Good morning daily

[supersparky]

Good afternoon All.
I have been having instances with our house solar system in that the output very frequently drops to zero and today I noticed that the mains supply reached 259V which causes the inverter to shut down until the mains reduces.

This graph shows what is currently happening today, bright and sunny. https://server-au.growatt.com/index

George

George, you will need to complain to your energy provider. It won't just be yours that's shut down. That's one of the reasons there is a push to install solar batteries, to stabilise network voltage fluctuations. Inverters are supposed to be clipped to 255v Max, but that's obviously not the case down your way.

[T1 Terry]

They all cheat, even the energy providers, by tapping the transformer well above the 230vac that everyone claims is the network standard ..... even here at the end of an extension cord the mains is at 255vac, so what ever it is at the actual transformer must be higher than that ......

The cheat is to use the over voltage on the mains and all the solar and put it into a very big battery, then sell it back via one of the energy providers that bid in the peak hr pricing and sell back what you stored ...... then use the cheap night time rate to recover what you used out of the battery ......

As I keep saying, the cheapest big battery you'll find anywhere, is in a salvage EV .... well, until the rest of Australia wakes up to it, then there will be an industry that buys the insurance EV's and parts them out, including the battery as a stand alone power storage device .......

Too old to get into that sort of thing now, but if I was in my 50's or even 60's, all my super would be invested in that sort of a business, getting it established and then watch the $$ roll in

T1 Terry

[supersparky]

Currently, that technology is only legal in SA. There would need to be a change of legislation in the rest of Aust to allow that to happen, without insurance problems.
Personally, I hope that the powers that be, change that legislation on a national basis, and soon. But I doubt if its high enough on the gubments list of things to do, at the moment.

[Dot]

Good arvo everyone

[T1 Terry]

Currently, that technology is only legal in SA. There would need to be a change of legislation in the rest of Aust to allow that to happen, without insurance problems.
Personally, I hope that the powers that be, change that legislation on a national basis, and soon. But I doubt if its high enough on the gubments list of things to do, at the moment.

It would be a matter of a legal battle if they could actually stop anyone from doing it.
The moment they sold off the poles and wires and the power generation companies, then the actual energy resellers, the govt can't actually stop anyone from doing it. No govt is allowed to publicly back a private enterprise ..... and backing a legal challenge against anyone actually doing that, would put the govt in the cross hairs .... no matter what colour flag they fly .....

As long as the electrickery is connected legally for return power to the grid, they can deny a govt subsidy for the cost of the battery, but they can't deny anyone the right to plug in an EV .... or which way the power if flowing .....

T1 Terry

[BruceS]

Terry the SA Gov never sold off the "poles & wires". That is the only part that is still in Gov hands.
It's called Power Networks.
I have no idea of regulation in Qld, SA or elsewhere but in the place I am now at, when the solar was installed & connected to the grid, an external connection was installed for INPUT (genny or whatever) but a manual changeover switch was installed as well.
Basically to hook up a genny, the grid gets disconnected. I'm pretty sure an automatic changeover is available ?? Dave?

[supersparky]

Bruce, auto changeover systems have been available for years. Power goes out, system waits a short while, typically 30 secs then starts the generator. Once the genset is running and is producing a stable voltage the auto change over switch closes off, and things like lighting and fridges and freezers automatically resume normal operation. In most systems, once the normal supply has returned, the auto changeover opens, and then closes onto the normal supply. It works the same on single or three phase systems.
A manual changeover is certainly a lot cheaper, but it relies on human intervention.

Terry, I have no idea what you are on about. All I stated was, that at present V2G systems were not approved except in SA.
AS 4777 was updated last year, but most of the necessary changes to the various State legislation has not yet been implemented.
But seriously, why would someone sell power to the networks at the piddly feed in rate, like the 3.7c/kW that they offer here and buy it back to recharge their own battery at between 19c/kW and 31c/kW.
Bi-directional chargers are still a little bit expensive here.
I don't know why they don't setup all those power walls to have 5 banks of 48v cells and use either 48v dc chargers with some clever BMS or a 220v to 240v transformer to recharge them.
That way, all the EV's that presently only output at 220v could be grid connected. Except for some of the early ones and maybe all the Tesla's that output at 60hz. They would require input to a inverter of some description.
I believe the gubment should spend a little bit more time trying to solve our energy issues if they continue down the No More Coal route, rather than try to play world politics.

