Will SolarCity H6 work in a rogue off-grid setup?

[GPS_RF_Guy]

BTW , i just remembered a arc welding tip for using 12 volt batteries in series to do DC type arc welding ( 36 volt works) . The batteries reach there current limit as set by the welding rod and cable connects to them. The tip was to put a LARGE induct or in series to smooth out the DC welding spatter and a for smoother arc, If the inductor is large enough it stores energy in magnetic field and as arc current changes, it smoothes it, when arc current dips, it dumps current , when current tries to rise it bucks it, thus smoothing the DC arc current. A mechanical analog is a flywheel...flywheels resist sudden changes to RPM and smooth out engine variations in RPM. It takes a heavy duty inductor to make a difference, like number 6 or better wound around a large chunk of steel.

 

[GPS_RF_Guy]

some more thoughts:: If I remember correctly , internal source resistance can be estimated by Open circuit voltage divided by short circuit current. Of course short circuit current is a perhaps a dangerous thing to measure manually...Watch out! For my panels its about 40 volts OC, 8 amps short circuit , or 40/8 = 5 ohms. I have a 12 panel string , so internal R of string is about 60 ohms. That is WAY higher than most battery packs. SO , some series resistance may be helpful if pushing a battery into the PV input of the H6. AND I remembered another benefit of small series resistance: Damp out oscillations. Like a shock absorber in a suspension system. Perhaps the H6 could have a instability when connected to low internal R batteries on its PV input? It tries to measure the MPPT , which some how changes the MPPT as its so low, H6 tries again, etc..a oscillation like event could occur? Series resistance could dampen it out.
Perhaps a suitable PI filter could also help as a large incuctance will slow down changes in current?? ( there is a AC MPPT as well as DC MPPT as MPPT is measured in small amount of time, thus , any inductive slowdown is possibly seen by H6 MPPT measurement) But I speculate here, just have to try it and see what happens.

 

[GPS_RF_Guy]

If I assume PV delivery 4500 watts at 85volts that is a current of 52 amps. An estimate of a PV array resistance that would deliver that is 85/52= 1.6 ohms. Since battery packs have low internal R this indicates the battery pack voltage should be on the lower end of what the H6 can accept. With a small amount of series resistance between battery and H6 it should think there is a PV array connected ?

Assuming a PV array voltage of 250 volts and battery voltage of 100 volts , summing these two sources at H6 PV input with series diodes will allow for continuous operation of H6 house 240vac output with no interuption of PV input power ? When PV input falls below battery its series diode will OPEN allowing battery to supply H6 DC power. When PV array above battery voltage the series diode to battery opens up allowing PV to provide the DC power to H6. This does not address how to charge battery from PV array , but on epossibilty is a PV voltage detection circuit .
If PV array voltage greater than say 200 volts, the AC Out from H6 house port is allowed engage( AC solid state switch) a AC fed BMS that will allow charging a battery from H6 AC output. WHen the PV array falls below say 180 volts , the charger is turned off with AC soild state switch. As long as battery voltage is well behaved the described system should allow continuos AC out from H6 , either supplied from battery or PV and when PV has enough juice allow it to charge battery using H6 AC output.

 

[CHERRYGUNSTOCK]

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?

I am looking to do the same thing (run A/C) but i would like to have my inverter grid tied, my local power (TVA) has so many rules that i can't afford to make it thru all the red tape. I and avoid the red tape if i do not export to the grid, does anyone here know if the H6 has any type of limiting function in the menu, by maybe using a CT clamp or using a power meter with RS485 connection. ?

 

[CoinHead]

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.

Thanks for the info. I did try series resistance between my battery and the H6. But the electronics on the Prius we're on and that was injecting the frequency probably what was causing the arc fault interruption. The resistance I used was several water heater elements in parallel trying to get the resistance down to 3 ohms or less. They did get quite hot and so I had to leave them dipped in water. It seemed to help a little but it was definitely not enough because I would still get the arc fault error too often. I have a feeling it would have worked had I shut the Prius off and got the Pew or DC voltage from it's a voltage battery. Would have been around 210 volts. my Prius is a generation 2 and its battery is only around a kilowatt hour so this wouldn't have been any any sort of backup power for me because it would have ran out quickly. I needed it to work with the Priuses engine enabled so that it could keep its battery charged.

