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byron avatar image
byron asked

Grid alarm: Grid lost, lights flickering and relay chattering.

Good day All,

We installed 3 x 10kVA Quattro's in Parallel. I keep getting the following notification "System overview [261] - Grid alarm: Grid lost" and get an exemptional amount of emails seconds apart . The lights in the house keep diming/flickering. when the inverter accepts the grid the lights dim and when grid is lost and the inverter inverts the lights are bright.

I have set the Low AC Connect parameters higher as I noticed due to the poor supply from our municipal grid the parameters of Low AC Disconnect & Low AC Connect were to close hence the hundreds of mails.

This did help to a point . The problem I'm still having is that I can hear how the contactor opens and closes in random intervals . 5min , 8min, 12min then randomly 2min etc. which the lights dim or flicker.


This problem completely disappears when we disconnect the grid and unfortunately we do need the grid for rainy days.


Any advice would be appreciated.

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1 Answer
Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) avatar image
Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) answered ·

The easy answer to stop the emails is to disable the Grid Alarm feature -

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But that sounds more like a symptom than a cause.

The grid alarm is going off, because your grid supply is fluctuating in and out of the acceptable range. You can increase the acceptable range (which comes with other problems) or decrease the acceptable range (which means less time connected).

The best advice I can give you is to monitor the system closely on VRM and see how the AC voltage is behaving to get a sense of what is a 'normal' and acceptable voltage range. Also looking at how the grid responds to varying current loads, and a various times of day.

Get to know your system and situation really well, and you might be able to optimise things a bit to get the best out of it. Or a bigger system and just do away with it entirely, if that is an option for you.


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byron avatar image byron commented ·

@Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager)

I have been monitoring the VRM and there are times that the contact opens and closes even when the voltages are within the set parameters. Turning off the notification would eliminate the constant mails but the lights flickering and dimming in the house not.

I forgot to mention that I did not have this problem when I Initially installed 2 x 10kVA inverters at first and when upgraded to the the 3rd 10kVA the problem started however I have removed the 3rd inverter and tested with the 2 x previously installed 10kVA units which did not eliminate the problem.



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