Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

Clif

Basically I got screwed (along with the 2 other solar systems on our utility). We were told we could get net metering but the utility decided they would go with net sale and purchase instead. I have 24 230 watt panels, a XW6048 and 300 AH of batteries. After much reading here I understand that I should have 600AH of batteries . Not much I can do about that right now. Last month I purchased 813 KWH at about 12 cents a KWH and sold back 434 KWH at 3 cents a KWH. I did not put any large loads in the electric panel fed by the Inverter because I thought I woud have net metering and it wouldn't mater. I only put lights , the fridge and a couple of outlets for the computers and tv. At this point what I want to do is maximize the solar power I am using and minimize any going back to the grid. I want to not overload my battery bank and get the longest life out if it that I can. I am going to move my HVACto the inverter load panel ( I am in Florida) and more small loads. What would be the best way to set up the XW6048 to use the power from my solar panels when it is available and not drop the charge in my batteries below 85%. I see no point in selling 434 KWH to the utility for 3 cents so would it help to shut off the sell feature since the battery bank is too small anyway, or to lower the max sell amps? Would it help to disconnect the AC1 line with a contactor when I have full solar power? Am I correct in assuming that what I sell to the grid would instead go to feed the A/C and other loads on the main load panel if they are running and so perhaphs I should have sell enabeled to go to those loads. I have small daytime loads in the winter with the A/C off. I have the XW so that I would have some power in outages. Would I be better off to sell it and go grid tie and try to maximize my daytime loads? Right now I am just wasting all those beautiful expensive panels on my roof so any suggestion would be helpful.

niel

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

welcome to the forum,
maybe sell is the wrong wording for it. when it is in sell mode the power from your pvs through the inverter can offset the power you use in the house as it goes there first. it does not sell until solar provides more power than you are using. even selling back at 3 cents a kwh is better than getting nothing at the times when you don't use all of the power. it would be easy to be a power gluten as you can supplement electric resistance heat in the winter and run some a/c units in the summer. do add some more batteries to your system so as to keep the ripple down. until then try not to tax the inverter and batteries too much with heavy draws on them. the extra batteries would also give you better backup capabilities during an outage.

Clif

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

niel wrote: »

welcome to the forum,
maybe sell is the wrong wording for it. when it is in sell mode the power from your pvs through the inverter can offset the power you use in the house as it goes there first. it does not sell until solar provides more power than you are using. even selling back at 3 cents a kwh is better than getting nothing at the times when you don't use all of the power. it would be easy to be a power gluten as you can supplement electric resistance heat in the winter and run some a/c units in the summer. do add some more batteries to your system so as to keep the ripple down. until then try not to tax the inverter and batteries too much with heavy draws on them. the extra batteries would also give you better backup capabilities during an outage.

Due to my current financial situation more batteries are not possible. Would it help the ripple problem to lower the sell amps and put more loads on the inverter load panel? At this point I feel like more batteries might even be putting more good money into a very bad investment. The idea that over time batteries could cost $1000 a year and the 3 cents per KWH are making me think there is no up side to this. I have AGM batteries and instead of spending another $3000 on batteries I could sell the XW6048 and buy a grid tie inverter. I just don't have any loads in the daytime in the winter. Despite several cold snaps into the 30's this winter my ICF house never droped below 72 degrees and I did not ever have the heat on.
What is the best way to keep the draw on the batteries low? I presume enable grid support, and sell. Does it make any difference in the way the inverter handles this situation if I switch loads to the inverter panel and possibly disable the AC1 line into the inverter during the sunshine. This could be done with a small solar panel and a relay on the AC1 input line.

Blackcherry04

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

You can do as you said, cut the AC in, but your going to produce more than you can use or store ?? I'd rewire the Electrical Panel and put all you can on it. That may be the cheapest. You have a great Inverter, the system is not designed to do what your trying to do. Adding more Batteries is a option, but that you'd want to do soon before the age difference becomes a problem. AGM's probably not the best for serious off grid.

It's nice to have some standby power, I used mine once in 30 years for a week, that week cost me probably $20,000 +, not hardly a good investment. Lucky for me my utility just " banks " my excess and it's a net bill. I went into the Winter with 3,000 KWH's banked and burned them off with space heaters.