Maybe we could put this on a separate thread, because it really isn't a good morning topic.
Sorry Bernie, I know that you'll say TL:DR, and I don't blame you.
It's probably the longest post I've ever posted.

[Dot]

Bruce would you please do the honors and make another thread as David suggested for the electrical /solar posts here Thanks.

[T1 Terry]

Bruce, auto changeover systems have been available for years. Power goes out, system waits a short while, typically 30 secs then starts the generator. Once the genset is running and is producing a stable voltage the auto change over switch closes off, and things like lighting and fridges and freezers automatically resume normal operation. In most systems, once the normal supply has returned, the auto changeover opens, and then closes onto the normal supply. It works the same on single or three phase systems.
A manual changeover is certainly a lot cheaper, but it relies on human intervention.

Terry, I have no idea what you are on about. All I stated was, that at present V2G systems were not approved except in SA.
AS 4777 was updated last year, but most of the necessary changes to the various State legislation has not yet been implemented.
But seriously, why would someone sell power to the networks at the piddly feed in rate, like the 3.7c/kW that they offer here and buy it back to recharge their own battery at between 19c/kW and 31c/kW.
Bi-directional chargers are still a little bit expensive here.
I don't know why they don't setup all those power walls to have 5 banks of 48v cells and use either 48v dc chargers with some clever BMS or a 220v to 240v transformer to recharge them.
That way, all the EV's that presently only output at 220v could be grid connected. Except for some of the early ones and maybe all the Tesla's that output at 60hz. They would require input to a inverter of some description.
I believe the gubment should spend a little bit more time trying to solve our energy issues if they continue down the No More Coal route, rather than try to play world politics.

Maybe we could put this on a separate thread, because it really isn't a good morning topic.
Sorry Bernie, I know that you'll say TL:DR, and I don't blame you.
It's probably the longest post I've ever posted.

Victron inverters switch so fast they are much like an uninterruptable power supply, but they take up to 3 mins to switch back to the mains, during that time, the inverter is checking the voltage, wave formation and frequency to determine if the supply is stable ..... this is why Victron inverters will not accept a lot of generators, Onan is one of the more expensive ones that still produce poor frequency control so the Victron inverter will not accept them as a stable supply.

What I was talking about Dave, was using the stored power in the EV to feed into the solar grid tie inverter when the company you are using can get you the best price per kwh.

No one is forced to sell back to the grid at the rate the service providers offer, here is an example https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewa ... eighbours/ but there are other energy trading companies that will pay you for your export power at a premium rate when the demand is high enough to make money for all involved.

V2G is very new and I don't know a lot about it. There was a talk at one of the AEVA meetings regarding this but I didn't attend that meeting ..... but there could be a You Tube video of it ..... I'll check later .... if I remember.

The way around the V2G problem is getting a small solar battery system installed, then charging to the small battery via the EV V2L method and selling when the price is better than during the day when solar is worth very little.

SA are actually way ahead of the other states by offering very cheap or even paying consumers to store excess grid power and buying it back during peak periods at a good rate .... again, I haven't looked very far into this either, because I have no plans of ever connecting to the grid again ....

T1 Terry

[supersparky]

Terry, the biggest problem is that most of our present crop of EV's only output around 220v and some of them are 60Hz anyway. The main reason that Bi-directional chargers are so expensive is they have to step that up to what the grid voltage is, otherwise it won't push in. Some of those 220v EV's only have a switch mode power supply , which is really only a centre tapped 110v inverter. That's why RCD's don't work on them and you have to use an RVD if you want any circuit protection that will work. One day maybe, the demand for EV's with V2G capability will increase to a sufficient level that the vehicle manufacturers will install equipment in them that will satisfy our national grid requirements instead of building them to suit just the Chinese or US market.