Another Generator question

@pawnee Just to be clear the issue remains the same when the inverter switches from generator to battery?
I will report this again to the team so we can look further into this.

@ron
The closest option is AC charge mode, where the inverter uses either the grid or a generator to power loads and charge batteries. However, it cannot charge the batteries and use them to power loads simultaneously.

@eric yes, but for whatever reason adding 1 minute to cooldown did stop it from switching from battery to generator then back to the battery then the brownout. 

Now once voltage is reached the generator stops charging the batteries. The batteries take over the house and after the cooldown period the generator shuts off and then the batteries disconnect from the house for a second or so. Thanks for staying on this 

@pawnee @eric When the generator is running and producing AC the inverter passes the AC through to power your loads and also converts the AC to DC to charge the batteries. The brownout is occurring when the inverter has to switch from converting AC to DC to charge the batteries to inverting battery DC to AC to power your loads as it can't do both at the same time. I was hoping that the "cool down" process would allow the generator to provide pass through AC for the loads and allow the inverter time to make this switch avoiding the brown out. This is why I have a chargeverter as the inverter does not have a separate converter

@ron according to my 18k screen and my amp meter the generator is not running the house at this point. The batteries are when the brownout occurs, or you could say the generator has handed the load to the batteries. Then for some reason when the generator shuts off the batteries disconnect. I don't get any amp measurement coming from the generator when this happens.

@pawnee How exactly did you determine that the house loads were being powered through the batteries and inverter and not the generator?

@ron amp clamp on the wires coming from the generator

Doesn't make any sense to me. Good luck

I want to add my voice to this issue. It's clear that this is a software/firmware issue. I just had a 12 kpv Installed in the last 10 days. My home is entirely off grid not grid tide. I was running off of two trace engineering inverters for a very long time and when I ran the generator in the generator turned off it switched over to batteries instantly with no problem. After installing the 12 kpv when the generator is running and switches off the entire house browns out causing all electronics to turn off and then back on. This actually causes a problem with my zoned heating controller which false to some sort of weird error state and cannot function. Have to physically unplug the device wait for about half a minute and then plug it back in for it to electronically reset in order it for it to work. This has caused us to have no heat or what hot water in the morning after a generator run in the previous evening. This is a big problem and needs eyes on it fast. For people that are running completely off grid these inverters are not a good choice until this is fixed. Oh, btw, I'm running a six stack of Eg4-LL batteries, so the system is fully compatible.

@britton-beckham you are describing what all of us are experiencing. Can’t imagine this function was ever tested prior to shipping on an off-grid system.

@wardo5757 I agree, it seems like this is an obvious failure in pushing product to market. It also seems like an easy fix, so not sure why EG4 isn't getting people on it. Yet, now that I understand how these are basically white-labeled, it makes me wonder the difficulty it is for them to make changes to software/firmware.

@britton-beckham at this point I have to agree. The EG4 and SS folks have been great but they should probably just call it a game and send out discounted charge controllers

So we haven’t had sun for 4 days. Last night at 3 the house looses power. I go out and check the settings and it doesn’t appear that anything is wrong. I reset the start/stop values and the gen starts. I check it at 7 this morning and it has stopped charging the batteries and is just running the house, but won’t shut off. I manually killed the gen and the 18k wouldn’t switch back to battery power. I reset the start/stop values again and will post if it works. I’ve gen cycled probably 50 times and have never seen this.

I’ll say it again EG4 just send me a chargeverter and let’s be done with this!! 

I believe I have found the root of the problem, so I'm adding to this conversation again in hope to get this issue resolved. It's all software related. Mentioning @eg4eric. Thank you Eric for your help in troubleshooting this issue, I hope this post provides the information needed to tackle this problem and make all owners happier.

When I first added my voice to this conversation about a month ago, I had just newly installed the inverter 12 KPV into my system. I was replacing two separate inverters that were running 4K each per leg. Because this old system that I had was very outdated, I was controlling the operation of the generator using my own ad hoc system automation with HomeAssistant and a Victron CerboGX controller.