PM a member " Northguy ", he's been setting up a system like yours with on & off Grid. He should be able to help you get all the numbers right. Do Not despair, it's doable with what you have, it just takes some fancy dancing and power management. Your Hot water heater can be put on a Timer, that would eat a bunch and you could add a second one. Another thing we do is turn the Air Conditioner down lower in the day time, that will lower the latent heat stored inside the house. Then we turn it up a couple degrees when the sun goes away. I know it sounds contrary to normal grid thinking, but it helps. With ceiling fans, our A/C won't even come on till around midnight or so. Some cooking can be done in the daytime, washing and drying is another one that can be shifted, easy to put a timer on a dryer.
.

BB.

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

Need to understand what is Net Sell and Net Buy... And are these time of use or just flat rate (no noon-6pm higher peak rates, etc.).

There are several ways the meter(s) can be setup...

The basic is meter turns backwards when excess power is going to the grid, and forwards when drawing power from grid. And the difference is the end of month bill.

But, it sounds like yours is setup to spin forward when buying power--put into one "register". And spin backwards when buying power--put value into second register.

If the second way is what is being billed--That is a tough management issue. Basically, you want to balance your usage to zero (as seen by the utility) as much as possible. That means using loads during the day when the system is selling power, and using less at other times (or even, possibly using battery/stored energy).

It would be neat if the XW could be programmed to do this--But, I don't think it can. You could look at a whole house meter like this one (TED has a bi-directional model that can do net metering) and manage your loads manually.

But this is going to be tough to optimize your energy use. And you will probably wear out the batteries faster by cycling them vs floating them--So, with your $0.12 per kWH energy cost, it may not be cost effective to try brining battery usage into the equation.

Setting up your home A/C to precool during the day and then run very low during evening/night/early mornings is your best bet (similar if you have electric hot water--heat during day, turn off at night, etc.).

What your utility is doing is probably the best (for them) in terms of reflecting their costs (short of high fixed charge for billing/infrastructure and low kWH billing/buying--the typical, at least for California commercial billing method). If more utilities start doing this, it will probably kill GT Solar.

At this point, looking at conservation on your side is going to be the next point of investment (something like a GE Geospring heat pump based water heater if you have propane/electric hot water).

-Bill

Blackcherry04

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

I don't see why you couldn't set up a AGS to create Grid use instead of a Generator. With a relay / contactor it should be easy to work out. They seem to have a lot of flexibility programmed in them. My " Gen " settings must have 100 different perimeters you can set and when it's enabled it shuts off many of the grid selling and charging automatically. You may try to use them without doing anything, I think you would have to that the input power on AC2. On my Outback GFX it disables all the bi-directional ability when you choose " Gen " as the Input.

NorthGuy

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

You could charge batteries during the day and use this electricity during the night.

As I understand your explanation, most of the loads are connected to AC1 input on XW. There's no way for XW to know how much loads you have there, and therefore it will not know whether it is feeding these loads or selling. If you try to support these loads by discharging batteries, you will end up selling the power from your batteries to the grid.

You can maintain the loads connected to ACOut of XW (on sub-panel) mostly with off-grid power, but you won't be able to sell this way. You can put more loads there if you want. You need to enable "Grid support", but disable "Sell". It will use minimum energy from the grid (about 1A, 5kWh/day) and the rest from batteries. It'll automatically re-charge batteries from the grid if they go too low. Loads on XW input (AC1) will only be powered from grid. This is probably the best that you can achive without adding any extrenal relays/transfer switches.

Clif

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

BB. wrote: »

Need to understand what is Net Sell and Net Buy... And are these time of use or just flat rate (no noon-6pm higher peak rates, etc.).

There are several ways the meter(s) can be setup...

The basic is meter turns backwards when excess power is going to the grid, and forwards when drawing power from grid. And the difference is the end of month bill.

But, it sounds like yours is setup to spin forward when buying power--put into one "register". And spin backwards when buying power--put value into second register.

If the second way is what is being billed--That is a tough management issue. Basically, you want to balance your usage to zero (as seen by the utility) as much as possible. That means using loads during the day when the system is selling power, and using less at other times (or even, possibly using battery/stored energy).

It would be neat if the XW could be programmed to do this--But, I don't think it can. You could look at a whole house meter like this one (TED has a bi-directional model that can do net metering) and manage your loads manually.

But this is going to be tough to optimize your energy use. And you will probably wear out the batteries faster by cycling them vs floating them--So, with your $0.12 per kWH energy cost, it may not be cost effective to try brining battery usage into the equation.

