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Will SolarCity H6 work in a rogue off-grid setup?
- Thread starter CoinHead
- Start date
Short answer from me on this is I HOPE SO!
6kW in PV ready to go, building my own LiPo HV PowerWall clone with 200A discharge capacity cells and just need to add CAN communications to work with the H6 I bought.
If you don’t know how or your Bat Bank doesn’t have this, like a Prius battery, it might not work, though.
I’ll know more once I finish my quarter-power test tomorrow.
(I guess it IS tomorrow NOW!) So later TODAY.
I’m a HW/SW Engineer, semi-retired, so I DO know HOW... I think. We will see, if it’s necessary and if it works once I add CAN, if needed.
Good Luck to all off us trying to get an H6 to work in our respective projects.
QaPla!
6kW in PV ready to go, building my own LiPo HV PowerWall clone with 200A discharge capacity cells and just need to add CAN communications to work with the H6 I bought.
If you don’t know how or your Bat Bank doesn’t have this, like a Prius battery, it might not work, though.
I’ll know more once I finish my quarter-power test tomorrow.
(I guess it IS tomorrow NOW!) So later TODAY.
I’m a HW/SW Engineer, semi-retired, so I DO know HOW... I think. We will see, if it’s necessary and if it works once I add CAN, if needed.
Good Luck to all off us trying to get an H6 to work in our respective projects.
QaPla!
Well it's not really working that well with the H6 butt the Prius works great with the midnight classic charge controller on my 48 volt system. And when I say great I mean as long as I'm not using more than the charge controller can produce there's no problem. I set up a custom wind chart for it to follow. But as soon as it goes to bulk mode because the demand is higher than the charge controller can produce then the charge controller will kick off and on cycling. most of the time this cycling is enough to bring it back up once the load is removed but sometimes I have to reduce the voltage output in the charger settings so that it more closely matches the battery voltage and goes back to absorb. Then I can raise voltage setpoint a little at a time over the next 10 seconds and it does fine. Pretty but it doesn't cycle at all because I know that at night when I'm running off the Prius I shouldn't use more than 2500 watts. I've been doing it now for 6 months 16 hours every night. Soon I'll have my lithium batteries home and set up and I won't be running the Prius anymore but dang it sure has been a nice quiet powerful generator. And one gallon for 16 hours has been amazing compared to the 2 gallons the little Honda 2k inverter generator needed.
With the H6 it seems to me that it wouldn't be able to do any mppt sweep because as it put a load on the source it would max itself out before it found the maximum power point. Makes sense to me it should just stay there sucking 6000 Watts out of the Prius happily. But then there's that dang arc fault shut down. Can't I just take a pair of pliers to the arc fault detection circuit and break it off the board?
I'm really interested if this works out that you are able to charge your 160V Lipo battery bank with the H6. The specs say it needs 400V+ DC batteries, which I guess is what the PW had. If you do get it to work in charging your 160V battery, that would be awesome!
I hope you mean LiFeP04 or some other chemistry other than Lipo. Those are the cells used by RC hobbyists and they charge them in fire proof bags and discharge them when they get home because they are so volitile even when not used.
hi friend i am new here, i buy this inverter h6 solarcity and try to put net meter on my country but need paper or letter of the warranty and the person sell this not have that (signature solar) only appear info warranty is on manual and that is not sufficient...any person put net meter with this h6 inverter?
Another newbie here. Is anyone else considering building battery packs for these inverters, and what's your experience with / thoughts on it? I've found some 15AH 40152 LiFePO4 cells that look potentially promising, as I'm pretty sure that I could get 40 of them into a standard 2U rack chassis. In straight series, that works out to 7.68 kWh in 8U of rack space, at 512v. I know an Orion BMS can handle the 160 cells, does anyone know if its CAN bus would allow it to work with the H6?
I have an Orion BMS and an Outback Skybox. Both have CANBUS, but it is not plug and play. It takes more than my simple scripting skills.
I got the inverter working off grid. I've been using it now for over a month to power my house. And prior to that I had it working 2 months on a test bench. It required lots of research and actual hardware modifications but now that I've got it figured out for the price this is the most Kick-Ass off grid inverter you can get. If anybody wants a modified unit let me know I'll be putting some on the market soon.
Yes. I know my wiring is a mess right now. There's remanence of two past systems still there on the wall. I'm confident enough now to remove all of the old components so I'll be cleaning it up soon.
