EG4 System - Oregon!

Hi All.

Introductory post to share my system and experience so far with EG4 products.  I have a grid connected system with inverter, battery, and 16kW of solar modules to supply power to my 2300sqft home and shop.   I also have a backup generator (propane fuel) for more lengthy winter blackouts.  

Main system components:  280AH Wall Mount Indoor battery, 18kPV Inverter, and 40 solar modules.  30 of the modules are 395W and roof mounted on my garage, and the remaining 10 are are bifacial 400W modules (520W peak) ground-mounted behind the garage, all south facing.  

I installed the first 30 modules last fall, and then through the winter I worked on the ground mount and had the remaining modules installed by January.  So, it is just in the last month that I have come around to optimizing working modes on the inverter to maximize my solar harvest.   Up until then it worked fine to operate in self-consumption overnight and switch to solar charge priority during the peak hours.   

The 18kPV inverter has a LOT of configuration options, and my experience has been that the instructions/manuals are not quite as intuitive or explanatory as I would like.   Example:  One key feature of this inverter is its ability to take advantage of up to 18kPV of solar modules, while only making 12kW of AC power.   THE KEY - it converts some of the energy DC-to-DC to charge the battery.   My challenge was that there was no clear guidance as to HOW to configure the unit to take advantage of more than 12-13KW of solar to realize this benefit!   Clearly I needed to charge batteries during peak sun hours, but the settings and modes interact in some ways that are not described nor intuitive.   I’ll share more on where I am in this quest in a further post, but for now I will just say that I have finally achieved a peak solar utilization of a bit over 17kW while charging battery and using AC for a combination of house and grid export.  

I am really liking this system!  

Rob