I tried something similar to you with the exact same inverters. I live in the SouthWest and my power company is not very nice if I power my smart meter backward (it just shows negative some number of watts). Lots of folks have net metering contracts here but I don't and don't intend to. What I did is study my daily power consumption by the hour which I can do as my power company provides it back to 12 months prior. I then sized my panels to about 600Watts each max for each of the two inverters. My wife and I went back and forth to our meter many times and charted about when our panels/inverters would cause the meter to go negative and by how much. I then purchased at a thrift shop two sets of old photo lights (figuring they could handle lots of current). We removed the photo lights and experimented with different bulb combinations until we could snap them on and have the meter stay about 20watts positive at the time of most solar power (I am oversimplifying this for the purpose of explaining). We then put simple "Christmas Tree" timers on each set of photo lights (each adjusted to the leg they were on, one on each leg each to one inverter) and put them in a safe place in our basement. They came on just prior to when our panels were peeking and would otherwise cause our meter to go negative. We were not wasting electricity as it was our panels creating the power. Anyway, we ran the house electrical that way (propane for heat and cooking) for just over a year. We reduced our electric bill by 2/3!!! It was hands-off and trouble-free. Almost like having a closed-loop system like I think you are creating. After over a year of trouble-free use of the inexpensive inverters and timered-on light loads, we purchased three of these: "www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001873876697.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.21ef1802i0ZeaK" which if I understand what you are engineering, do all that in one box. Our electrical bill prior to the inexpensive inverters and timered-on lights load was around $275.00 on average (I have the most expensive electricity in the nation. Guess where I live!). It dropped to about $92.00. After running just two of the blue boxes (link) with one on each leg and adding 600 more watts of panels (because now they are in closed-loop control), our electric bill has dropped to around $32.00 on average. The blue boxes control down to zero or just over zero (7)watts. The blue boxes have software that allows them to be run off batteries so we are experimenting with setting the internal limiter (with easy software-selectable scroll bars) to put a continuous max of 100watts into our home at night to offset the grid demand. There is a way to do it but we have not figured it out to just use the charge controller in the blue box, but for ease of our simple understanding, we are using a separate charge controller to charge the batteries during the day with their own additional panels. We have a Christmas tree timer on the blue box supplying power at night with the batteries (on the leg of highest demand) that turns it on when our solar cuts off in the evening, and back off in the morning before the solar kicks in. With this conservative setting (100Watts), we appear to be consistently reducing our evening consumption by 1 kiloWatt (which where we live is expensive for just one). The battery-supplied power offset has only been running for a couple months. I will get back to you as we learn more. We are NOT using the CT which would allow us to offset down to about 5Watts as our panel has metal bus bars and not wire so no more room for the additional CTs on the high-demand leg of the panel. That is why we are using the software to limit the power to 100Watts. During the day, the two blue boxes bring the meter down to between 0.000kW to 0.007kW (only 7 watts!). It has never gone negative even after a heavy load like the microwave turns off.
Wow, you've done some experimenting there. I looked at those Limiting Grid Tie Inverters, and was thinking about getting a pair. Cost for the 2 would have been about $700-$800, as I would need the larger CTs for 200 amp service. My project is mainly for back-up, and the grid ties are for fun. I may in the future get one or two of the blue boxes to play with. Cost for electric here is not an issue. Only the worst months go over $200, and we have an all electric house. Now for us to go 2 months without losing power for at least 4 hours is a good however. Keep up the good work.
@@kc79ta Got it! Yep, the one negative with our system is that if the grid goes down, our blue boxes (and the same ones you have) turn off within a few milliseconds to protect line workers. I am looking to see if a simple sine wave function generator could be fed to my panel (with the main breaker off) to trick the Grid Tie blue boxes to staying on once we turn off the main breaker and introduce the sine wave. I'm a mechanical guy so I have to go slow and safe to make sure I do no harm as I know so little about electircal.
@@benkanobe7500 Be careful trying to cheat these grid ties. Unless you can come up with away to use your limiter. Leaving the CTs on the mains won't work as no power will be going through them with the main breaker off. Problem being, if the load in your house dropped below the output of the inverters voltage spikes and burns them up. There are some videos out there showing this. I'm sure there are ways, I just have not looked into them to much. My Growatt will be for back-up.
