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craig-gebhardt asked

Using a generator to recharge a battery in ESS - Multiplus.

Does anyone know of a possible way to automate what would normally be manual adjustments on the GX device to allow a generator to be used to recharge the battery and over-ride the parameters being enforced by ESS?


The use case is as follows:

Easysolar 5kVA with CCGX connected to the grid and running ESS. External Anti-islanding device, so ESS system runs grid code "Other" and LOM type B

Lithium batteries. ESS in Optimised w/ battery life at 30%.

Under stable grid conditions the system works perfectly.

When a prolonged grid outage is experienced - this happens quite frequently due to the sites' location - The operator would then like the option for a generator to be started and run for a few hours to be able to power loads that were on the non-critical circuit (a water pump). When the generator runs they would like the system to automatically switch to using the generator to recharge the battery bank.

This can be done manually through the following steps on the CCGX (however the operator would like it to happen automatically because there is no-one on site with the competence to change the settings on the CCGX and then revert them once the grid returns)

1. The generator is manually started and stopped and the change-over is manual. This will remain a manual process.

2. The AC input current limit needs to be adjusted from 50A down to 16A. This is currently adjusted on the CCGX, but we plan to install a 5V power supply on the generator supply line and use this 5V signal on the Aux input 1 of the MultiPlus in conjunction with the "input current limit control" assistant to automatically adjust the current limit.

3. If at the time of starting the generator the battery SOC is above the Min SOC level, then it wont charge the batteries. It requires user input on the CCGX to change the ESS mode to "keep batteries charged". Alternatively we can start an immediate scheduled charge with no SOC limit - this also requires user input on the CCGX. I have not been able to devise any plan that this can be automated through an assistant or input from the generator? Anyone done this in a simple manor? I know it might be possible using Modbus TCP and an external device to write to the Modbus registers - but I am hoping to not go down that route.

4. I have also noticed that the system is happier using the generator to charge when the AC1 input is changed to 'Generator' under the system setup. So potentially this setting also needs to be adjusted when switching to Generator.


Anyone managed to do something like this?


Thanks


ESS
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