I didn't look into it further with inductors or anything because my battery bank is 65 kilowatt hours of lithium and I've never been anywhere near needing a backup generator. I've only got five kilowatts of solar and it's working fine until I get air conditioning or something in that case I would simply get more panels because there's plenty of battery power.

My backup generator concern is for people using an H6 off grid with a small battery. So small they can't make it through a few rainy days. Right now the only option so far for those people is to run a generator to power their house directly. They would not be charging the battery.

Or maybe if you had an electric car you could get some power from that battery and as long as the car was off there would be no high frequencies to create the arc fault interruption error?

As to the people worried about the warranty seal you should realize there's no warranty anyway. And as cheap as these are I bought seven of them just to experiment / blow them up. By the way don't short out the inverters dc output with a million Watts or there will be a loud noise and flying parts and sparkling smoke trails. Don't ask me how I know.

I'd still like to experiment with fetching power from an electric car or from my Prius to solve the backup/generator power need for other people but honestly I don't know when I'll ever get to it.

Right now I'm experimenting with tethering these things together off grid because I'd like 18000 watts of inverter power to run larger loads in the future.

 

[CoinHead]

If I assume PV delivery 4500 watts at 85volts that is a current of 52 amps. An estimate of a PV array resistance that would deliver that is 85/52= 1.6 ohms. Since battery packs have low internal R this indicates the battery pack voltage should be on the lower end of what the H6 can accept. With a small amount of series resistance between battery and H6 it should think there is a PV array connected ?

Assuming a PV array voltage of 250 volts and battery voltage of 100 volts , summing these two sources at H6 PV input with series diodes will allow for continuous operation of H6 house 240vac output with no interuption of PV input power ? When PV input falls below battery its series diode will OPEN allowing battery to supply H6 DC power. When PV array above battery voltage the series diode to battery opens up allowing PV to provide the DC power to H6. This does not address how to charge battery from PV array , but on epossibilty is a PV voltage detection circuit .
If PV array voltage greater than say 200 volts, the AC Out from H6 house port is allowed engage( AC solid state switch) a AC fed BMS that will allow charging a battery from H6 AC output. WHen the PV array falls below say 180 volts , the charger is turned off with AC soild state switch. As long as battery voltage is well behaved the described system should allow continuos AC out from H6 , either supplied from battery or PV and when PV has enough juice allow it to charge battery using H6 AC output.

If the battery voltage was low enough a cheap homemade capacitive battery charger could be utilized. Capacitive Battery Charger

 

[CoinHead]

I am looking to do the same thing (run A/C) but i would like to have my inverter grid tied, my local power (TVA) has so many rules that i can't afford to make it thru all the red tape. I and avoid the red tape if i do not export to the grid, does anyone here know if the H6 has any type of limiting function in the menu, by maybe using a CT clamp or using a power meter with RS485 connection. ?

I've seen a few people in your situation but they haven't been able to accomplish what you're trying with the H6. I bet in Tesla's original idea with this inverter it would be possible.

 

[CHERRYGUNSTOCK]

I've seen a few people in your situation but they haven't been able to accomplish what you're trying with the H6. I bet in Tesla's original idea with this inverter it would be possible.

thanks for your reply CoinHead, i had hoped it was possible because the $600 price of the H6 is so attractive. along with its ability to make power during the day without any type of battery attached. do you know of any inverters that will do what i ask?

 

[CHERRYGUNSTOCK]

one more thing, the setting in some inverters are so obscure, look at how the growatt limits the export, without a guide you could not find it.
link:
https://solarclarity.co.uk/wp-conte...port-Limitation-Guide-Growatt-3-15K-TL3-S.pdf

 

[marczener]

This is a very informative blog.