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I did feed 350 kilowatt-hours to the grid during testing. it worked quite well except whenever I connected the batteries it would send all the battery power to the grid as well. It seemed very eager to send the power to the grid with no user control on how much you sent at what time. As long as they're solar or battery available it takes the power and gives it to the grid.
When using with a homemade lithium battery completely off grid Without hardware modification this inverter will not work at night.
I am using several of these to run daytime only air-conditioning. What sort of hardware mods do you have to do for night/battery ops?
Coinhead/Tinman All;
I have had a H6 for about 6months now. I got it to replace a dead aroura inverter on a Solar grid tied application at residence. SO far so good its doing well. But at first it did not. I installed it right where the old inverter was and it worked for a day or so and then a ARC fault error would occur shutting it down. I was unfamiliar with AFI so I looked into it. Basically it senses RFI on the DC lines that occurs when a small arc occurs. Since a pure DC line should have very low AC component , when there is a sizable AC component ( RFI) it trips the AFI ). Well I was not happy , after all the old inverter was quite happy with my solar panel string circuit, but not the H6. But the old aroura did not have AFI. SO I went to the panel array, its ground mount thankfully, and opened every panel connector(MC4) , WD40 it, reseated it. Fired up the system worked fine. For about a week. Then the AFI tripped again. I knew then that the industry standard solar panel connectors MC4 were junk ( I never liked them) . So out came the wire cutters , I cut out every one of those connectors and replaced with a large wire nut. Yeah I know cheesy. I put vasiline on the wires. SO for 6 months now NO AFI trips. Lesson: you need PERFECT connections on the panel DC input OR a AFI will occur. Forget compression/crimp, oxidation will get it , then a small arc , then AFI. I will replace ALL the wire nuts with SOLDERED LUGS and a stainless nut/bolt compression to connect the lugs. I have them , but need to find the time get out there with solder gun and install all those lugs. ( I live near the coast and corrosion is a real issue here. ALL crimp connectors eventually give problems here unless sealed from air. LESSON: SOLDER Stuff! Dont use Pure Tin Solder either! LEAD/TIn is best , most stable...yeah I know LEAD..oh well)
Coinhead: As for clipping out the AFI circuit, I considered that , but it was not in the wire service compartment of the H6. Its inside the big sealed area , which has a warranty seal on it. ( the AFI circuits I researched showed a pickup coil of some sort) I did not want to destroy the seal so i did not open it up. As for using an inductor , that might help. As for putting a diode in reverse in parallel with inductor to absorb back emf, yes thats an old trick. The diode, if rated high enough will not blow as the AVERAGE power it sees is very low ( typically). Capacitor to ground, then inductor, then capacitor to ground is classic PI filter used to suppress RFI in Rf circuits and else where. The design challenge here is the Inductor must pass the high DC current ( not over heat) AND not saturate ( hits its magnetic field limit)? The caps are a bit easier ...need to handle the voltage, but capacitance is issue? Perhaps a large value in parallel with smaller one? Big one knocks down low freq RFI , small one high freq RFI.
I have a 2KVA variac transformer. WIth a full wave diode bridge&filter caps I can make a high power variable DC supply. Thinking about getting another H6 and setting it up on the bench , then use variac DC to standin for PV array and seeing if I can investigate 240AC protected load output of H6. With the variac I can start with Low DC volt and slowly crank up the DC , sorta mimicking what a live PV would do. A word here on MPPT and non Panel type DC input: A variac type DC supply, as i discussed here has a MPPT for any given setting of the VARIAC. This is due to saturation in the transformer which limits AC current. This same effect is how my old transformer based Lincoln ARC welder works. You set a TAP point on the front selector. Each tap point has a saturation point. When u start welding the saturation occurs limiting the current. If there was not saturation , you would BLOW the breaker as current from line would explode in magnitude. Clever and simple, bullit proof , last for decades. In short all real world power sources have some sort of internal resistance, which is essentially defining the MPPT for that source. PV arrays typ have high effective internal resistance, battery packs very low. A cheesy , inefficient way to increase a battery packs internal resistance is a small series resistance between battery and load, in this case the H6 DC panel input. Yeah , I know resistance , is bad, ineffieicent , etc, but a small amount might help H6 think it is seeing something closer to a true PV panel on its DC Panel input. There r another advantages to adding a small series resistance: Isolation from RFI , as the resistance makes any RFI filter more effective. Series resistance will also help limit inrush currrent. If resistance was .5 ohm, input current 10 amps @ 300VDC , that is a voltage drop of 5volts across resistor. Power loss 50 watts. Short circuit current would be 150 amps MAX. ( likely less as battery has some resistance also) . From those calc's a series restance between .25 and .5 ohm, might help. Its a high power resistor or course.
