question

iromeo avatar image
iromeo asked

Quattro limit charge from grid

Hi folks,


I have a migro-grid system with a 1000VA quattro and 8kw Fronius.

The fronius is fed with 8kwp solar array (over-compensating for cloudy days as I will rarely use all of that power and connected to the mains in the house.

The quattro is connected to a 20kw lead battery bank and also has a genny connected for those really bad days.

During the summer, i only had 1 string of panels connected (4kw) and was rarely charging with more than 3.5kw the battery bank, but today, since connecting the second string, i got at least 6 at some point.


I tried to limit the quattro, but it seems the limit is for AC In only, while my set-up should limit charging from AC-Out.


Any ideas how should enable this limitation?


Thanks!

Romeo



charge current limit
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3 Answers
Justin Cook avatar image
Justin Cook answered ·

@iRomeo, I'm a little uncertain as to what you're asking; am I safe in assuming that you mean you want to limit charging via DC out rather than AC out? If you have a charger plugged into the Quattro on AC, then the only way to limit charging would be if your AC-to-DC charger had a settable current limitation; on the other hand, if you're inquiring about limiting charging on DC-out directly through your Quattro, charger current limit can be set through VictronConnect (using an MK3 to USB Interface) in Settings>Charger>Charge Current

I've attached a screenshot of the setting in a demo product; you didn't specify which model of Quattro you have, but the setting should be in the same place regardless.

If you were inquiring about a different method of limiting charge, however, please supply additional information about what exactly you're trying to do?

Cheers


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iromeo avatar image
iromeo answered ·

Thanks @Justin Cook! That charging feature was exactly what i was looking for.

And i did browse the menu, it just didn't pop :)


I now have a strange situation- my battery bank is ~20kw so i should charge it with a max of 4kw, so I set the charge to 20A (i was wrongly calculating 20A*220V, not the 50V(rather 48) that the bank is set. While it was set at 20A (now set at 70A), it somehow limited the Fronius into producing no more than 20A. I was using ~1kwh and charging with only ~1.5kwh the bank.

So the charging limit, limited the output of the Fronius.

Later I changed it to 40A and the charging increased accordingly, but the Fronius output (on the Fronius display) was producing exactly the consumed+charging capacity (It was rather sunny so it should have over-produced, but this was not the case until i set the charging to 80A).


Weird, right?

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Justin Cook avatar image Justin Cook ♦♦ commented ·

@iRomeo, unfortunately the Fronius is a device I can't help you with, this sounds like a question for a different post altogether. I know the Victron and Sterling lines like the back of my hand, but haven't dealt with Fronius at all, so I can't be of any assistance here, alas!

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iromeo avatar image iromeo Justin Cook ♦♦ commented ·

I'll dig deeper to get to the bottom of this. I do suspect it's a firmware issue.

Thanks again for your help on the charging issue! Really appreciate it!!

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iromeo avatar image
iromeo answered ·

ps - how did you get the cool new view? I assume it's not VE Configure.

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Justin Cook avatar image Justin Cook ♦♦ commented ·

This is VictronConnect on a desktop, which works for setting/programming most features on MultiPlus/Quattro/etc as long as you're hardwire-connected using an MK3 to USB Interface.

If you need to program Assistants, you still need to use VEConfig, and VE.Bus configuration still needs to be done using the special VE.Bus programs, but the vast majority of all functions and programming for a standard user can now be done through VictronConnect for Windows or (maybe) iOS machines... not sure about iOS stuff because I have no iDevices to test that on.

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