I just completed installing 4200W solar panels (8x 375W Prism Solar + 3x 400W Trina Solar) last month. This month, I connected the Solarcity Inverter H6 that I bought for $570. After observing it for a day, I got Arc Fault error. I went to troubleshoot mode immediately. I found that the arc fault was emanating from the 3x 400W Trina Solar section of the series array. So today, I went and cut off all the MC4 factory connectors that replaced all with new MC4 connectors. But completed late in the afternoon. By tomorrow, if it does not solve the problem, I will try GPS_RF_guy’s solution by using large wire nut twisters. I’ll give an update if successful.

I have several questions regarding this Solarcity Inverter H6.

1. If I break the seal where the arc fault detection circuit is located. What is the procedure on how to disable this function? Would a mere cutting an inductor wire in a coil or bypassing a component or lifting a leg of a component do the trick? If you can share a photo where the mod needs to be Or a modification to the firmware is needed. CoinHead have you tried opening this arc fault section circuit? Or have you figured out how to bypass or disable this detection?

2. Since this is a hybrid inverter with the capability of charging lithium batteries, if I purchase 135pcs of 3.7V = 500VDC connect them in series either the 18650 lithium batteries or the similar lithium batteries used in the Tesla Model3 the 21700 lithium batteries, will it work if I connect it directly to the BATT+ and BATT- of the SolarCity inverter H6 terminals. Will it function to charge the batteries during the day then provide battery power during the night for my household. At present my H6 is connected Grid Tied. I see the default is set to Auto. Has anyone tried this concept? Or do I need to create a BMS (Battery Management System) for this setup. If yes on the BMS, can you recommend a DIY circuit for this lithium battery arrangement? I plan to build this and contain it in a DIY metal casing to house all these 135x lithium batteries then construct a small concrete structure to place this metal case. I intend to add a temp sensor and overvoltage sensor to shutdown the charging in case of overheating. If I get this battery concept successful, I intend to share the plans immediately to contribute to green energy. Or has anyone tried this concept?

3. This week, I am also excited to install the electric sense monitor with Machine Learning capability from sense.com. I got the sense monitor with solar option. I can be able to use the Sense.com app in my phone since this SolarCity Inverter H6 does not have an App that can monitor its activity. Or does anyone know of an App that works in the phone for this SolarCity H6 inverter?

I appreciate the information that this blog community has contributed. Thank you very much.

 

[CoinHead]

This is a very informative blog.

I just completed installing 4200W solar panels (8x 375W Prism Solar + 3x 400W Trina Solar) last month. This month, I connected the Solarcity Inverter H6 that I bought for $570. After observing it for a day, I got Arc Fault error. I went to troubleshoot mode immediately. I found that the arc fault was emanating from the 3x 400W Trina Solar section of the series array. So today, I went and cut off all the MC4 factory connectors that replaced all with new MC4 connectors. But completed late in the afternoon. By tomorrow, if it does not solve the problem, I will try GPS_RF_guy’s solution by using large wire nut twisters. I’ll give an update if successful.

I have several questions regarding this Solarcity Inverter H6.

1. If I break the seal where the arc fault detection circuit is located. What is the procedure on how to disable this function? Would a mere cutting an inductor wire in a coil or bypassing a component or lifting a leg of a component do the trick? If you can share a photo where the mod needs to be Or a modification to the firmware is needed. CoinHead have you tried opening this arc fault section circuit? Or have you figured out how to bypass or disable this detection?

2. Since this is a hybrid inverter with the capability of charging lithium batteries, if I purchase 135pcs of 3.7V = 500VDC connect them in series either the 18650 lithium batteries or the similar lithium batteries used in the Tesla Model3 the 21700 lithium batteries, will it work if I connect it directly to the BATT+ and BATT- of the SolarCity inverter H6 terminals. Will it function to charge the batteries during the day then provide battery power during the night for my household. At present my H6 is connected Grid Tied. I see the default is set to Auto. Has anyone tried this concept? Or do I need to create a BMS (Battery Management System) for this setup. If yes on the BMS, can you recommend a DIY circuit for this lithium battery arrangement? I plan to build this and contain it in a DIY metal casing to house all these 135x lithium batteries then construct a small concrete structure to place this metal case. I intend to add a temp sensor and overvoltage sensor to shutdown the charging in case of overheating. If I get this battery concept successful, I intend to share the plans immediately to contribute to green energy. Or has anyone tried this concept?

