I would like to use the inverter only setting to prevent grid consumption when it’s expensive. But when I turn this on and grid is available, lights with dimmers start flickering. Not constantly but a lot.
This morning the grid was actually down and the lights were pretty much ok (99% of the time), but when the grid came back (Victron still said not_connected) my light in the living room went to stroboscope.. literally. Until Victron went to state “grid” instead of not_connected.
Is there any solution to this issue? Seems like it wants to sync with grid somehow when inverter only is active with grid available.
Can you tell us about the grid? Which country? How the grid is stable/unstable? Grid voltage theoretically and practically? What’s happening if you connect lights to grid without going through Victron equipment?
Belgium, grid is stable to my knowledge, no issues when grid is live.
So lights will not flicker when it’s live (through Victron equipment), connecting them direct is not going to change anything I reckon?
Theoretical 240V, practical (right now) L1 235 ,L2 235 ,L3 234
At the time of the outage, output of the Victron was 230
Image below is from today, mouse is were the grid was down.
The 2 dips after are when grid is live, but the issue happens when grid is live and Victron is set to inverter only so grid stability is probably not so much a factor?
I do believe it’s more of a fequency issue where the dimmers go haywire, I have not seen any flickering on “non-dimmed” lights.
We had our own experience with LEDs flicking when introducing Quattros.
Essentially all of our lights are on high-quality Lutron dimmers, so we have many different combinations of LEDs (ranging from very cheap LEDs to quite expensive).
We noticed only a couple cheaper LED models would flicker, and only when in a slightly dimmed state (e.g., 85%). We resolved this by just switching those cheaper LEDs to higher quality ones, with better internal drivers.
The flickering was more frequent a few seconds after a large load turned on / off – and only when the Quattros were grid-connected (no flicker when off-grid).
Our grid is also very solid, and we never had flickering before installing the Quattros (even with PV microinverters).
The really interesting observation was those LEDs would flicker regardless of whether they were connected to the AC Input or AC Output side of the Quattros, while the Quattros were grid-connected. This was quite concerning as it would imply our neighbors, who are connected up-stream of the Quattros (to the same utility transformer) may be impacted.
We also tried without ESS Assistant installed (thinking the parallel operation my be affecting something) but that didn’t seem to matter, neither did disconnecting the PV microinverters.
It seems there is some sort of “noise” the Quattros are injecting into the AC system, but we didn’t bother researching further after replacing the handful of cheaper LEDs (and our neighbors didn’t complain about their lights flickering )
Yes, I’ve seen your post I believe but you have the issue with grid live, I do not, so I’m not sure if it’s related tbh.
I also failed to mention one of my UPS’s also doesn’t like it very much either.
What exactly was your “flicker”?
Mine is just like someone is dimming a bit and brightening a bit for a while, then it goes back to normal only to repeat a while later.
So aside from the stroboscope (out and on full brightness) I got when it went back to live (before it was live in victron though…) it’s “minor”.
It’s just very annoying to sit under a light that is doing that the whole time.
I’m using Fibaro zwave dimmers but I also noticed it on Aqara led strips.
It could also be that the voltage it’s producing is a but low, 240 is expected but not 230 (and a little below).
But it seems that this can’t be changed in the settings
)