I recently noticed that in the VRM dashboard screen, the current shown in the Grid box does not match the voltage and power readings. See below the screenshot.
In the grid box, you can see that the grid voltage was 240V. Power was 32W which was close to the setpoint 30W. However, it showed that the current was 1.7A. Why did it show 1.7A? Shouldn’t it be 0.133A?
Below is the setup of my battery storage system which is running ESS at grid setpoint 30W and battery output 950W.
Thanks for your reply. This was also what I suspected but that would mean that the power faction was around 0.1 which is so low (I don’t have that much inductive load in my household) that I gave up this possibility. May be, as the 32W shown in the grid box was the power maintained by the system (i.e. not caused by a real load) in order to maintain the grid setpoint, would it be the reason that the power factor was so low? If this is the case, the current shows in the grid box is then not that meaningful.
At near zero real power, the power factor also tends to go to zero. It’s hard to say where the reactive power is going without hooking up an oscilloscope, but I expect it to be caused in large part by distortion current. Aka current that isn’t part of the fundamental frequency.
There is still some merit in the current displayed in the box as your wires do have to be able to carry that current. In an extreme case you may not be consuming or produce any real power, but you might still overload your wires. Also, you have a number to check against if you measure with a clamp meter.