3. This week, I am also excited to install the electric sense monitor with Machine Learning capability from sense.com. I got the sense monitor with solar option. I can be able to use the Sense.com app in my phone since this SolarCity Inverter H6 does not have an App that can monitor its activity. Or does anyone know of an App that works in the phone for this SolarCity H6 inverter?

I appreciate the information that this blog community has contributed. Thank you very much.

question 1 about disabling the arc fault protection. No I have not discovered how to disable it. Maybe it's possible to do like you said and maybe it wouldn't throw a different error when the board got messed with.

Question 2 about running off the battery. It is possible to run off the battery as I am but it required modifications to the board that I am not disclosing. I am modifying and selling these units complete with 65 kilowatt hour battery Banks. If you figure out the modifications on your own yes you will need to create a BMS for the battery to protect it from temperature current and voltage problems just as you would with any homemade lithium battery. The BMS systems designed for high voltage electric cars don't quite get up high enough and so I think the best choice is to get several cheap BMS systems and and deal with the added confusion due to having several BMSs to try and monitor. you'd be best off getting the bMS systems that control actual contactors instead of having internal mosfets.

Question 3 about a monitoring app. Yes there is a monitoring app for this inverter it's basically Tesla's app because the SolarCity app is discontinued. it requires a Solar City gateway which you can buy cheap on eBay. The problem is though that Tesla won't attach this hardware to my Tesla account because that's the responsibility of the sales rep which I don't have because I didn't buy this from a Tesla sales rep. Tesla promised to try and figure something out and call me back but they never did. For now I've been using an external battery monitor to keep track of my battery capacity but it doesn't show anything about the daily solar harvest or the house is consumption. for that information I must look at the inverters display near the end of the day before it disappears.
The information the inverter shares over the communications system is probably all available if you're some kind of communications protocol professional and I bet it shows daily harvest and daily consumption among other things and maybe even some form of history going back beyond just the current day. over that same communications I would expect to be able to command the inverter to do a net-zero mode and feed the grid battery power during peak times. And even charge the battery from the grid. These are all things I will probably never try to figure out because Im completely off-grid anyway and I've found with 65 kilowatt-hours of battery I have very little need for a generator. My system just seems to work hassle-free and I'm now enjoying day-to-day life without being stressed all the time about whether or not batteries are dead or whether or not I need to run the generator and for how long and not worried anymore about lead acid batteries being partially charged and getting sulphated. I don't have to smell the stinky generator & my neighbor doesn't complain anymore.

Out of the box this inverter is best suited for a standard grid tie system with no battery.

 

[Samsonite801]

Today I hooked a 230 volt battery to the inverter where the solar panel is supposed to be connected. It seemed to work okay for small loads like 600w but when I turned on the 1.4kw Shop-Vac that has a startup surge of kw6 the inverter shut down with an error and said arc fault. Then I tried exporting to the grid and it was working for a while until my battery had a sudden change in voltage because it was actually my Toyota Prius and the engine was starting up. That gave the arc fault error again and it shut down. It would sort of randomly give the arc fault error and shut down so I'll say as of now it's simply not reliable the way it is. that's too bad because the solar panel voltage input ranges from 85 volts up to 570 which would have made it the perfect setup for hooking straight to a wide range of electric vehicle batteries at their stock voltages. I'm thinking maybe I should have twisted the 20 foot wires around each other that stretched between the battery and the inverter. Maybe that would help?

Hey CoinHead, I'm thinking you're the guy from the Prius forums who hooked up the MidNite Classic 250 charge controller using a wind profile to charge your home battery bank.

"Prius as backup generator with midnight classic as voltage converter possible?"

It's because both of you seem to be from Hawaii anyways... Anyways, nice to meet you (whether you're the same guy or not), I am also a Prius owner (my brother owns a Tesla which he lets me drive all the time so can I post here hehe...), my Prius is a 2018 and I currently use a SURT6000XLT UPS for backup power.

I just bought a Midnite Classic 250 the other day which has not arrived yet (a toy I want to play with). I have also been toying with the idea of this SolarCity Delta H6 as a battery-less inverter to run off the Prius for hopefully enough surge power to start my 230v/14.5a air compressor (the APC won't start it even with a soft-starter on the motor), and then I encountered this thread so I had to sign up to see if I could have a discussion with you about it.

