New SW and XW communication "Conext ComBox

Re: New SW and XW communication "Conext ComBox

The Conext ComBox sounds pretty cool. Evidently it plugs into your Xanbus network.
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Chris

Re: New SW and XW communication "Conext ComBox

Being able to start and stop the gen, or check in on my system from my cell phone while I'm out on the lake fishing would be the coolest thing. We'll have to wait and see what sort of desktop or PC application it uses.
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Chris

Re: New SW and XW communication "Conext ComBox

Outback's menus have always been unorganized and difficult to set up for me. They got dollar signs for "selling" and it "buys" power from the generator, and all sorts of weird stuff. The Mate3 is not any better. When we were looking at getting a Radian I went and looked at one that was operating, and was not impressed. With an Outback system you can't even set critical things like your generator crank time, preheat time and spindown town from the Mate because Outback doesn't even build an auto gen start. Their opinion is that you should just buy a two-wire generator (or strap on a crappy Atkinson controller). No thanks - not for off-grid. It had better be integrated, or forget it.

Don't know much about grid-tie. Being without the grid since June 2002, and doing perfectly fine on our own for that long, today you couldn't get myself or my wife to hook up to it if they gave it away for free and promised to send a Christmas card.

NorthGuy wrote: »

Off grid stuff doesn't require much, but there are still some bad things. For example, if you start a generator and it makes to absorption, but there's some solar still present, it draws full power from the generator and dials down solar charging. Why? Should be reverse.

I got Classics instead of XW MPPT's. But the answer is to NOT absorb with your generator. That's bad off-grid practice. Use either the STOP ABSORB or the STOP V trigger to stop your generator before it tries to do that. I got both set and which ever one is the first to be true (depends on battery temp), kills the generator before any attempts are made to absorb the bank with gen power. If you do need to absorb the bank with the generator in an emergency (10 days or more and RE power hasn't gotten the job done), then start the gen manually and do it. The STOP ABSORB and STOP V triggers won't stop the generator if it's started manually in the XW-AGS menu.

NorthGuy wrote: »

To set terminating amps, you need to multiply them by 50 and set "Bank Size" to that value.

What's so abnormal about that? The normal ending amps for termination of absorb is 2% of ah capacity. If you're confused over that, you would've gone into a coma over the way the SW/SW Plus does it. The older ones used AC amps to the charger for the ending amps setting. You had to calculate charger efficiency to come up with the DC amps, then multiply bank ah x .02 to come with DC amps. Then use your charger efficiency calcs to convert the DC amps to AC amps for the menu setting

Coming from the SW Plus, and many of the menu items are the same, it was no mystery to me as to how to set up the XW so it "just works". I didn't even read the manual. The menus are laid out different (I like the XW's menu layout MUCH better because they're easier to find and understand, and allow scrolling thru them by simply holding down the UP or DOWN buttons). But they do the same things. And the XW has a few more options than the SW Plus for some things - for instance, for the 30 second gen start on low volts trigger for extremely heavy loads that don't meet the Load Start setting, the SW Plus used LBCO. The XW allows setting that independent of the LBCO.

So basically, I see none of the noted problems with it. Ours does not drop the generator or charger when loads are added to the system like yours does. I wired up our backup generator to the AC1 input today, without changing any of the default settings except for setting the Charger Block so it doesn't try to charge batteries with that generator (it's too small), and tested it. It thinks that generator is the "grid" and it works perfectly.

So I dunno. The XW is a sophisticated thoroughbred compared to the SW Plus, and the SW Plus is a pretty dang fine inverter. But dealing with this stuff as long as I have I ain't no novice either, so I don't expect any hand holding in the menus when it comes time to set up an inverter so it works. After getting the thing tuned to my liking, I cannot find a single glitch in the way it works - and we push it to its raw limits just about every day.
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Chris

Re: New SW and XW communication "Conext ComBox

ChrisOlson wrote: »

I remember the first time I was trying to set up an Outback system and I seen it "buying" power from the generator I was, like, "What in the FRICK is this? Are we robbing Peter to pay Paul here?" :roll:
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Chris

A matter of mindset.

I worry that since two of the brightest minds in solar left the company that product advancements are now driven by accounting rather than engineering.

Re: New SW and XW communication "Conext ComBox

NorthGuy wrote: »

Sunlight period is very short in December and January. So, I pretty much need to use almost all of it to get a 4-hour absorption. The only way to do that is pre-charge with the generator.