Setting up your home A/C to precool during the day and then run very low during evening/night/early mornings is your best bet (similar if you have electric hot water--heat during day, turn off at night, etc.).

What your utility is doing is probably the best (for them) in terms of reflecting their costs (short of high fixed charge for billing/infrastructure and low kWH billing/buying--the typical, at least for California commercial billing method). If more utilities start doing this, it will probably kill GT Solar.

At this point, looking at conservation on your side is going to be the next point of investment (something like a GE Geospring heat pump based water heater if you have propane/electric hot water).

-Bill

My meter reads in both directions. I buy from the utility at 12 cents and sell back at 3 cents.

Clif

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

Blackcherry04 wrote: »

I don't see why you couldn't set up a AGS to create Grid use instead of a Generator. With a relay / contactor it should be easy to work out. They seem to have a lot of flexibility programmed in them. My " Gen " settings must have 100 different perimeters you can set and when it's enabled it shuts off many of the grid selling and charging automatically. You may try to use them without doing anything, I think you would have to that the input power on AC2. On my Outback GFX it disables all the bi-directional ability when you choose " Gen " as the Input.

What is an AGS?

Clif

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

OK. Maybe I am confusing people. Here is what I want to do:
1. Not use the batteries to shift the load to nightime since my battery bank is to small and this would probably cost more in battery replacment than I save.
2.Fully utilize my daytime solar power which means selling to the grid so that that power is available on the main house load panel if the well pump or other large load comes on.
3.Not have problems because my battery bank is undersided to sell to the grid. So the question here is would liminting the sell amps protedt the batteries even though I lose capacity? What settings sould I use to do this?
4.Prevent the inverter from using grid power when solar is available to power the necessary loads. The inverter still wants to use some grid power so would shutting of the input to AC1 force the inverter to use solar at full capicity for loads on the inverter load panel? This could be done with a relay switched by a small solar panel that would turn on AC1 during rainy or cloudy weather to prevent deeply discharging the batteries.
5. Are there any other settings in the configuration that will assist me in maximing my daytime solar usage?
6.Is there any difference in the way the inverter would let me use the most solar with grid sell amps lowered to protect the batteries depending if the load was on the inverter load panel or the main house panel?
7. Would I just be better off with a straight grid tie system and timers to shift as much load to daytime as possible?

It seems to me without netmetering that the XW6048 is worse for me than just a grid tie system or am I mistaken here?

ChrisOlson

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

Blackcherry04 wrote: »

I don't see why you couldn't set up a AGS to create Grid use instead of a Generator. With a relay / contactor it should be easy to work out.

It could, possibly. But you'd have to mimic a generator pretty closely because the XW-AGS requires things like a gen run signal to let it know the generator has started during cranking.

It's a lot simpler to just disable Sell but still use Grid Support.
--
Chris

Cariboocoot

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

A little mathematical analysis for what it's worth.

Twenty-four 230 Watt panels = 5520 Watts, derating = 4250 Watts
Four hours minimum good sun = array production of 17 kW hours DC
Divide by nominal 48 Volts = 354 Amp hours

Obviously it is not possible to store the array's potential daily harvest in only 300 Amp hours of battery. As such it isn't possible to store it all up for use 'at night'.
Most of its production therefor either has to go to loads, be sold back to the grid, or be lost.
Turning on loads just to use power isn't very sensible if they're not actually needed and losing the potential harvest isn't economical.

Without putting in the larger battery bank the system should have had in the first place it looks like Niel's suggestion of continuing to sell surplus to the utility is the best option, even if the price is very low. Something is better than nothing.

NorthGuy

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

Blackcherry04 wrote: »

I don't see why you couldn't set up a AGS to create Grid use instead of a Generator.

Or, instead of AGS, you could use AUX output from XW to operate relay or transfer switch. However, the installation of the transfer switch will require some re-wiring.

Cariboocoot

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

I have to ask: what charge controller is being used with this system?
If it is a 60 Amp then a fairly significant portion of the array's power is being lost anyway.

NorthGuy

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Without putting in the larger battery bank the system should have had in the first place it looks like Niel's suggestion of continuing to sell surplus to the utility is the best option, even if the price is very low. Something is better than nothing.

Prices are stacked in a very bad way. OP has to pay $0.12 for the energy. If he can store something for the night, even if half of it is lost in the process, he still saves $0.06. If he sells, he only gets $0.03.