I read through this entire thread, and it looks like you are having issues with the H6's AFCI (arc fault detection) on the PV circuit.

Have you seen these articles?
https://www.solaredge.com/sites/default/files/arc_fault_detection_application_note_na.pdf
https://www.solaredge.com/sites/default/files/arc_fault_detection_application_note.pdf


Do you have the app to control the inverter? It sounds like it might be possible to disable the AFCI 'feature'...
If it was possible, I wonder if it could be a workaround to get the Prius to work on the PV input.



I also had another couple questions about the Midnite Classic 250...

I was wondering if you ever toyed around with U-SET Voc % (percentage of Voc, to narrow the MPPT scan range), instead of using wind curves, and maybe you found the wind curves was the only way to do it?

It seems to me on the Prius, Voc test check would always pull the current Prius battery voltage, and it could be useful to set U-SET narrow the scan window. Like I was thinking of figuring out far the Prius battery voltage would drop if you pulled 62a from it, and then calculate that as the percentage of voltage drop, so then even if MPPT tried to pull it all the way down it could only hit the bottom of the U-SET percentage window and never be more than 62a (the MC 250's short circuit current max). The other question I had which is related to this, is will the MC 250 try to pull more than 62a and potentially blow itself up, or does it have overcurrent protections built-in to only pull the voltage down to its maximum current limit (I will still put a breaker on the PV circuit just for safety)...

 

[CoinHead]

Hey CoinHead, I'm thinking you're the guy from the Prius forums who hooked up the MidNite Classic 250 charge controller using a wind profile to charge your home battery bank.

"Prius as backup generator with midnight classic as voltage converter possible?"

It's because both of you seem to be from Hawaii anyways... Anyways, nice to meet you (whether you're the same guy or not), I am also a Prius owner (my brother owns a Tesla which he lets me drive all the time so can I post here hehe...), my Prius is a 2018 and I currently use a SURT6000XLT UPS for backup power.

I just bought a Midnite Classic 250 the other day which has not arrived yet (a toy I want to play with). I have also been toying with the idea of this SolarCity Delta H6 as a battery-less inverter to run off the Prius for hopefully enough surge power to start my 230v/14.5a air compressor (the APC won't start it even with a soft-starter on the motor), and then I encountered this thread so I had to sign up to see if I could have a discussion with you about it.

I read through this entire thread, and it looks like you are having issues with the H6's AFCI (arc fault detection) on the PV circuit.

Have you seen these articles?
https://www.solaredge.com/sites/default/files/arc_fault_detection_application_note_na.pdf
https://www.solaredge.com/sites/default/files/arc_fault_detection_application_note.pdf


Do you have the app to control the inverter? It sounds like it might be possible to disable the AFCI 'feature'...
If it was possible, I wonder if it could be a workaround to get the Prius to work on the PV input.



I also had another couple questions about the Midnite Classic 250...

I was wondering if you ever toyed around with U-SET Voc % (percentage of Voc, to narrow the MPPT scan range), instead of using wind curves, and maybe you found the wind curves was the only way to do it?

It seems to me on the Prius, Voc test check would always pull the current Prius battery voltage, and it could be useful to set U-SET narrow the scan window. Like I was thinking of figuring out far the Prius battery voltage would drop if you pulled 62a from it, and then calculate that as the percentage of voltage drop, so then even if MPPT tried to pull it all the way down it could only hit the bottom of the U-SET percentage window and never be more than 62a (the MC 250's short circuit current max). The other question I had which is related to this, is will the MC 250 try to pull more than 62a and potentially blow itself up, or does it have overcurrent protections built-in to only pull the voltage down to its maximum current limit (I will still put a breaker on the PV circuit just for safety)...

View attachment 617770

yes I'm the prius guy. How did you know? It must be my accent...

in this case my 230 volt battery is my Prius but it was on which could have been disturbing and causing the arc fault. I recently ran my electric clothes dryer many times a day for several weeks in a row during a cloudy month and I ran out of battery power. So I'm sort of on a renewed mission soon to try and smooth out the Prius output power and feed it into the H6 to charge my house batteries. I saw the solar edge has that ability to disable the arc fault.