I have had a H6 for about 6months now. I got it to replace a dead aroura inverter on a Solar grid tied application at residence. SO far so good its doing well. But at first it did not. I installed it right where the old inverter was and it worked for a day or so and then a ARC fault error would occur shutting it down. I was unfamiliar with AFI so I looked into it. Basically it senses RFI on the DC lines that occurs when a small arc occurs. Since a pure DC line should have very low AC component , when there is a sizable AC component ( RFI) it trips the AFI ). Well I was not happy , after all the old inverter was quite happy with my solar panel string circuit, but not the H6. But the old aroura did not have AFI. SO I went to the panel array, its ground mount thankfully, and opened every panel connector(MC4) , WD40 it, reseated it. Fired up the system worked fine. For about a week. Then the AFI tripped again. I knew then that the industry standard solar panel connectors MC4 were junk ( I never liked them) . So out came the wire cutters , I cut out every one of those connectors and replaced with a large wire nut. Yeah I know cheesy. I put vasiline on the wires. SO for 6 months now NO AFI trips. Lesson: you need PERFECT connections on the panel DC input OR a AFI will occur. Forget compression/crimp, oxidation will get it , then a small arc , then AFI. I will replace ALL the wire nuts with SOLDERED LUGS and a stainless nut/bolt compression to connect the lugs. I have them , but need to find the time get out there with solder gun and install all those lugs. ( I live near the coast and corrosion is a real issue here. ALL crimp connectors eventually give problems here unless sealed from air. LESSON: SOLDER Stuff! Dont use Pure Tin Solder either! LEAD/TIn is best , most stable...yeah I know LEAD..oh well)
Coinhead: As for clipping out the AFI circuit, I considered that , but it was not in the wire service compartment of the H6. Its inside the big sealed area , which has a warranty seal on it. ( the AFI circuits I researched showed a pickup coil of some sort) I did not want to destroy the seal so i did not open it up. As for using an inductor , that might help. As for putting a diode in reverse in parallel with inductor to absorb back emf, yes thats an old trick. The diode, if rated high enough will not blow as the AVERAGE power it sees is very low ( typically). Capacitor to ground, then inductor, then capacitor to ground is classic PI filter used to suppress RFI in Rf circuits and else where. The design challenge here is the Inductor must pass the high DC current ( not over heat) AND not saturate ( hits its magnetic field limit)? The caps are a bit easier ...need to handle the voltage, but capacitance is issue? Perhaps a large value in parallel with smaller one? Big one knocks down low freq RFI , small one high freq RFI.
I have a 2KVA variac transformer. WIth a full wave diode bridge&filter caps I can make a high power variable DC supply. Thinking about getting another H6 and setting it up on the bench , then use variac DC to standin for PV array and seeing if I can investigate 240AC protected load output of H6. With the variac I can start with Low DC volt and slowly crank up the DC , sorta mimicking what a live PV would do. A word here on MPPT and non Panel type DC input: A variac type DC supply, as i discussed here has a MPPT for any given setting of the VARIAC. This is due to saturation in the transformer which limits AC current. This same effect is how my old transformer based Lincoln ARC welder works. You set a TAP point on the front selector. Each tap point has a saturation point. When u start welding the saturation occurs limiting the current. If there was not saturation , you would BLOW the breaker as current from line would explode in magnitude. Clever and simple, bullit proof , last for decades. In short all real world power sources have some sort of internal resistance, which is essentially defining the MPPT for that source. PV arrays typ have high effective internal resistance, battery packs very low. A cheesy , inefficient way to increase a battery packs internal resistance is a small series resistance between battery and load, in this case the H6 DC panel input. Yeah , I know resistance , is bad, ineffieicent , etc, but a small amount might help H6 think it is seeing something closer to a true PV panel on its DC Panel input. There r another advantages to adding a small series resistance: Isolation from RFI , as the resistance makes any RFI filter more effective. Series resistance will also help limit inrush currrent. If resistance was .5 ohm, input current 10 amps @ 300VDC , that is a voltage drop of 5volts across resistor. Power loss 50 watts. Short circuit current would be 150 amps MAX. ( likely less as battery has some resistance also) . From those calc's a series restance between .25 and .5 ohm, might help. Its a high power resistor or course.
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