I was running the generator manually (via automation), or I could turn the generator on at will and my inverters would pick up the incoming power and switch over after about 30 or so seconds of starting the generator up. And then, when I turned the generator off, the inverters would immediately detect the loss of power and switch over to battery power. This switch would occur very fast with and would only cause a minor change in the electrical power to the house, noticed by a slight dimming of the lights, but not a brown out. Nothing would turn off and no electronics were reset in this switch over. 

I operated my generator this way for about a year. Now, after I installed the 12 KPV, I assumed that the 12 KPV would be able to handle manual switching of the generator without any issue, just my assumption based on previous inverters. So this was the way I tested my 12 KPV with the generator--by doing manual start and stops. Yet, when I tested a manual stop on the 12KPV, it could not handle the loss of power quick enough and a total brown out would occurred, and vital electronics would turn off and restart. This would cut my electricity to everything including my Internet, computers, stoves, oven, refrigerators, etc. For the most part, this wasn't a a problem, except for those electronics that need a constant power like Internet and computers.

A few days ago, I decided to set up the inverter to actually handle the start and stop operation for the generator (using the inverter's normally open [NO] relay) in order to see if I could troubleshoot the problem further. What I determined was when the 12 KPV handles the starting and stopping of the generator it does so with a very nice level of grace that is very capable of shifting the power over without any brownouts or almost any noticeable dimming of the electricity to the house. I tested this several times.

What this tells me is that the problem lies with the software detection of the lack of power coming in through the generator lines. The inverter might be assuming that it will turn off the power for the generator and do the transition its own way, and I do think the transition of the 12 KPV has from generator to battery power is smooth. Yet if the generator is turned off prematurely for any reason, without the inverter performing the transition, then the power browns out to the house (too slow of detection and switch over).

This problem that I'm describing is actually not good for a number of reasons. A generator run can be initiated by the inverter, but the false assumption that the inverter will always handle the generator shut down is a logical fallacy. There are many reasons why the generator may shut off prematurely. For example, the generators gas supply is cut off or runs out, or the generator may actually have a fault on its own accord and shut down for safety or electronic protection reasons. Another use case is that I may personally turn the generator off myself for my own reasons. 

I am proposing that EG4 make the following changes for their inverters for handling generators.

1. Firstly, in my walking through all the generator settings, I discovered that the inverter does not have settings for time of day operation of the generator. This very basic and reasonable setting is needed if you don't want the generator to run in the middle of the night and wake up your neighbors. Even though I'm in the mountains, I still have people within an earshot and the generator running in the middle of the night could be a formula for making bad neighbors, and also waking up my entire household, which I may not want. The only place I found time block settings was in the AC (grid) charge. So I'm asking for time block settings to be added to the generator run configuration.

2. Reprogram the firmware so that I can handle manual stops of the generator with more grace and smoothness, with the objective of eliminating browning out.

3. Finally, provide a button to initiate generator start and stop (not exercise). Currently there is a button that initiates the generator exercise, but this only runs for a pre-determined amount of time (uncontrollable). Ideally, it would be great to have a button for me to flip on and flip off the generator at will. Please note that I'm in a total off-grid situation and this is what any off-grid owner would want to do. Essentially, this just means adding a button for each relay to be manually controlled.

4. Bonus: (please prioritize the above three over this request). Add more advanced generator programability to give more strategic control of how the generator runs. For example, given a low light day, the batteries may hold at a certain low percentage all day long, without much drain or charge. Yet, when night rolls around, the power may be too low to make it through the night but not low enough to trigger the generator auto start, or it would be too late to run the generator when the batteries finally hit the threshold. What would be intelligent would be to have the generator estimate the need for generator power to charge the batteries and base on the time settings in #3 (above), it would be able to trigger charging before the threshold triggered it. This could also be smart enough to incorporate solar power estimations for the next day.

Thank you for your time and attention, EG4!

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