@@kc79ta Thanks. I decided (after I sent the above) I can just use the software and select the Watts I want the GTIL to contribute. So the CTs will not be involved. It doesn't know if it is Solar or battery providing the power. I just need to design a function generator to create a pure sign wave as that is what the blue boxes trigger "on/off" from. My panel is 200amp typical split-phase and if it had wire like most (they are there on the grid side of the meter) instead of bus bars the white CTs that come with the GTIL will fit nicely over the wire. I obviously cannot put them on the grid's side of the meter or the power company would freak, so they are around each leg where I just barely have enough room for them over the bus bar at the top of the panel. The GTILs can be stacked as many as you can fit CTs on each leg of your panel with excellent results. There is a TH-cam of a guy from years ago that has I think four on each leg (1000Watt models like mine, not the 2000watt model). Thanks for all the info!
Nice show! I've been running one of these little 1300w inverters for a couple of years. Trying to max it out now that I have new panels but so far it seems I'm only getting around 850w from the panels so I might hook up one more panel and see what happens. The most I've seen going into the grid was a little over six amps. My new 6kw growatt was shipped today so I might not end up messing with this little one anymore. What a deal on this new growatt grid-tie inverter plus they're 98% efficient and seem to be up there with the best quality brands. My ec hasn't bothered me about about turning my meter backwards but I'm a little concerned about maxing out this new one till I can figure out all the code rules and get everything right so I'll probably just hook up a few panels for a while and see how it goes
please use TWO ct's one at high level say 12 amps to LATCH relay on! use second ct set at low level say 2 amps to UNLATCH relay Grid tie will remain on and feed more power then you can set any SPAN you need, narrow or wide! Thanks Fred Goff
I don't know how much room you have to play, but if the switch works reliably at 5A, perhaps you can physically loop the breaker feed wire twice through the CT to increase the pot setting you need to activate the switch at 5A. Maybe that's the low side limitation. This would probably work on your analog CT as well with the expectation that 2 loops is 1/2 the actual current.
I was trying to set a high/low point so I would be able to place it on the main feeds to the house. This way the analog CT could detect a 10 amp rise (say when both fridge and freezer are running plus the normal things) kick in the inverter on that leg, and let it supply 6-7 amps without short cycling. I placed the relay CT's on larger loads (heat pump/water heater), so I really don't need to go below 5 amps on the CT. I was testing them lower just for the info. I may try looping the wire for testing purposes. I am now looking at the fridge/freezer circuit as we have a fridge and 2 freezers. Unfortunately the washing machine is on that same circuit, and they have frequent current rise/fall. could be the same as short cycling, but I will be checking.
Hi,thanks for share. i drawing schematic share will be helpful for me.I have 3 grid tie inverters and this is what i want to do for my solar. I have an 4 kw hybrid inverter that i want to be "helped " with grid inverters. My house is off grid and when the load on hybrid inverter exceed 10A at 230v then the grid tie inverters to start and help the hybrid inverter. i allready ordered that curent switch that i want to command the 230v contactor coil.cheers
Without seeing your complete schematic. I think your back feeding the same CRKT that your CT seems to be monitoring. If your monitor one CRKT and then back feed on its own CRKT but same leg the load on the monitored CRKT will stay constant at a mix of grid and inverter. When the load is removed from the monitored CT CRKT then it would shut off. I just happened to come across your videos today. I have been collecting parts for a very similar set up but I am going to be switching the DC side from a battery when the battery is at 14.2V plus when the load is greater the 12amps (And Gate set up with a V monitor in series with the CT) and back feed on a different CRKT on on the same leg. You can email me at my channel if you would like to talk. Have a great day.