It may be more economical to store part of the energy produced during the day, and may be use it to power loads for part of the night, and then switch them to the grid when batteries are discharged to 50% or so.

More batteries would certainly balance the system and make it viable for emergencies.

Cariboocoot

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

The basic problem is: he hasn't got the battery capacity to store it. That leaves use it, lose it, or sell it painfully cheap.

ChrisOlson

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

How about if he disables Sell and sets Grid Support amps at a low value to force the system to carry loads and support the grid above the allowed amps? During the day with good solar and the bank floating it would take power right from the solar to power the loads, and both solar and batteries, in conjunction with allowed Grid Support amps setting, to meet heavy loads

The limiting factor is not the solar array. It's the storage capacity to be able to use the solar array at night. But night-time loads are usually small so the low Grid Support amps setting might meet them then if you go into nightfall with a floating, fully charged battery bank. And even if a heavy load did come on at night it shouldn't use that much power from batteries overnight to meet it, that the solar couldn't catch up again the next day.

Maybe use Charger Block to keep the grid from ever charging the batteries too.

I wouldn't sell power to the grid for 3 cents and buy it back at 12. Where I come from that's called legalized highway robbery. That's worse than nothing when you got a system that you could use, with a little thinking on how to set it up, to just offset your grid usage. It's going to force the batteries to work a little bit like they would on any full-fledged off-grid system. But that's what batteries are for.

It would take some playing with it to find the allowed grid amps setting where it would maximize solar harvest without over-taxing the bank. Maybe start out at 10 amps and lower it by one amp a day until you find the batteries can't keep up at night and you wake up in the morning with the bank totally sacked and the solar can't meet daytime loads and catch the bank back up.

Your power would still stay on in the event of a grid outage. But for extended outages, purchase of a little generator hooked up to AC2 to charge batteries might be prudent.

The XW already has all the stuff in it to this without adding external contactors and whatnot to disconnect grid power when you don't want it. From what I read earlier (unless I misunderstood) the Sell didn't exceed usage. All you have to do is find that "sweet spot" for how many amps you want to allow off the grid to meet the usage that the RE system can't supply.
--
Chris

NorthGuy

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

Cariboocoot wrote: »

The basic problem is: he hasn't got the battery capacity to store it. That leaves use it, lose it, or sell it painfully cheap.

It would be wise to store what he can and then sell the rest.

With XW, this choice is not easily implemented. But XW can be configured to "store what you can and lose the rest", or "sell it all". The former may be more economical, even if some (most?) of the energy is lost.

niel

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

chris,
yes, that was what i had in mind that he use the power during the sunny periods, but that's allot of power.

if this way diy he should've asked for advice first. if installed by a solar installer then the installer should've made things more clear as to what this would do.

ChrisOlson

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

niel wrote: »

chris,
yes, that was what i had in mind that he use the power during the sunny periods, but that's allot of power.

All it takes a wife that decides to do laundry for a day and you got an electric clothes dryer. 5 kW of solar power don't go very far.
--
Chris

Eric L

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

if this way diy he should've asked for advice first. if installed by a solar installer then the installer should've made things more clear as to what this would do.

Just guessing here, but from the OP's first post it looks like the utility indicated one thing but then changed its mind, perhaps between the system start and commissioning.

Anyway, my utility is similar if not quite as bad (sell at .10/kwh, buy at .05 for all produced kwh), and my system was designed accordingly with a smallish battery bank and grid support only. I leave the utility out as much as possible but still use them for the "hard" loads -- namely, loads during prolonged cloudy periods and large, intermittent loads (electric range, clothes dryer). Not that bad a deal when you stop and think about it: I get to grab all the "easy" watts. They provide the rest but get very little money from me in return (under $40/month after all their little fees and taxes are factored in). It's not as good as a grid-tie with net metering, but in the circumstances it was the best I could do and I'm glad I did it.

Some of the posters here (Joe B., maybe?) have struggled with the grid support function on the XW series, unfortunately. Among other things, I recall that it always draws at least some power from the grid in grid support, even if there is more than enough power from the renewable source. This was among the problems that drew me away from Xantrex, but in the circumstances here, with only a 300 ah bank, that light draw might be tolerable.

