I recently turned on my Tesla-installed solar system. It's got 30 Panasonic 325w panels for a total system size of 9.75Kw. Of course, my total purchase price is a measure of the total watts produced...
So I was upset when I flipped through the screens of my SolarEdge HD Wave inverter to see that it has a setting called 'PWR Limit' with a value of 7.6Kw (about 20% less than my total system's potential output). It seems this is a setting in the inverter to limit the total output of the system, even if my panels are generating more energy at any given moment.
One Tesla support rep told me they intentionally set this limit below the total system output level to increase longevity of the system. I haven't been able to find any discussion about this, and when I mentioned this to someone else at Tesla (a solar project manager), she had never heard such a thing. I dug in and found some documentation for the inverter which mentions the PWR Limit feature:
Page 51 - https://www.solaredge.com/sites/default/files/se_hd_wave_inverter_installation_guide_na.pdf
... which links to:
Page 5 - https://www.solaredge.com/sites/default/files/application_note_power_control_configuration.pdf
I realize this would only impact production at peak production times, so overall production wouldn't be drastically different if there wasn't this artificial limit, but if this capping isn't actually necessary, I could get the same output from a system with the same physical footprint and lower output per panel... 30 260w panels, for example.
I'm not an electrical engineer, so I'm sure there are some pieces of the calculation that I'm not factoring in, but the bottom line is that I paid for a 9.75Kw system, and the current setup prevents me from producing any more than a 7.6Kw system (as far as I know).
Does anyone know if this is standard practice? Should I be upset about this, or is Tesla doing the right thing here? Does anyone else have a similar setup installed by Tesla with such a cap in place?
Thanks in advance for any insight.
So I was upset when I flipped through the screens of my SolarEdge HD Wave inverter to see that it has a setting called 'PWR Limit' with a value of 7.6Kw (about 20% less than my total system's potential output). It seems this is a setting in the inverter to limit the total output of the system, even if my panels are generating more energy at any given moment.
One Tesla support rep told me they intentionally set this limit below the total system output level to increase longevity of the system. I haven't been able to find any discussion about this, and when I mentioned this to someone else at Tesla (a solar project manager), she had never heard such a thing. I dug in and found some documentation for the inverter which mentions the PWR Limit feature:
Page 51 - https://www.solaredge.com/sites/default/files/se_hd_wave_inverter_installation_guide_na.pdf
... which links to:
Page 5 - https://www.solaredge.com/sites/default/files/application_note_power_control_configuration.pdf
I realize this would only impact production at peak production times, so overall production wouldn't be drastically different if there wasn't this artificial limit, but if this capping isn't actually necessary, I could get the same output from a system with the same physical footprint and lower output per panel... 30 260w panels, for example.
I'm not an electrical engineer, so I'm sure there are some pieces of the calculation that I'm not factoring in, but the bottom line is that I paid for a 9.75Kw system, and the current setup prevents me from producing any more than a 7.6Kw system (as far as I know).
Does anyone know if this is standard practice? Should I be upset about this, or is Tesla doing the right thing here? Does anyone else have a similar setup installed by Tesla with such a cap in place?
Thanks in advance for any insight.