I’m trying to make sort of the same circuit but I don’t really understand what you mean, if you grid tie for example phase number 1 where should you put the current meter? It will always be in the circuit of phase number 1 right? I think I should look for a current meter that only measures current in one way if that even exists…
I tried something similar to you with the exact same inverters. I live in the SouthWest and my power company is not very nice if I power my smart meter backward (it just shows negative some number of watts). Lots of folks have net metering contracts here but I don't and don't intend to. What I did is study my daily power consumption by the hour which I can do as my power company provides it back to 12 months prior. I then sized my panels to about 600Watts each max for each of the two inverters. My wife and I went back and forth to our meter many times and charted about when our panels/inverters would cause the meter to go negative and by how much. I then purchased at a thrift shop two sets of old photo lights (figuring they could handle lots of current). We removed the photo lights and experimented with different bulb combinations until we could snap them on and have the meter stay about 20watts positive at the time of most solar power (I am oversimplifying this for the purpose of explaining). We then put simple "Christmas Tree" timers on each set of photo lights (each adjusted to the leg they were on, one on each leg each to one inverter) and put them in a safe place in our basement. They came on just prior to when our panels were peeking and would otherwise cause our meter to go negative. We were not wasting electricity as it was our panels creating the power. Anyway, we ran the house electrical that way (propane for heat and cooking) for just over a year. We reduced our electric bill by 2/3!!! It was hands-off and trouble-free. Almost like having a closed-loop system like I think you are creating.
After over a year of trouble-free use of the inexpensive inverters and timered-on light loads, we purchased three of these: "www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001873876697.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.21ef1802i0ZeaK" which if I understand what you are engineering, do all that in one box. Our electrical bill prior to the inexpensive inverters and timered-on lights load was around $275.00 on average (I have the most expensive electricity in the nation. Guess where I live!). It dropped to about $92.00. After running just two of the blue boxes (link) with one on each leg and adding 600 more watts of panels (because now they are in closed-loop control), our electric bill has dropped to around $32.00 on average. The blue boxes control down to zero or just over zero (7)watts.
The blue boxes have software that allows them to be run off batteries so we are experimenting with setting the internal limiter (with easy software-selectable scroll bars) to put a continuous max of 100watts into our home at night to offset the grid demand. There is a way to do it but we have not figured it out to just use the charge controller in the blue box, but for ease of our simple understanding, we are using a separate charge controller to charge the batteries during the day with their own additional panels. We have a Christmas tree timer on the blue box supplying power at night with the batteries (on the leg of highest demand) that turns it on when our solar cuts off in the evening, and back off in the morning before the solar kicks in. With this conservative setting (100Watts), we appear to be consistently reducing our evening consumption by 1 kiloWatt (which where we live is expensive for just one). The battery-supplied power offset has only been running for a couple months. I will get back to you as we learn more. We are NOT using the CT which would allow us to offset down to about 5Watts as our panel has metal bus bars and not wire so no more room for the additional CTs on the high-demand leg of the panel. That is why we are using the software to limit the power to 100Watts. During the day, the two blue boxes bring the meter down to between 0.000kW to 0.007kW (only 7 watts!). It has never gone negative even after a heavy load like the microwave turns off.
Wow, you've done some experimenting there. I looked at those Limiting Grid Tie Inverters, and was thinking about getting a pair. Cost for the 2 would have been about $700-$800, as I would need the larger CTs for 200 amp service. My project is mainly for back-up, and the grid ties are for fun. I may in the future get one or two of the blue boxes to play with. Cost for electric here is not an issue. Only the worst months go over $200, and we have an all electric house. Now for us to go 2 months without losing power for at least 4 hours is a good however. Keep up the good work.
@@kc79ta Got it! Yep, the one negative with our system is that if the grid goes down, our blue boxes (and the same ones you have) turn off within a few milliseconds to protect line workers. I am looking to see if a simple sine wave function generator could be fed to my panel (with the main breaker off) to trick the Grid Tie blue boxes to staying on once we turn off the main breaker and introduce the sine wave. I'm a mechanical guy so I have to go slow and safe to make sure I do no harm as I know so little about electircal.
@@benkanobe7500 Be careful trying to cheat these grid ties. Unless you can come up with away to use your limiter. Leaving the CTs on the mains won't work as no power will be going through them with the main breaker off. Problem being, if the load in your house dropped below the output of the inverters voltage spikes and burns them up. There are some videos out there showing this. I'm sure there are ways, I just have not looked into them to much. My Growatt will be for back-up.
