Hi all,
Have a 5kw with 8kw of solar and 2 X 9.5kwh of batteries.
Can see already I'm a) wasting a lot of solar generation as going past 2.6kw of generation and b) wasting battery capacity as inverter can't charge enough battery in the 4hr Octopus cheap window.
I've seen a few mentions of Givenergy working on a solution to allow two hybrid inverters to work properly together.
Does anyone have any details of this? It'd be a great improvement - otherwise Givenergy remains limited to smaller panel efficiency.
alphabeta77 this is kind of a problem as on a cold but sunny day you might get nearly 9kw of solar production (assuming south facing) and you will only ever be able to send 2.6 to battery and 5kw to the grid. If the batteries are full them only 5kw can be used.
With energy the price it is being able to export more would be very useful, however as you have cheap overnight electric then Octopus outgoing agile is not available. I would maybe consider abandoning the cheap overnight tariff next summer and going Outgoing agile as you have so much solar!
#4hoggy
It's a tough line to tread, I guess it's down to cost and perhaps the fact that GE are new and probably don't want to push the hardware too hard until they get a feel for reliability. The Gen1 stuff is now a pretty old design (traced back to 2018 and perhaps even well before that if you dig further into related designs)
That said the Gen 2 stuff did feel a bit underwhelming - I had assumed they would atleast aim to top out the bigger batteries at 80A charge rates but then we ended up with 3.6 not 4+.
I couldn't wait (dual Hybrid plants were a big no no and Gen 2 didn't exist back then) so went my own way to push 5kW in/out through a single Hybrid (which I guess GE could easily mimic) but is probably more trouble than it's worth. Is handy for ramming 5kW into batteries from Solar though.
A
#5alphabeta77
Yes exactly my challenge - although given I've got one hybrid (Leaf @24kwh) and a Tesla Model Y (75kwh) on order, I guess that means I'll have 124kwh of batteries needing kept topped up each day, so it's likely less about maximising return on exports and more about maximising battery flow!
This is why I was interested in the dual inverter tech I'd seen mentioned in a few places.
I could obviously just replace for competitor 8kw as you describe if Givenergy are not moving quick enough - I just saw a few posts on facebook groups and the like talking about before Christmas as a rough/non-committed goal....
Any reason you wouldn't want dual inverters (ie long term rather than they aren't designed to do so yet!)
T
#6Tim
alphabeta77 We've had dual HY5 gen 1 in since the end of January. Each HY5 has 6kWp PV and an 8.2kWh battery. They have been playing very nicely ever since. We have charged our EV purely from PV since March and have an EV tariff for the car and the house batteries over winter. Our tariff gives us a 5 hour window which is more than enough to charge the EV and each battery. We were fortunate enough to have a South facing roof large to take 32 panels and a supplier who actually did have kit in his store, when we decided to jump on the bandwagon.
A
#7alphabeta77
Tim really interesting Tim - any reason that Givenergy say it can't be done??
T
#8Tim
alphabeta77 I think they have had real difficulties with their AC3s working as a plant since they are connected over Modbus with one as master and the other(s) as slave devices. My HY5s are connected to the same 240Vac "solar" consumer unit but otherwise know nothing of each other. I guess that the two EM115s are well matched in calibration terms and so each inverter responds to the same inputs and just match their output to whatever is supplied/demanded. The battery SoC for each system is usually within 3-7% and rarely more than 10% different. I may be a quiet minority of customers whose plant just works. There may be others whose systems also work, but those whose systems don't work well are justifiably very vocal about the controls being less than ideal. Given this, I'm assuming Givenergy prefer to advise not to install multi-inverter systems, to recommending such configurations and then being slated for them not working well.