question

The Quattro in inverter mode will generate its own sine-wave. But when it is in charger mode it will phase-match to the incoming sine-wave (from the generator) will pass the generator sine-wave to the house loads. The Quattro does not clean up the generator sine-wave, it merely phase-matches and pass it through to the house loads.

What does the generator sine-wave (without Quattro connected) looks like?

Also, if the generator feeds the house loads (bypassing the Quattro) do the lights flicker as well?

I actually had the same thing, I was sure that the two working together was causing the light flicker, as like yours my components worked fine alone. Wasn’t sure if the AVR in the Stephill generator I used was working against the quattros controller trying to match the voltage and frequency?

Do you by any chance have 'Weak AC input' selected in the Quattro settings?

Hi @Boekel.. I do not think so, but I'll have a look tomorrow when I can login

@Jacko I've had this problem on a number of sites in the past which I have assumed was the generator. This new installation has a nice robust smooth generator and I've had the benefit of the use of a couple of oscilloscopes to see the waveform. Something is happening inside the Quattro to change the waveform slightly.

Hi @Margreet Leeftink . I replies to your comments the other day but they have gone from the blog. Very strange. I will again attach the photo of both Quattro and Generator output's You can see that both do not have any glitches on their own, it only occurs when the generator is connected to the Quattro.

Just a thought, but do you have Power Assist enabled on your Quattro? If you do, try turning it off and see if the problem persists.

Don't have a clue if that will work, but it's worth a try.

Pat

Sounds like a similar issue that I’ve just had come up.

Customer has just been in contact mentioning that when genset is plugged on, lights flicker and clock runs faster. Around 100Hz going to load. Both inverter and generator work perfect when not connected together.

I have not been back to site yet, but will keep an eye on here for any suggestions.

I have exactly the same experience on my off grid solution (Multiplus 5000W 24V and Honda EM5500CXS)

Did this issue got solved?

I have had this issue a few times now and it's always been the generator.

I turned off the UPS function and it was better but still not good enough. The frequency on VE config looked OK, but with my multimeter on it, it was fluctuating between 42Hz and 58Hz very quickly.

We tried with a smaller, newer genset and it worked..

Turns out the spring on the governor of the generator had fallen off causing it to have a bad sinewave. Once we fixed this, it worked fine.

Another system we had the same issue with an older generator. The owner had a spare genset that was newer so once we changed it over it worked fine.

Hi Everyone. Much time has passed since this post. The original customer with this problem I think still has the issue as they had purchased a new 30kVA generator and are stuck with this. However, I do recall there is no flickering when the installation is running just off the generator OR just off the Quattro... Its is when the two of them are working together.

Other installations before and since that have flickering lights when running with a generator are always the generator. Different generators do different things to the power. Also, different LED lamps are often more suseptable the fluctuating power, etc.

Keeping generator run time low by using a larger PV array is pretty much the way forward.

Thanks for the reply on this old post. I agree that in the end it's the generator that deliver this bad sine-wave. I do find it strange though that even very professional and expensive Gensets like the Honda I have behave like this.

I have the strange feeling that this comes from the rather "aggressive" way the Victron units try to put load on the source and they way they constantly are adjusting the demand giving the generator a rather difficult task. I made a short screenshot video of the Voltage and Hertz fluctuations from my CCGX

If the inverter could just reduce the rate of the demand I belive the problem would be much smaller.