Hi. New to solar… only had them installed A few days ago (10 panels plus 9.5 battery)
Is there a setting we can change on the app/give energy page that stops the battery exporting to the grid. Ideally we want to pulling from the battery in the evening but we are seeing power being pulled from the battery and the grid at the same time battery is exporting to the grid! (Unless I am not reading this right)
many thanks 😊
What you are looking for is not possible as I understand it.
I am fairly certain that what you are experiencing is a limitation of the current GE hybrid inverter.
The maximum continuous discharge rate for the Gen 1 Hybrid products are:
Max Power Output from Battery is 2600Watts
The Gen 2 have increased this to 3600Watts.
So in the situation where you are using more than the relevant value you will use power from the Battery and then any extra will come from the grid.
Please note that this is a different situation than say using the power from the combined Solar PV and Battery this would see a limit of 2.6kW (Gen 1) / 3.6kW (Gen 2) from the battery PLUS any Solar PV upto the limit of your inverter (so add 1kW or 2.4kW for Gen 1 hybrid inverters and 0kW or 1.4kW for Gen 2's
I hope that is clear enough.
The only way to get around this, with current GE products, would be to have another inverter & battery most likely an AC coupled unit.
Having just been to the Solar Show at the NEC today I have seen at least 1 system (that was interesting and not just a repackaged "white box" from China) that would allow you to use 5kW from the battery.
Wdes3art due to inverter ramp up/down times you will always pull a little from the grid before the inverter kicks in, then when the load finishes the battery will export until the inverter ramps down. For me, on Eco mode, I pull around 0.1-0.2kWh from the grid each day, and overnight export roughly the same.
What @magician2905 is talking about is any load higher than that of your inverter/battery capacity, if you're limit is 2.6kW (Gen 1) but your draw is 3.0kW you'll pull 0.4kW from the grid.
magician2905 Please note that this is a different situation than say using the power from the combined Solar PV and Battery this would see a limit of 2.6kW (Gen 1) / 3.6kW (Gen 2) from the battery PLUS any Solar PV upto the limit of your inverter (so add 1kW or 2.4kW for Gen 1 hybrid inverters and 0kW or 1.4kW for Gen 2's
My understanding is that while the ac output from the inverter is a maximum of 5kW (or 3.6kW) to the home, supplied by PV and battery (accepting your stated limitations), the inverters can consume more PV than they are rated at. If there was sufficient PV, a 5kW gen2 hybrid could charge batteries at 3.6kW while supplying house load at 5kW. However, once the batteries were fully charged, the inverter would reduce output to supply just the 5kW house load.
Tim Thanks for that.
I just typed up a reply then re-read it.............
I think the answer is "perhaps".
It's possible you're talking about Over Provisioning of Solar PV.
The numbers for that are:
This simply means that they will cope with a higher Solar PV input than they are "sold" as.
That's pretty common across the industry. Sunsynk actually offer a 3.6kWh Hybrid Inverter with a USP stating it will handle 7.2kW Solar PV. In fact they offer, as far as I am aware, the highest rated single phase hybrid inverter @ 16kW but there's no data sheet on that yet (likely its around +15% capacity so 18kWish).
What you have to understand is that Solar Panels produce DC current to the hybrid inverter and the battery stores that in DC format.
When it is sent to your house for use it has to be converted into AC. This is where the limitation occurs as the combined capacity is as previously stated.
Getting a bit more into the explanation Solar Panels are sold using the STC (where they are tested at the PERFCT conditions - Temperature, Wind Speed and Solar Irradiance). They then have to state a minimum performance at Normal conditions - NMOT. Even then the NMOT is based on Irradiance at 800W/m2, Ambient Temperature 20°C, Wind Speed 1m/s @ a Nominal Operating Cell Temperature of 43'C.
Changing any of those variables will generally reduce (but can also improve slightly) the performance of your panel array.
Using a Trina Vertex S 425W Black Framed Mono (TSM-DE09R.08) as an example:
(1) If you had 10 Panels @ 425W = 4.25kW array but you are likely only going to see 3.21kW or less.
(2) If you had 15 Panels @ 425W = 6.375kW array but you are likely only going to see 4.815kW or less.
In the first example you would be fine with the Hybrid 3.6 but would have to move up to the Hybrid 5.0 for the second.
You could push the Hybrid 3.6 to 12 panels = 5.052kW as you will likely see 3.852kW or less.
Here is one of the idiosyncrasies of solar PV.
PV Panels like's lots of sun, but they also like to be cold (that's why superconductors are always at -150'C+). Ironically the original blue panels perform slightly better than black ones. But in an industry push they decided that people prefer black as they are less "unsightly".
Batteries however prefer to be like Goldilocks "just the right temp".
Bringing it back to the original post in either case you will once again be limited by the DC to AC Inverter component as previously stated.