Some updates here, I purchased a
- transfer switch, and bought an
- Oupes Mega 2 power station (2500W, 2048Wh).
I liked that one because for $1200 you get solar input up to 2100W which is more than my 1170 watts solar panels produce, and it accepted 12 to 150 volts so if I want to place them in Serie the 147 volts (sum of Voc) will be fine. As well it would be fine if I want to use some 24V batteries with an MPP controller to the input and add capacity. I selected the circuits to connect analyzing the highest historical consumption from each of them from my Emporia energy monitor to get a total of 1000W to make sure my panels would be able to support that consumption without relying on the AC input, at least during a good sunny day.
Anyways, I read on some other forums that you don't connect the neutral from your transfer switch to the main panel. But the instruction on the transfer panel indicated to connect them, so I connected it. First thing I noticed is that some circuits in my panel with ARC breakers activated protection, but when switched over to the power station on the transfer switch, everything worked fine. Perhaps, still being disconnected from the load the arc breakers still kept activating protection, like .
Anyways, it was almost Sunset, so I connected the panels, and the input started showing up to 150 watts, and going down minute by minute. Battery arrived at 66%, so I connected it to the AC so that it can get charged 100% since the remained 30 minutes of sun will not be enough.. Total charging power incremented slowly to more than 1000W, so I switched to low speed charging so it can get from the grid a max of 800W. At 100% charge I connected the battery to the transfer switch using the TT30 cable, and all the circuits in the house that I connected to the transfer switch were alive again.
Kept monitoring with the app the consumptions of my loads and from my emporia the consumption of the circuit charging the battery, both numbers were almost the same, around 300W all night.
This morning it was haze again , and the app indicated only 9 watts from the solar panels. I waited until noon and it never moved from there. So I disconnected the AC cable to see if the solar panel inputs shows something different on the app, and yes, it started to climb the number up to 100W, but at the same time some buzz sound could be hear inside, and suddenly it shutdown completely. Overload protection switch was not activated, the device was unresponsive to any button. May be having the transfer switch neutral connected to the panel created an issue, or not but .. it is just a big brick now. It may be defective the unit so I am requesting a replacement. In fact, something I noticed overnight (I could not sleep well because I got the new battery toy), the AC input watt on the app showed as just 30 watt, while the output shows as 300W. But on my emporia I could see it was actually taking the 300W from the main panel.
I was expecting something better from the app, like control of turning on/off the outputs, or monitoring consumption for each outlet, but all it provides is input watts, AC cable and solar panel input. there is a graph, but it shows probably only the last minute, and all history is gone. And well, the AC input watts number was also wrong. First connection from the app to the battery was not easy as well, since instruction called to push a button for 3 seconds so wifi and BT start blinking, but those were only blinking while I kept pressed the button, the moment I released the button they stop blinking. So, I had to maintain the button pushed so that it could be connected to the app.