question

sardonicus avatar image
sardonicus asked

Supplementing grid power with a generator

This is a very general question. Is it possible with a quattro to supplement grid power with a generator? I am looking at potentially having a source of fuel that is free which I can run a generator with, but my generator is not sufficient to run my entire house on its own, and my source of fuel may be intermittent. If it is possible I would like to run the generator around 50% capacity to offset some of the grid usage to reduce my power bill, which is enormous in the summer. Like 3000 dollars a month enormous. I do not have batteries at the moment, but I will in the future.

MultiPlus Quattro Inverter ChargerGeneratorgrid
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3 Answers
nickdb avatar image
nickdb answered ·

Victron inverters aren't designed nor supported to run without batteries.

The two AC inputs are either one or the other, with AC1 taking priority.

There is no load sharing/balancing across inputs so you can't feed from two different supplies simultaneously.

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sardonicus avatar image
sardonicus answered ·

Thank you for the response.

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hennie-mouton avatar image
hennie-mouton answered ·

A bit late, but here some ideas, which I cannot say for sure will work, so gather some expert opinion first. You can have a small battery, then connect the generator via an external DC charger providing 53 V or so to the battery, assuming a 48V battery sytem, and this DC then feeds your inverter.There will be no control, if not an intelligent chargers, once the battery is full. If it's a Li battery with BMS, that should not be so much of a problem, as the BMS will cut off charge to the battery when full.
OR, put the generator feed via a rectifier only, and feed that 120 / 230 / more V DC into an MPPT, similar to a wind turbine or a large PV string, which also feeds the DC side. In this instance the inverter (Quattro, or Multiplus I would think) can control the MPPT and thus the charge coming into the battery/DC side.

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