I recently set up a Generac ATS to transfer to an existing Magnum off
grid system. Grid was added to the house later. I ended up putting a
7ah 12 v battery, 120 vac outlet, and 1 A charger inside the enclosure
to power the ATS. Gird sense was connected right to the grid input
terminals in the ATS. It worked, but Generac certainly frowned on this
use of their equipment. It was not easy figuring out the terminal
strip connections, either.
I thought it was slightly kludgy, and probably 5 years from now, it will
stop working when the little battery fails. They'll call a Generac
dealer, who will have no idea what he's looking at.
Ray Walters
Remote Solar
On 9/20/2024 8:33 AM, Sam Haraldson via RE-wrenches wrote:
Wrenches,
We are primarily a grid-tied solar EPC but like many solar companies
have a long history with small off-grid installations. In the past
few years we have been tackling a handful of large, complex, grid-tied
battery-backup systems (sub 90 kwh) range with some working flawlessly
and some plagued with weekly quirks. A weak link we've found in two
of these installations was our choice to use Generac Automatic
Transfer Switches. In order for this ATS to sense a grid outage and
perform its transfer it relies on circuitry built into a Generac
generator as well as a source of 12v power (typically the generator
start battery).
One of our sites doesn't have a generator at all and the other does,
but the grid sensing circuitry in the ATS is bypassed as we want the
Sol-Arks to be the first-line of power during an outage and not the
generator. In order to accomplish this our electrician designed
custom circuitry for grid sensing which is powered by a separate 12v
source, has a 10 second delay, and flips the transfer switch during an
outage placing the loads under the control of the Sol-Arks.
Our initial design for these systems did not take into consideration
that a Generac ATS doesn't have its own "brains" to grid sense and
since we are now relying on a small custom circuit and a small
external 12v power supply to act as a key player in an otherwise
powerful and robust backup system we are second guessing our equipment
choice. What ATS solutions are Wrenches employing that we should be
considering?
TL;DR - what are the simplest ATS solutions that sense the grid
(frequency, voltage, et al) and self-switch between backup and grid
power automatically?
Sincerely,
Sam
OnSite Energy
<https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onsiteenergyinc.com/&source=gmail-html&ust=1677085494759000&usg=AOvVaw2NN36GoM1sjnS4RdC8Svt->
SAM HARALDSON
Operations Specialist
(406) 551-6135
1515 N. Rouse Ave Bozeman, MT 59715
Locally owned and operated since 2012
B Corporation <https://onsiteenergyinc.com/bcorp>
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