I tried like crazy to get the Tesla app to connect to the H6 but it simply won't do it directly. It's not designed to do that. It requires Tesla to connect the H6 to my account from their end and they are not understanding how to do it because I didn't buy it from their salesman. And even if they did connect it I'm pretty sure that there's not going to be a way to disable the arc fault in the app.

I'll try and run it through an inductor and capacitor Bank salvaged from old microwaves in about a month or so or whenever I get around to it or if I run out of power again and I'm forced to start tinkering.

On the midnite classic I played with the u-set a lot and it didn't work as well as making my own custom wind chart. My logic was exactly like yours but when I developed my percentage I did so with a lot lower amperage during the test but the results were not following logic. I also cannot get anywhere near the power out of the midnight classic that it's rated for when using with the Prius or it shuts down and start cycling. Something about it's software / hardware it's just not correct for what I was doing but it sure was efficient and worked well enough to keep doing it for 6 months until I replaced that system with the H6. There's one other person that tried it and had smoked for the a result. He sounded like he was doing exactly like I was so who knows...

It does amp limit itself but I don't think it's super quick to respond so it does take a beating when you short out its output. When it starts doing the cycling thing on me it sounds as if it's trying really hard and sometimes the amp limit light comes on before it cycles off and then tries up again. the sound it makes is kind of like I shorted out its output it tries really hard it sounds stressed out. I had my doubts that it would work long-term but I did this 24/7 for many many months and it didn't ever go up and smoke or quit working.

Let me know if I missed one of your questions

 

[Samsonite801]

yes I'm the prius guy. How did you know? It must be my accent...

in this case my 230 volt battery is my Prius but it was on which could have been disturbing and causing the arc fault. I recently ran my electric clothes dryer many times a day for several weeks in a row during a cloudy month and I ran out of battery power. So I'm sort of on a renewed mission soon to try and smooth out the Prius output power and feed it into the H6 to charge my house batteries. I saw the solar edge has that ability to disable the arc fault.

I tried like crazy to get the Tesla app to connect to the H6 but it simply won't do it directly. It's not designed to do that. It requires Tesla to connect the H6 to my account from their end and they are not understanding how to do it because I didn't buy it from their salesman. And even if they did connect it I'm pretty sure that there's not going to be a way to disable the arc fault in the app.

I'll try and run it through an inductor and capacitor Bank salvaged from old microwaves in about a month or so or whenever I get around to it or if I run out of power again and I'm forced to start tinkering.

On the midnite classic I played with the u-set a lot and it didn't work as well as making my own custom wind chart. My logic was exactly like yours but when I developed my percentage I did so with a lot lower amperage during the test but the results were not following logic. I also cannot get anywhere near the power out of the midnight classic that it's rated for when using with the Prius or it shuts down and start cycling. Something about it's software / hardware it's just not correct for what I was doing but it sure was efficient and worked well enough to keep doing it for 6 months until I replaced that system with the H6. There's one other person that tried it and had smoked for the a result. He sounded like he was doing exactly like I was so who knows...

It does amp limit itself but I don't think it's super quick to respond so it does take a beating when you short out its output. When it starts doing the cycling thing on me it sounds as if it's trying really hard and sometimes the amp limit light comes on before it cycles off and then tries up again. the sound it makes is kind of like I shorted out its output it tries really hard it sounds stressed out. I had my doubts that it would work long-term but I did this 24/7 for many many months and it didn't ever go up and smoke or quit working.

Let me know if I missed one of your questions

Hey thanks for replying back!

Yeah I know even the Prius is susceptible to noise it can pick up in the battery circuit (mine is the 56-cell lithium hybrid battery .75kW/h 207.2v version on the 2018 three-touring, under the back seat)... I know if I turn on the APC SURT6000LXT UPS the radio controls in the car start acting funny, so I just turn off the radio before I turn on the UPS and it's fine. So maybe in your case, the Delta H6 is picking up some noise from the car and triggering the arc fault detection on it or something. Did you try a ground wire between the H6 metal chassis and the Prius chassis to see it it might help shield noise (may be a long shot but thought I'd throw it out there).

