Hi community members.
I’m a beginner here and have questions and a few issues, possibly suggestions for Victron.
We have set up a system that does not include solar as we are unable to have solar, however our power company has attractive rates during specific times. Currently we are at 3 cents a kwh from 10 AM till 3 PM, 35 cents from 4 PM till 7 PM, and 8 cents from 11 PM till 5 AM and 12 cents all other times so we chose to install a battery system to use the cheap rates as the cheap rates turned out to have a better return than spending the $17,000 on a solar system with battery backup. We CANNOT send power to our grid as this involves a ton of permits, new electrical on our home and a new line from the power company, totally expensive and not worth the return as they only pay 2.5 cents a kwh to send to grid.
Our current setup is:
2 Victron 48/10000/140 Quatrro inverters in split phase mode
1 Lynx Shunt
2 Lynx Distributors
1 Cerbo GX
4 Ruixu Lith16 48V 16 kw 314 AH batterys that give us 64kw battery capacity.
We took our current 100A connection from the grid and ran it to the AC1 IN on the inverters and ran the AC1 OUT to our new panel and moved all our home circuits to the new panel.
First issue-suggestion to victron. In ESS why do you not accommodate energy storage templates that allow us to use the system without solar and depending on the power company’s rate plan that we can manually input and don’t try to send power to the grid. We want to favor battery charge times and off grid disconnect when rates are high. If it is there documentation is sparse to non existant. If im wrong and it is there its not obvious to me and there is no PDF that outlines steps to do so. Currently I am using node-red to turn off the AC1 input, turn the charger to 0A to allow pass through of the grid so I can run on grid when the batterys empty and only recharge during the super cheap times, etc, node-red is great but adding if-then commands is difficult and too complex for your typical DIY person.
Our Lunx shunt, When we reboot the Cerbo is there and works fine, after about an hour it vanishes from the system.
Setting up the charger was a festive experence. The billt-in BMS on the Ruixu battery’s are sending thier paramaters to the Cerbo just fine, however the Cerbo and the inverter/chargers still needed manual configurations to get the proper voltages for charging and discharging rates in several places. Tottaly un-intuitive.
I have several other issues and questions but this is what I’m currently up to in my install process. Please don’t attack me as I am a DIY beginner and chose Victron because we had such great success with it on our sailboat.