NorthGuy

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

ChrisOlson wrote: »

It would take some playing with it to find the allowed grid amps setting where it would maximize solar harvest without over-taxing the bank. Maybe start out at 10 amps and lower it by one amp a day until you find the batteries can't keep up at night and you wake up in the morning with the bank totally sacked and the solar can't meet daytime loads and catch the bank back up.

Then you need to set Load Shaving to avoid selling during the night, and adjust it as the length of the day length changes with the season. Then you get cloudy days when you do not want to sell. It would require tweaking the settings depending on whether and season. That would be a tricky thing.

gww1

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

What would really be neat would be if you could set an inverter to sell but have some sort of stopgap that would keep any power from actually going to the grid. Then you would have a sort of grid support type system. It would allow you to get away from matching loads in a sub panel. You could then support loads like central air that you could probly never justify fully covering with solar and/or batteries. Yet you would not have to get a grid tie agreement. If you wanted power during outages you could put some load in a sub panel but would not have to match your whole house and could support loads you can't fully cover. I will be in the same boat as the who posted this topic as I will have more solar then I have battery. Going to eat some with a preheat hot water tank but would rather cut my air conditioning and heat bill. Tall girl was working on simular to this but quit as she said it cycled the batteries more and the new outback mate 3 wouldn't accept her programing. With her programing I believe some power still slipped back to the grid.
Anyway for some one who doesn't want to mess with the electric company it would be on my wish list if it can even be done.
Cheers
gww

Blackcherry04

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

I still think there is a way to make the AGS (automatic generator start ) and Generator support and make a heck of a system.

ChrisOlson

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

Eric L wrote: »

Some of the posters here (Joe B., maybe?) have struggled with the grid support function on the XW series, unfortunately. Among other things, I recall that it always draws at least some power from the grid in grid support, even if there is more than enough power from the renewable source.

This is correct, and it's not a bug or a problem like some people think. I got our backup generator hooked to AC1 and am using the Grid Support function in the inverter with it. It works identical to Gen Support on AC2. It will only draw power from the grid if there's loads. It will draw power from the grid up to the setting you have it set at, then supplement from the batteries when the loads exceed the amp setting.

I can't see how anybody can struggle with it. It's so simple that it really needs no explanation. It's doing exactly what you told it to do - support the grid with battery/inverter power at a certain load threshold. That's why it's called "Grid Support".

There's also some settings for Load Shaving. But I have no way to try those to see what they do.
--
Chris

ChrisOlson

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

Blackcherry04 wrote: »

I still think there is a way to make the AGS (automatic generator start ) and Generator support and make a heck of a system.

In theory that could be done if you tell the XW-AGS that the grid is a two-wire generator (can't remember what "type" that would be in the menu selections). And have the signal from the AGS operate a 12V pilot relay that in turn operates a heavy contactor to turn the grid on and off to AC2.

However, in that situation you're dealing with a simulated off-grid situation with very small battery bank on a very big inverter, and it's going to work the living snot out of the bank. That little battery bank, no way, can handle a 6 kW load on the inverter. And the XW requires the battery bank to carry a heavy load, or overload, for five minutes before it will call for help from the generator. Five minutes at 6-8 kW load, with no incoming solar, will pull a little 350 ah battery bank down to the LBCO almost instantly just due to voltage sag from not having enough battery behind it, and you'll probably lose power before the five minutes is up.
--
Chris

NorthGuy

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

ChrisOlson wrote: »

This is correct, and it's not a bug or a problem like some people think. I got our backup generator hooked to AC1 and am using the Grid Support function in the inverter with it. It works identical to Gen Support on AC2. It will only draw power from the grid if there's loads. It will draw power from the grid up to the setting you have it set at, then supplement from the batteries when the loads exceed the amp setting.

I've just looked at the menus in my XW, and I couldn't find a setting that would limit amps drawn from AC1, such as "Gen Supp Amps" for AC2 (except AC1 breaker size of course). Where is it?

ChrisOlson wrote: »

I can't see how anybody can struggle with it. It's so simple that it really needs no explanation. It's doing exactly what you told it to do - support the grid with battery/inverter power at a certain load threshold. That's why it's called "Grid Support".

They're trying to tell XW not to use grid at all, as opposed to supporting the grid.

ChrisOlson

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

I got AC1 breaker size set to 10 amps so it don't pop the breaker on our little generator. You enable the Grid Support function, then set the Grid Supp Volts to the lowest value (46.0V). As long as the bank voltage is above 46 and the load exceeds the AC1 breaker size it supplements battery power to help the little generator. If the load is below 10 amps it uses just gen power and doesn't use any battery power.

