Thanks, Mac.
Outback support was kind enough to call me on the phone and discuss. Thank you Outback – you’re the best on knowledge of your product! Back to where I’m going with this. I’m going to get in the installer menu to ensure there are not sell limits enabled that were not immediately apparent from the standard Mate views. In my mind, this corroborates my gut feel that the inverters seemed throttled back. I will disable the GT mode on the charge controllers individually across all 12. I don’t have a good feel as to what I think this will do going forward but that will be one of my last steps. Before that, I’m going to check that charging parameters (using the charger hard key) are not what are unsatisfied and perhaps preventing full Sell mode. Perhaps…an unstable grid out there is constantly resetting the grid connection timer back to 5 minutes. None of this an original thought – all from Outback. Mac, I did calibrate the voltage across the charge controllers and the master inverter, via the Mate. I may go back and check calibration at the other inverters / ports too as I have not done that. Of note, the Mate will allow calibration up to .8 volts and this was just barely not enough to bring them to the charge controllers level but before I go down that rabbit hole…I feel like I want all devices “seeing” the same voltage but I recognize, to your point below, that there may in fact be voltage deviations between devices as devices load and unload. So…is “calibration” brining each device to the true voltage measured at that particular device or is “calibration really a normalization of voltages across the system, with some voltage being the reference point? As for mode – in grid-tied mode. Remember there is no digital network connection between the inverters/Mate to the CCs. All the basic level settings (Sell enabled, sell voltage below float…) have all been set. Will keep all updated so we can learn on this one. Scot From: RE-wrenches <re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org> On Behalf Of Mac Lewis Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2020 7:52 PM To: RE-wrenches <re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org> Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Outback Radians x 8 don't seem to sell back as much as they could in this microgrid Hi Scot, Tell us much more about your set-points and entire set-up. Screen shots of OpticsRE can help if that's available. Are your charge controllers dropping into float or float MPPT? Or constantly in bulk? I can't recommend that you put them in grid-tied mode although that is supposed to work. What grid-input mode are you using? (Grid-tied, mini-grid, back-up, UPS, or ?) This will have significant impact on what will happen in various circumstances. What's your offset? Is offset enabled? What's your sell voltage? Is sell enabled? The charge controllers should force power onto the DC buss, while the inverter should sell it away. There is a constant tug of war between devices. If we assume you can sell all of the solar available, then be aware that there are charge algorithms that take some time to equal out. For example, you may see the DC buss voltage increase while the inverter gears up to sell, after a bit of time, you may see the inverter overshoot the sell voltage a bit and back off to allow it to recover. Do the calculations and verify you are getting approximately what you expect over the course of a day, noting that there is a lot more inefficiencies in these systems than straight grid-tied. If the charge controllers are clipping power, be sure that the absorb time is long and the absorb voltage is well above the offset voltage. Here is a good article about what is happening http://www.outbackpower.com/downloads/documents/appnotes/offset_tech_note_correc.pdf There is a lot of programming that will need to be correct for optimization. Be sure to calibrate voltage across devices. These can work well, but are far from automatic or easy to program. Good luck and more info will really help us help you. I highly recommend OpticsRE connection if possible Thanks On Wed, May 20, 2020 at 2:23 PM Jason Szumlanski <ja...@floridasolardesigngroup.com <mailto:ja...@floridasolardesigngroup.com> > wrote: I have had a hard time getting FM60s (not my install) to sell at the same rate even though they had identical PV on them. They were all on the same Hub and the voltages were the same. I never did explain that. It's been a while but I think that client just gave up because the cost to research and correct it became too high for the relatively small system. I wouldn't install a DC Coupled grid interconnected system today if the primary purpose was grid selling. AC Coupling has so many advantages. DC Coupled systems always have to have me thinking that they could be selling more. They don't have adequate monitoring for selling. I'm even thinking about going to all AC Coupling even for off-grid. I don't do a ton of off-grid, but I have always been disappointed in the data monitoring and setup interfaces for the various brands of charge controller and how they interact with inverter/chargers. I'm willing to take the efficiency hit to just get good data on the PV output. Jason Szumlanski On Wed, May 20, 2020 at 11:49 AM <scot.a...@solarcentex.com <mailto:scot.a...@solarcentex.com> > wrote: Hello wrenches: I have a rural “micro-grid” system with eight 8048 Radian, twelve FM80s, and paralleled RE2700 batteries. I’ll spare you the details of how we got here (this started as half this size bt we doubled and enlarged to micrgrid support instead of single ranch dwelling.) Because of the increases, the ability to network all together with hubs is not possible. It seemed as if the FM80s were not producing as much as they could. I’ve checked the charging parameters and feel good about those. All voltages are calibrated across the FM80s as well as the Mate 3. The Mate 3 is connected to the eight inverters only. The FM80s are not networked together; I was concerned about that until I read an earlier post here. Yesterday, I left with an impression that my challenge might be the inverters not selling to their maximum potential. It seemed like they certainly had more voltage “space” before they hit the lower threshold for sell voltage but the inverters just were not making as much I expected them to make. Only indication to give you is that the inverters, as seen on the Mate 3, would cycle up to a max about 11kw of selling back to the grid and then return back to 4KW of selling (while meeting minimal household loads on during home reconstruction. It would hit this peak and cycle down before it hit the sell voltage. Each port for each inverter is set for 50A. The charger for each port is set for 30A (even though to be quite honest I just do not know why/how the charger must be on for a grid-tied system with PV charging…) Any thoughts or recommendations? 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