@@kc79ta Thanks. I decided (after I sent the above) I can just use the software and select the Watts I want the GTIL to contribute. So the CTs will not be involved. It doesn't know if it is Solar or battery providing the power. I just need to design a function generator to create a pure sign wave as that is what the blue boxes trigger "on/off" from. My panel is 200amp typical split-phase and if it had wire like most (they are there on the grid side of the meter) instead of bus bars the white CTs that come with the GTIL will fit nicely over the wire. I obviously cannot put them on the grid's side of the meter or the power company would freak, so they are around each leg where I just barely have enough room for them over the bus bar at the top of the panel. The GTILs can be stacked as many as you can fit CTs on each leg of your panel with excellent results. There is a TH-cam of a guy from years ago that has I think four on each leg (1000Watt models like mine, not the 2000watt model). Thanks for all the info!
HOWdy KC,
Home-Made Grid-Tie LIMITER
Thanks
COOP
...
Nice show! I've been running one of these little 1300w inverters for a couple of years. Trying to max it out now that I have new panels but so far it seems I'm only getting around 850w from the panels so I might hook up one more panel and see what happens. The most I've seen going into the grid was a little over six amps. My new 6kw growatt was shipped today so I might not end up messing with this little one anymore. What a deal on this new growatt grid-tie inverter plus they're 98% efficient and seem to be up there with the best quality brands. My ec hasn't bothered me about about turning my meter backwards but I'm a little concerned about maxing out this new one till I can figure out all the code rules and get everything right so I'll probably just hook up a few panels for a while and see how it goes
they sell grid tie inverters that have a no export mode with a CT to monitor your loads for you
some growatt models can also do it
please use TWO ct's one at high level say 12 amps to LATCH relay on!
use second ct set at low level say 2 amps to UNLATCH relay
Grid tie will remain on and feed more power
then you can set any SPAN you need, narrow or wide!
Thanks Fred Goff
I don't know how much room you have to play, but if the switch works reliably at 5A, perhaps you can physically loop the breaker feed wire twice through the CT to increase the pot setting you need to activate the switch at 5A. Maybe that's the low side limitation. This would probably work on your analog CT as well with the expectation that 2 loops is 1/2 the actual current.
I was trying to set a high/low point so I would be able to place it on the main feeds to the house. This way the analog CT could detect a 10 amp rise (say when both fridge and freezer are running plus the normal things) kick in the inverter on that leg, and let it supply 6-7 amps without short cycling.
I placed the relay CT's on larger loads (heat pump/water heater), so I really don't need to go below 5 amps on the CT. I was testing them lower just for the info. I may try looping the wire for testing purposes. I am now looking at the fridge/freezer circuit as we have a fridge and 2 freezers. Unfortunately the washing machine is on that same circuit, and they have frequent current rise/fall. could be the same as short cycling, but I will be checking.
My thoughts exactly. It would cause the ct to read 2x the actual current. If the ct were set for 5A cutoff, actual current would be 2.5A.
i use this ct relay to turn my charger on and off, that ct measures my grid tie inverter
Hi,thanks for share. i drawing schematic share will be helpful for me.I have 3 grid tie inverters and this is what i want to do for my solar. I have an 4 kw hybrid inverter that i want to be "helped " with grid inverters. My house is off grid and when the load on hybrid inverter exceed 10A at 230v then the grid tie inverters to start and help the hybrid inverter. i allready ordered that curent switch that i want to command the 230v contactor coil.cheers
Without seeing your complete schematic. I think your back feeding the same CRKT that your CT seems to be monitoring. If your monitor one CRKT and then back feed on its own CRKT but same leg the load on the monitored CRKT will stay constant at a mix of grid and inverter. When the load is removed from the monitored CT CRKT then it would shut off. I just happened to come across your videos today. I have been collecting parts for a very similar set up but I am going to be switching the DC side from a battery when the battery is at 14.2V plus when the load is greater the 12amps (And Gate set up with a V monitor in series with the CT) and back feed on a different CRKT on on the same leg. You can email me at my channel if you would like to talk. Have a great day.
I’m trying to make sort of the same circuit but I don’t really understand what you mean, if you grid tie for example phase number 1 where should you put the current meter? It will always be in the circuit of phase number 1 right? I think I should look for a current meter that only measures current in one way if that even exists…
@@teammouse That was a long time ago. I will have to try to watch that video again to get some context.