies making their PV inverters play nice, but I think there are also issues with hybrid inverter companies selling half baked poorly thought out solutions that work better on paper than in reality.

This is finally working after the latest IQ8 firmware upgrade.

I know it is standard industry practice to use 12-2 nonmetallic cable (better known as romex) for 240 only circuits. So you get a white and a black. Using the "correct" color isn't really an option. Running 12-3 just to have the right color is not required by code. The code may require using...

I got the max power from the data sheets on the inverter. They say the Max DC input is 8000 watts divided into 2 MPPT inputs. So each MPPT can handle 4000 watts. Since the whole purpose of an MPPT controller is to vary the Voltage / Amperage to achieve the best power production based on...

Considering you are storing enough energy in there to power a small rail gun, you really need to make sure there is no chance you will ever short out your DC cables. I am careful around my DC cables anyway, but shorting these will be like a bomb going off. The rectangular metal boxes under my...

I went the other way. I got everything wall mounted. I guess it depends on what your garage space is like. For me having everything up off the floor is a big benefit. Getting those Schneider inverters up on the wall is a challenge even with two people. If I did that on a regular basis, I...

With a dual inverter system, you should be able to supply 60 amps. The 48 amps is a 80% derating of a single 60 amp circuit. This derating is required when a circuit is used continuously. With dual inverters no derating should be required. However just like the case of the AC1, AC2 has a 60...