As far as disabling the arc fault detection on the H6, I wonder if it would be possible to hack into the unit using serial/UART header on the main board or something, to figure out how to access the firmware and disable it on the command line somehow?

Did you ever try to check if a Delta version of app would work? I notice they had some software too.... Monitoring & Software - Delta Solar Solutions

I wondering if it would be worth it for me to buy one to play with or if it would be worth trying to fuss with it. I have so many other tasks to mess with right now on my homestead project, I don't know if I would be wise for me to commit to yet another project, I might not be able to work on it for awhile. But it sure does make me curious to find the perfect Prius inverter.


On the Midnite Classic, can the custom wind curve be added by uploading a file or do you have to manually enter the values via the display? Once I get the MC 250 here, I'll have to read all your forum posts on it again to get a refresher, it's been awhile since that stuff was fresh in my mind. The MC 250 just seemed like the most versatile unit to use for DC-DC charging as they marketed it as hydro, wind, solar, and 'other DC sources'.

Do you remember what is the behavior like on it if you just leave it on the default auto (PV LEARN) mode MPPT, connected to the Prius battery?

The primary intended use I wanted to try the MC 250 on was to use it for charging from a 48v LiFePO4 battery bank to a 12v LiFePO4 battery bank, since I couldn't find an actual charger that could do this (only converters)... I had been looking at the Outback charge controller too (PV input only a 150) but decided to use the MC 250 (for higher PV input voltage) just to have versatility in case I ever did want to use it with the Prius 207.2v battery, then would have that option open too.

I may also try to simply hook up the Prius to the generator input of my MPP Solar LV6548's directly to see how well it can charge, or other option is to try and hook the Prius to one of the MPPT inputs on the LV6548 and see what happens.

The main reason I was considering the Delta H6 was for one, it is smaller and lighter, the APC SURT6000XLT with SURT003 transformer is heavy and fills the whole floor, and 4u tall in the trunk, and I was hoping I could find a more compact inverter that could start my air compressor, the SURT won't do it. Other than that the SURT is great. I might also just see if I can wire a 240v receptacle onto my 6.5kW genset on the motorhome and see if it can start the air compressor. I won't have my LV6548's installed until maybe next Summer so trying to find temporary way to start the big motors on the large tools...

 

[Samsonite801]

This forum doesn't have edit post buttons?

On my comment above:
"I may also try to simply hook up the Prius to the generator input of my MPP Solar LV6548's directly to see how well it can charge, or other option is to try and hook the Prius to one of the MPPT inputs on the LV6548 and see what happens."

...I meant it to mean, I may try to hook up the Prius, via the APC UPS's 240v AC output directly to the gen input on the MPP inverter...

 

[mckemie]

I haven't been paying attention to this thread recently but just revisited and found much of interest.
My goal is to just use the H6 grid tie. After much trial, I've discovered that the Santan used panels I am committed to using do not work reliably with H6s. Or ANY transformerless inverter. The panels do work well with all micros I've tried as well as all old transformer string inverters. The problem with transformerless inverters is "isolation faults".

Recently, I've been attempting to test panels individually to weed out the ones that seem to have weak insulation. With some success in dry conditions. I've had no success getting the H6 to accept the carefully selected panels under wet conditions. Even foggy conditions are enough to screw things up.

I suspect no real safety hazard since many inverters work very well with the panels. I wonder if there is any future in trying to defeat or adjust the H6's "feature". In dry conditions, the H6 typically reports ">1Mohm". The threshold seems to be in the .4 to .3 range.

Can anyone give me any insight into this problem?

 

[ashtricky]

question 1 about disabling the arc fault protection. No I have not discovered how to disable it. Maybe it's possible to do like you said and maybe it wouldn't throw a different error when the board got messed with.