I'd like to try some of the Load Shave settings to see what they do, but I haven't done that because it looks like it's more geared to grid and there's times you have set there. That looks like it's a direct amp limiter, allowing use of a higher AC1 Breaker Size setting. But with our little backup generator (which is hard pressed to deliver 2.5 kW continuous) I haven't gotten around to trying it, or know if it even works at that low of a power setting.
--
Chris

Eric L

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

This is correct, and it's not a bug or a problem like some people think. I got our backup generator hooked to AC1 and am using the Grid Support function in the inverter with it. It works identical to Gen Support on AC2. It will only draw power from the grid if there's loads. It will draw power from the grid up to the setting you have it set at, then supplement from the batteries when the loads exceed the amp setting.

I can't see how anybody can struggle with it. It's so simple that it really needs no explanation. It's doing exactly what you told it to do - support the grid with battery/inverter power at a certain load threshold. That's why it's called "Grid Support".

Chris, I can't say much about an inverter I don't even own, but the problem seemed to be that it wasn't acting as it should when programmed (as opposed to people not being able to understand how to program it).. Here was one such thread reporting the problems of being unable to get it to fully disable grid draw:

http://forum.solar-electric.com/showthread.php?14803-Xantrex-XW6048-configuration-help

Another poster with a similar problem:

http://forum.solar-electric.com/showthread.php?18283-xw6048-load-shaving-problem&p=140168#post140168

Grid support has led to other problems too, e.g., common "F25" faults:

http://forum.solar-electric.com/showthread.php?15893-XW-6048-F25-fault&p=118674#post118674


Again, I'm only reporting other's experience -- maybe there's a simple programming change to fix it and then I'm sure these posters would be happy to hear about it.

NorthGuy

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

ChrisOlson wrote: »

I'd like to try some of the Load Shave settings to see what they do, but I haven't done that because it looks like it's more geared to grid and there's times you have set there. That looks like it's a direct amp limiter, allowing use of a higher AC1 Breaker Size setting..

Load Shaving does the opposite. It disconnects AC1 completely. It'll turn it on only if loads are too big.

ChrisOlson wrote: »

But with our little backup generator (which is hard pressed to deliver 2.5 kW continuous) I haven't gotten around to trying it, or know if it even works at that low of a power setting.

Where did you get 240V generator that small. I'm trying to find a backup generator, but all 240V units are 4kW+?

ChrisOlson

Re: Help with XW6048 settings with no net metering

Eric L wrote: »

Chris, I can't say much about an inverter I don't even own, but the problem seemed to be that it wasn't acting as it should when programmed (as opposed to people not being able to understand how to program it).

I've read them all before and basically I came to the conclusion that it's mostly new users that don't fully understand the settings, have more than likely limited experience with inverters in general, or expect it to do something different than what it's designed to do. So they post a question on it and the same guy always pops up and says, "Oh - it's a BIG problem and Schneider won't fix it and I hate my XW".

Truthfully, I have found very little to complain about with it. There's a couple things I'd like see different - like maybe adjustable Load Start/Stop times. But otherwise I've tried to break it, get it to shut down or do something bad. I just haven't managed it yet. But then I'm coming at it from the standpoint of using the SW-series inverters for many years, and the XW is considerably more advanced. But they still share a lot of the same traits, just call it different things in the menus - and the XW generally does it better.

There is one anomaly that I've found in the settings. And that's for Start Load and Stop Load amps for the generator. All the other settings involving amps use the high leg value. The Start Load and Stop Load uses the SUM of the current on L1 and L2 to determine when to start and stop the generator. I talked to Schneider tech support about this and this is the way it was designed, being the XW can handle a huge overload on one leg without it actually being an overload. So they based those two settings on the SUM so Start Load and Stop Load can be set more accurately to only start the generator when an actual overload for the inverter (or battery bank) happens.

But the thing is - they never explained it that way in the manual. What's interesting in the manual is how they worded it:

Important: This function is intended to protect the batteries from rapid drain.
It is not intended to protect the inverter against overload.

But then, in Considerations it says:

Change this setting if there are certain “peak” times of power usage or if
power demands consistently exceed the output of the inverter.

If the power demands consistently exceed the output of the inverter, isn't than an overload situation?
--
Chris