question

billk avatar image
billk asked

Quattro charger flashing main and float lights with generator hooked up

Been in the clouds for 5 days, went to charge batteries with the normal generator and have no power going to the batteries. I have a pair of Quattro 10kW in parallel and split phase. Using a 120v generator with the input on AC In-1 on the master inverter. switched to "charger only" mode and the main and float lights flash. switch back to inverter mode and the lights go out.

Generator
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2 Answers
Justin Cook avatar image
Justin Cook answered ·

@BillK, can you confirm that it's the "Mains On" and "Float" LEDs that are flashing, not the "Inverter" and "Float" LEDs?

My immediate thought (somewhat independent of the above question) is that if the master Quattro is expecting two legs of 120 input and only finding one from your generator, it won't accept the input because it sees it as faulty (missing a leg).

I don't know if I'll see a response from you over the holidays, but in the event that this sounds like it may be the problem, you can try opening the VE.Bus System Configurator (which you probably already have as part of the VE Configuration Tools for VE.Bus Products, but if not, you can get the tools here) and uncheck the "switch as group" checkbox.

There are caveats to doing this, but this will typically allow the master unit of a parallel Multi/Quattro setup to switch on by itself from a single-leg 120 input rather than looking for the other leg, not finding it, and shutting itself down.


vebus.jpg (46.2 KiB)
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billk avatar image
billk answered ·

@Justin Cook thank you for your response this holiday season. That was the problem indeed and the main and float lights were flashing in unison on the charger side of the unit. They only came on when I shifted over to charger only mode during my frantic troubleshooting.

I have a 120v generator hooked up to AC IN-1 on the Master. All had been well till I started poking around with the settings in VE Bus System Configuration. I'm not seeing any AC output from the Slave inverter. Voltage shows up at the service panel the way it should but the CCGX only shows output on L1, zero and sometimes a slight negative value on L2.

Since I had already saved a copy of the configuration I "knew" I could always go back to it. Nope, I got into this trouble with the generator and went to reload my file. Got hit with the dread "grid code password" demand. Since I've never been on the grid and the settings reflect that I'm not sure where that came from. I spent a panicked 5 hours troubleshooting everything I could think of before I stumbled back on the need to uncheck "switch as group" Can't find any information on when that should be checked, do you know what the purpose of "switch as a group" is?

All is well now, I even got the password from my dealer. It would have been a dark holiday since we've literally been in the clouds for the past 10 days and desperately needed to get generator back on line

Thank you for taking the time to help me during this holiday season, wishing you and yours the very best Holiday Season and a Joyful New Year!!

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