I have a 15kVA Quattro. On AC1, I’ve got essential loads, which never exceed the Quattro’s capacity. The AC2 is configured to turn off when grid is lost, and I have a heat pump connected there.
On occasion, when the AC1 has some load on it and the heat pump starts, I get to around 11-13kW output, which triggers the L1 overload warning. This happened when all my use was covered by solar and/or batteries and grid was not used (but was connected).
My question is - would the Quattro not start passing through power from grid once the inverter is maxed out? Or would it disconnect loads even if there is ample capacity left from the grid? As I’ve said, this situation can only happen when grid is up, as otherwise the AC2 is off and so is the heat pump.
I am worried that if the spike was larger, say around 15kW for some time, the Quattro would shut down instead of just starting to pass through grid power to make up the difference and take my entire system down for no apparent reason. This has not happened yet though, I only get the warning once or twice a month as it rarely happens that the heat pump and AC1 loads are high at the same time.
@petr_io if the input current limit is not exceeded it will
pass the current. If the input current is exceeded and the “Power Assist” feature is on, it will boost the input current limit by the power assist factor ( default = 2.0).
Warning is normal ok. You are still within capability. Its alarm that is the one to pay attention to.
Think about this- what would happen if grid was rejected or an input breaker trips randomly or a brownout or blackout?
It is good to be informed.
Also 15kVa is 12000w so you are pretty much near the edge of inverting capability there assuming 25°C.
Ok, so it’s effectively safe to ignore those warnings?
As I’ve said, the only time I can go near 12kW load is when non-essential loads are on, and those are connected to AC2, thus the load would drop to around 5kW if grid failed.
A scenario then - let’s say my loads get to 16kW (9kW from grid and say 7kW inverter) for an extended period of time , will I just have a permanent warning on in that case? Is there any way to let the system know how much load is leaving on AC2 and thus should not need to be considered as a warning state?
Overload warnings can also be caused by batteries when dealing with transients. Heat pumps without a soft start will pull orders of magnitude more power when it kicks it, something you will not see on the console or charts.
Combine those two and overloads can happen.
You didn’t say what battery you were using?
Overloads can have different causes and are not always obvious or related to load. Though sometimes they are.
Typically, on a balanced system with a decent grid, you should never see them.
As mentioned, warnings and alarms are not the same thing.
If my maths is right then that is rated to around 13kW, give or take (250A cont).
Personally I like a bit more headroom for larger systems, but that is a decent battery/BMS.
Anyhoo, was just adding some context.
When it turns off , then you can worry.
I’ve got an update - happened today again. I can see from the monitoring that loads slowly reached 12kW, at which point the grid was being used for anything above (ended up drawing around 0.5kW at the peak from grid). So from what I can see, everything worked fine - the inverter used it’s full capacity and then started using grid.
Any idea how to disable this specific notification? Or amend to receive it only when the load was going over 12kW and grid was NOT available? (as this state should not happen)