After you've worked with your system for awhile you should know what your consumption is, how much it takes to replace it, and what equipment you need to replace it. Unlike most, I don't get all bent if the batteries don't get charged up every day. We rarely use the generator for battery charging. We have considerable wind power (which actually works in the winter time) and that helps. But using the generator for peak loads also helps because it reduces how much has to be put back into the batteries. In the dead of winter it's not unusual for us to generate 10 kWh/day for peak load support from the generator. That equates to about 2 1/2 hours of gen run time per day.

BUT - we get more kWh from our generator to the loads by using it for peak load support because the power generated by it goes direct to the loads instead of being wasted in battery charging and inverting. By using that feature to reduce the amount of kWh that has to go back into the bank, the RE system can keep up without having to use the gen for battery charging. Have you thought of that? It's one of the "tricks" that I've learned (and that not very many off-grid folks have learned or use) to use the generator more efficiently.

Your present generator is way too big to make it work efficiently. But if you intend to live off-grid permanently, you should be putting the pencil to that.

People who are grid-tied find themselves in this situation all the time - XW suppress solar charging and starts charging batteries from the grid in the middle of sunny day. How stupid is that?

Why not defeat it with the Charger Block during the day? I know Joe_B mentioned something about the Charger Block not working - but it works here with our backup generator on AC1. What I don't understand is this:

Normally I would just use charger block to disable charging on AC1 and still allow the generator on AC2 to charge when the AGS tells it to start. Since charger block does not work for AC2 properly, when the AGS starts the gen, it just picks up the local loads and will not charge the battery.

I have some problems figuring out why something like this works perfectly here and not somewhere else. The Charger Block does not affect AC2 at all. I have it set and I tested it. It works as advertised - when I fire up the "grid" (our backup gen on AC1) it just goes to loads and doesn't charge because of the Charger Block settings. When I fire the standby gen (on AC2) it charges fine. So saying the "charger block does not work for AC2 properly" is a misnomer - it's not supposed work on AC2. It does EXACTLY what the manual says it's supposed to, for me.

So I'm confused over that.

Why not to call ending amps "Ending Amps". That is easy, understandable, unambiguous and you do not need to multiply anything.

LOL! The old SW/SW Plus inverters did not even have absorb. They just called it "Bulk" and "Float". All those calculations you had to do manually with those were set in the Bulk End Amps setting.

Outback doesn't even have ending amps. They just got a timer.

The XW's way is a lot more intuitive, to my way of thinking. It just asks for one simple setting - how big is the freaking bank? It does all the calcs for you if you answer that question correctly. If you want to mess with the proper ending amps that it calculates based on how big the bank is - NOW you're on your own, and you'd better not complain about it 8)

So let's just say that after running these inverters for years, I don't have much sympathy for the folks that want the thing to brush their teeth for 'em and tuck 'em in nice and cozy when they go to bed at night. It's a machine - and every machine has limitations - learn to deal with it.

And the list of these things is endless ...

Evidently so. But I'll tell you what - if I find a glitch in the thing that is not due to my programming it incorrectly you can rest assured you'll hear about it. But so far, I've put it thru its paces just to see what it can do, how robust it is, and how much it will take before it complains or screws up. There was some glitches when I first started testing it after putting it in - but those glitches were not related to anything being wrong with the inverter or the software. I fixed every single one of them by tweaking settings until it performs flawlessly.

Again, I know nothing about grid-tie, and don't want to. So I can't say much about any bugs there. And for off-grid I believe in setting up a system totally different than most folks use because I avoid using the generator at all costs to charge batteries, and instead use it for peak load support. And I can definitively say, after getting it tweaked the way I like it, it is a formidable off-grid inverter and you're likely not going to buy a better one because it don't exist. And that's why I picked it over a Radian. The XW has been around for a long time. It is proven. It's almost impossible to break one. But note - there is a difference between perfect (in the eye of the beholder) and proven. When it comes to choosing between cool (like a iPod-type scroll wheel thingy on the control panel) vs proven, for off-grid power I'll take proven over cool every time.
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Chris

Re: New SW and XW communication "Conext ComBox

mike95490 wrote: »

Is the heritage XW series going to go away, with the introduction of the Conext XW ?

The Xantrex XW and the Conext XW are the same thing. They're just getting rid of the Xantrex name.
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Chris

Re: New SW and XW communication "Conext ComBox

Let's try a simple explanation of what Chris is talking about:

The inverter and generator work in concert to power loads that neither unit on its own could handle.
Like stacking inverters, only one of the power sources is a generator instead.

This is not the same as a standard off-grid install where the generator gets sized to both run the loads and provide charging current for the batteries because it has to do the whole thing by itself.