AndyCasper
New Member
This is my grid-forward system to take full advantage of my utility's time-of-use plan for EV owners. Off-peak is $0.05/kWh and peak is from 3pm - 8pm at $0.25/kWh. Being able to stay at those lower rates has cut my monthly energy bill down by 65%. That plus the federal rebate means the ROI for this system is only 7.5 years. The transitions on and off grid power are seamless and clean with only a minor light flicker, but no impact to computers or other appliances noticed. But here's the rub, I'm the one doing the transition.
I've seen SignatureSolarPeyton on here responding to others similar issues, but frankly Signature Solar seems completely overwhelmed in their support department. They have been extremely helpful in the design of this system and through the sales process and, while I do sense a company that means well and cares about thier customers, communication with support is sparse, lacking confidence and inconsistent. Which (surely inadvertently) induces a lack of confidence in the product from my side. Specifically these 8k Inverters. On two occasions with "Anti-Reverse" enabled, these back-fed the grid from the battery storage. I am not permitted to do that with my utility and have no idea what the consequence will be if any. I'm hopeful they can help me find an answer to why it simply refuses to switch to battery power at the configured time. We've gone through several iterations of changing the system time, and offsetting the configured discharge time, to no avail. In the meantime, I have spec'd out a 60A 4-Pole (normally closed) contactor with a 120v coil, paired with a simple appliance timer. If nothing else I'll program the appliance timer to energize the coil at 3pm to disconnect the grid power, then turn back off at 8pm to return it. That's really all I'm doing right now with the inverter breakers anyway.
While this non-functioning feature issue is frustrating, the system is otherwise working very well. It handles the entire home load with ease. Including two 3-ton HVAC units, our dryer, conventional oven and everything else we throw at it. In fact, I would call these inverters rather quiet, even in times of high load. The batteries charge well in advance of need and so far we've only used about 30% of available capacity in a given cycle. We'll see what happens in the heat of the Utah summer (July and August).
The only remaining oddity is something which may only be because I see the activity on a Sense monitor where it otherwise may go unnoticed. The oddity is how the batteries charge. After cycling back to grid, they chill for about 30-40 min and then start charging. They decide, but I have peak set to 35A. Typically they'll charge at around 20A. When they're fully charged after a few hours, the system reports 100% then 99%, then 100%, then 99% and so on for 8+ hours. It appears on the Sense monitor as intermittent requests for 3-4kW every minute or so, lasting only a second. I've let Signature Solar know, but they didn't really react, so maybe this is normal behavior that typically goes unseen by the end user.
Next year I'll add 8kW of solar to really drive down the monthly costs.
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