I’ve got 5kW Fronius inverter connected to the AC out of a 5kVA Multiplus II. The grid is connected to the MP2 AC in, and all the house loads to the AC out. Additionally there’s a 10kWh battery connected to the MP2.
Since the Fronius was already installed when I added the MP, the installer suggested this was a setup that would allow us to use the existing Fronius, charge the battery from Solar through the MP and operate as an off-grid setup if the external grid is ever down or under maintenance.
Overall I’m happy with the setup but my installer is incapable of configuring the VRM dashboard to show PV Inverter power, Critical loads, Battery and Grid all within the same screen. Instead, I don’t get any PV value on my dashboard (I can check it on the remote console or on Solar.web) and I can’t get the loads consumption. It only shows the difference between the solar generated and the critical loads. For example, if the solar generation is higher than what the house consumes, the dashboard shows 0 consumption. All in all, it’s really annoying to have to get all these values through additions and subtractions on HomeAssistant, I just want the VRM dashboard to work.
If it’s worth to mention, I did have the Fronius Smart Meter connected before they installed the MP, but the installer removed it because he said it wasn’t needed anymore.
Do you have any idea how I can re-arrange the dashboard to show the setup correctly? Is it something about the ESS setup within the CerboGX?
It’s pretty easy. Just google “AC-coupled PV with Fronius PV Inverters” without knowing the model it’s impossible to let you know if you need anything. Alternatively, you can add an energy meter like the Carlo Gavazzi ET112. It’s well documented setting these up for PV input. I don’t know if you have set up frequency shifting to turn the inverter off when there is no grid and the battery is full.
The PV inverter is a Gen24 Plus and the installer mention he did set it up with microgrid.
However most of the times, with a grid present, when the battery is full and the loads are lower than the pv production, it just exports the energy back to the grid. I do get some money back for selling it.
My pv inverter was shown as unknown on the cerbogx console, despite having solar api enabled and modbus tcp as well. But is any of this related to the dashboard configuration?
Here are some screenshots, the only thing that strikes me as odd is that there is no output for L1 in the Fronius, just totals AC. Similarly, ESS is set up to regulate “all phases”, my system is single-phase.
Did you do any of these settings? What does the dashboard look like can you see the PV charger in the remote console? Is the Fronius setup on AC out? Why have you limited the inverter power to 4000W was that necessary? The total of all phases should be fine but you can try individual I don’t think it will do anything because you have the inverter charger for grid metering and not an external meter with loads on AC in.
The above settings are what my installer set up. These produce the dashboard I attached in my first post, with no critical loads nor pv inverter.
The Fronius is set up on AC out.
I can’t see the inverter on the dashboard, but I can see the device in the remote console and can get the production from its total AC value within the menu (no dashboard).
Do I need a meter to be able to separate pv inverter power from house/critical loads? If so, would a CT work just fine? Or I need the Carlo Gavazzi ET112?
You could try the multiplus CT and set that to PV charger on the input from the Fronius. We just lost power this morning and I plugged our grid tie into the multiplus. It is doing about 2000w and was mostly 0w the house loads are on AC out. Does it look like this?
First of all, how does one edit the dashboard? Is it just arranged based on the connections setup? If not, how does one rearrange it?
I will try the CT and let you know. However an accurate dashboard (in my case) would be the Fronius and AC out connected together, then the inverter. Not the Fronius connected to the battery, and the MP between the Fronius and AC out loads.
It should just work. I did have a Fronius but swapped it for a 450/100 MPPT. The fronius was 4500kva sold as a 5000w so I was not happy with that and the frequency shifting was putting my office UPS into alarm mode. But it was extremely easy to set up and just worked. You have not shown us where the Fronius is connected in the console. If it is not on AC out 1 and set to AC in the desired calculation might not work.
I can only change in the ESS menu to monitor “single phase” instead of multi phase, not L1 in particular.
Despite that, when I go into the PV inverter settings there isn’t a dropdown menu (as opposted to your screenshot) and I can’t select anything else other than Multiphase.
I dont think its a VRM issue. Looking at the screen shot for the fronius info there is no data for any phase. Phase L1 should show Voltage, current and power but all the phases are 0 with a total down the bottom. I am pretty sure if you can find the setting to populate data on phase L1 it should show up.
This is from the manual. The setup must have been done wrong because it only will have a multiphase if a 3-phase system or split phase. This needs to be corrected.
Thank you so much! I’m away for a couple of days, but will try it first thing when I’m back. Hopefully a restart fixes it, because as far as I can tell, Modbus TCP is enabled on both devices. I also need to make sure Sunspec is enabled with type int+SF:
But I can already confirm that some of the symptoms described in that link I experienced in my setup. The pv inverter showed up as Unknown and then as Taurus, never as a Gen24 Plus. My installer just renamed the device to make it look like it was detected correctly.
Partial success! Enabling Sunspec protocol made the PV Inverter automatically appear on the dashboard, additionally with correct settings and name within the remote console menu.
It shows up as a two phase system but according to the thread, the setting should become editable within a few hours. Will check out again tomorrow.
Not sure why as this is how the two systems communicate.
The Fronius needs to be on the same WiFi updated and programmed correctly to appear in the GX. Exactly as documented. There are limitations for the gen 24. Read here.
