Hi,
We recently had a couple of short power cut to the local network (at night). I’m new to PV & our battery, so I’m just wondering should my home have plunged into immediate darkness as it did, or as we were not drawing energy from the grid at the time, should the lights and TV have stayed on (as I expected).
Thanks
When there is a grid cut, inverters must legally turn off to reduce the risk of electrocuting anyone working on the line.
You can have an islanded system, with its own earth and no connection to the grid, which will power things, but this requires dedicated setup.
Your hybrid will have an EPS, but either it has not been wired in or not how it appears you expect.
Depending on your hybrid there is a limit of 2.6 or 3.6kW output and you would need to isolate the grid connection.
My solar is nearly 10 years old, so when I got my battery months ago it was installed with an AC3 coupled inverter (not a hybrid inverter) and EPS (had to pay extra for this to be installed too).
This means that a few seconds after a power-cut, I can have a limited supply coming from my battery, which I've had wired (through a separate fuse box) to my boiler and light circuits. I've had 1 instance of this kicking in so far in 9 months.
I believe there's a knowledge-base article with various options on how to wire things up to allow operation during a power cut. I think they all require an earth rod be fitted. Can either have an isolator switch to switch the whole house over, or run a few critical circuits directly from the inverter, and those will switch over automatically.
Torphins_House they’re active by default but there are different ways of using the EPS connections to power a socket in your house, dedicated circuits or the whole house, with our without a changeover switch.
But no app or reconfiguration needed, just wire the EPS terminals into the circuits you want to protect
Torphins_House As @geoffreycoan says, but do engage a competent electrician to do the work. There has been quite a lot of discussion here about what is suitable for feeding from EPS and also how to protect the premises and the inverter. It's not difficult, but a competent sparkie should make a good job of it.
When we had our solar/battery system installed in Jan, the installer fitted a plug socket next to the battery. So if we had a power cut, we can run and extension lead from there to power a few things (providing there's power in the battery).
Never had to try it so far... should probably test it works.
I think I read on the forum that there was a configuration tweak that GE could do, which would eliminate the several second dropout on EPS when a mains failure occurs. Not sure if it's a thing or not yet, as I haven't got arround to using the EPS.
It would be useful for me, even without that, since my installation is in and on my workshop, which has a sump drain pump that could usefully be powered if someone blows up the local substation.
mrand31 I’ve heard that as well. It says in the EPS manual that there’s a 5 second delay as the EPS switches over. I’m going to get my fusebox split so the main house lights and the ring main that the internet is on are powered by the EPS so would be useful if there was minimal delay.
(The kitchen and our extension is all powered off a separate fusebox so all the high draw appliances are pretty much isolated anyway)
You can ask GE to implement UPS mode.
my ac3 constantly supplies a secondary essentials consumer unit from the EPS output. In a power cut there is no interruption to its supply.
Just a quickie! Anyone know if sorting out EPS has to be done by a GE accredited installer or can any qualified sparks do the work without invalidating the guarantees?
once the system is commissioned I cant see what impact further work could possibly have.
no change is made to the hardware ( apart from UPS setting which is a setting not physical change)
The eps output is part of the hardware and you are just connecting to that.
There is no requirement to notify GE of the eps you have chosen. if any.
Forgive the possible daft question... but what is the EPS and what does it do?
If my power goes out, I have no power to the house at all from the battery. They installed a socket next to the battery that I can run an extension lead from in a power cut to power some lamps or the TV or something if there's battery power. I figure an LED lamp or two and the lounge tv (40" LED) would use up around 200w an hour.
As we're an all electric house aside from heating/hot water... I keep a camping stove and some gas cannisters in the garage for these situations, so I can at least boil a kettle for a cuppa.
Anomnomnomaly eps is emergency power supply
Anomnomnomaly it technically can get turned into a UPS, if you ask GivEnergy support to do so.
By default I think it disconnects from the inverter from the mains and connects the socket directly to the battery within 5 seconds.
Out of curiosity, do a persons PV still charge the battery when there's a power cut, or does that shut down as well.
I think that is what happens with the Gateway. Mains drops, Gateway isolates system from mains but battery powers pv inverter so still get solar production for home and surplus to charge battery.
It depends on what kit.
As above, if you have an AIO it comes with a gateway. An AC connected PV system (aka another inverter, mains connected) can be linked to the gateway - to allow the PV to charge the AIO's batteries even in a powercut. Once the batteries are full and assuming not enough home demand, the AIO will raise the voltage to "slow" the PV down and eventually stop it from outputting (as if the voltage is too high, inverters have to stop producing electric).
If you have a GivEnergy hybrid - they also can charge the battery whilst the mains is down. However if the battery completely empties, I'm not sure if solar the next day can start up the inverter again.
Then if it's just an AC connected GivEnergy ("AC3" for example), with separate AC connected solar inverter, no, that wouldn't charge up during the mains outage. The AC connected inverter would see the grid has gone and it would stop outputting (aka it is grid tied - and follows the grid's frequency).
The battery on the GE AC3 can output to the EPS socket and/or EPS circuit board if those options are taken during install (or at a later install), but PV charging not an option*
( * I think some solar companies may have their own version of the GE gateway that gets around this).