Question 2 about running off the battery. It is possible to run off the battery as I am but it required modifications to the board that I am not disclosing. I am modifying and selling these units complete with 65 kilowatt hour battery Banks. If you figure out the modifications on your own yes you will need to create a BMS for the battery to protect it from temperature current and voltage problems just as you would with any homemade lithium battery. The BMS systems designed for high voltage electric cars don't quite get up high enough and so I think the best choice is to get several cheap BMS systems and and deal with the added confusion due to having several BMSs to try and monitor. you'd be best off getting the bMS systems that control actual contactors instead of having internal mosfets.

Question 3 about a monitoring app. Yes there is a monitoring app for this inverter it's basically Tesla's app because the SolarCity app is discontinued. it requires a Solar City gateway which you can buy cheap on eBay. The problem is though that Tesla won't attach this hardware to my Tesla account because that's the responsibility of the sales rep which I don't have because I didn't buy this from a Tesla sales rep. Tesla promised to try and figure something out and call me back but they never did. For now I've been using an external battery monitor to keep track of my battery capacity but it doesn't show anything about the daily solar harvest or the house is consumption. for that information I must look at the inverters display near the end of the day before it disappears.
The information the inverter shares over the communications system is probably all available if you're some kind of communications protocol professional and I bet it shows daily harvest and daily consumption among other things and maybe even some form of history going back beyond just the current day. over that same communications I would expect to be able to command the inverter to do a net-zero mode and feed the grid battery power during peak times. And even charge the battery from the grid. These are all things I will probably never try to figure out because Im completely off-grid anyway and I've found with 65 kilowatt-hours of battery I have very little need for a generator. My system just seems to work hassle-free and I'm now enjoying day-to-day life without being stressed all the time about whether or not batteries are dead or whether or not I need to run the generator and for how long and not worried anymore about lead acid batteries being partially charged and getting sulphated. I don't have to smell the stinky generator & my neighbor doesn't complain anymore.

Out of the box this inverter is best suited for a standard grid tie system with no battery.

Hey Coinhead,

Really appreciate your depth of knowledge on these H6 units, great thread. I have some 12P 10S samsung 18650 based modules that I've had lying around from a previous project. I have a BMS that is designed to run seven modules in series, so relatively high (350V DC) voltage. I have a charger for that setup as well. Would one of your customized H6 units be a candidate to play nicely with the pack I have? All I'm looking for is a battery backup in the event of an outage, solar could enter into the picture later on down the road.

Alternately, it sounds like there are good solutions for me to run those same modules in parallel and run a 48V system. It would require some reconfiguration of the BMS on my part, but it's not out of the question.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
Nick

 

[CoinHead]

Hey Coinhead,

Really appreciate your depth of knowledge on these H6 units, great thread. I have some 12P 10S samsung 18650 based modules that I've had lying around from a previous project. I have a BMS that is designed to run seven modules in series, so relatively high (350V DC) voltage. I have a charger for that setup as well. Would one of your customized H6 units be a candidate to play nicely with the pack I have? All I'm looking for is a battery backup in the event of an outage, solar could enter into the picture later on down the road.

Alternately, it sounds like there are good solutions for me to run those same modules in parallel and run a 48V system. It would require some reconfiguration of the BMS on my part, but it's not out of the question.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
Nick

You're probably better off with a 48 volt inverter. Alternatively there are several inverters designed to run off of the voltage that your pack is already set up for. Between 6,000 and 10,000 Watts for around a thousand dollars. Between 200 and 400 volts. Just look on Alibaba. As far as the h6 goes it needs around 480 volts before it'll even turn on. And it charges over 500 volts. I've had some issues with the h6 lately and made some adjustments. If I have any more issues I'll be switching to a different inverter myself.

 

[simonb]

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!

Were you able to figure out the CAN communication with the H6?

 

[ColoMtn]

H6 arcfaults won't reset on new installation

I'm a new member and just completed a 6kW setup with the H6 inverter grid tied with no battery but with a backup panel. When we first turned it on we had adequate PV voltage (368+/-) but the inverter measured grid voltage of 268v with 0 frequency and 0 current! Additionally we had arc faults that we were unable to reset. The inverter indicated no initialization as well. So we have input but no output and is not functioning.

Has anyone had similar problems with initial startup and have any ideas of how to get this system up and running? This is our first installation with the SolarCity H6 and are stumped.

Thanks.