Gulf Island Off-Grid System - Part 4

Re: Gulf Island Off-Grid System - Part 4

Today was the big day — First power!



Everything came up quite smoothly. We're very impressed with the SMA equipment so far.

The transfer box is also all wired up now. Here's a view inside:



The PSL pQube can be seen on the DIN rail at the bottom of the box.

Both Sunny Boys and the Solar Monitoring Panel are also operational.



It's so exciting to finally have everything running. All that remains is RS-485 and Ethernet cabling, and terminating the runs from the container to the buildings. And when the sun comes out tomorrow, we'll start charging those batteries!

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Re: Gulf Island Off-Grid System - Part 4

More progress today, though we ran into a slight problem with the Sunny Boys...

See if you can spot the mistake in the below manual page:



Yep, that's wright — The configuration settings for Island Mode - 60 Hz is incorrect. Serves us right for following the directions...

And as a result of this little misconfiguration, every time the Sunny Islands would try to throttle back solar production by increasing the frequency, the Sunny Boys would disconnect.

By the time we were able to figure out this was the problem (and after three hours on hold waiting for SMA tech support), we were worried that we had been locked out of the inverters (Sunny Boys have a "Grid Guard" "feature" that prevents you from changing your settings after "ten feed-in hours" (SMA tech support couldn't define what this exactly meant).

The first time we tried to change the settings, we got an error, but it seems to have taken the second time we restarted the Sunny Boys.

We've also been working on laying the cables from the cabin to the building:



Code requires the cables to be buried two feet down, with six inches of sand above and below. We were really worried about the sand, since it's hard to come by here, but we were fortunate in that we found a nearby bank that had more than enough for our needs.

Other notable progress includes completing much of the communication wiring and getting the WebBox communicating with the Sunny Islands via RS-485. The WebBox seems very sluggish, has broken images, and we're still having some trouble with the Sunny Boys not showing their parameters, so there is still more work to do here.

Another strange issue is that the Sunny Islands seem to want to throttle back charging, yet the SoC still reads 86%.

But, this is all to be expected; any complex system like this is going to have quite a few commissioning hiccups before everything is running perfectly.

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Re: Gulf Island Off-Grid System - Part 4

Re #46, #47 - The batteries are brand new, so that could be what his happening... The Sunny Island only changes state when it reaches Float.

Here are the SI values from the WebBox:

No.	Name		Value	Unit
1	Adr		Master	
2	AptPhs		On	
3	AptTmRmg	23437	hhmmss
4	BatChrgOp	Full	
5	BatChrgVtg	57.897	V
6	BatSoc		86.2	%
7	BatSocErr	10.3	%
8	BatTmp		21.9	degC
9	BatVtg		57.9	V
10	CardStt		Operational	
11	ChpPwrAt	0	kW
12	ChpRmgTm	0	hhmmss
13	ChpStrRmgTm	0	hhmmss
14	ChpStt		Idle	
15	EgyCntIn	3.1	kWh
16	EgyCntOut	0.6	kWh
17	EgyCntTm	25	h
18	Error		-----	
19	E-Total		0.6	kWh
20	E-Total-In	3.1	kWh
21	ExtCur		0.2	A
22	ExtCurSlv1	0.3	A
23	ExtCurSlv2	0	A
24	ExtCurSlv3	0	A
25	ExtFrq		0	Hz
26	ExtPwrAt	0	kW
27	ExtPwrAtSlv1	0	kW
28	ExtPwrAtSlv2	0	kW
29	ExtPwrAtSlv3	0	kW
30	ExtPwrRt	0	kVAr
31	ExtPwrRtSlv1	0	kVAr
32	ExtPwrRtSlv2	0	kVAr
33	ExtPwrRtSlv3	0	kVAr
34	ExtVtg		2.8	V
35	ExtVtgSlv1	2.7	V
36	ExtVtgSlv2	0	V
37	ExtVtgSlv3	0	V
38	Fac		61.9	Hz
39	Firmware	6.002	
40	FwVer		6.002	
41	FwVer2		6	
42	GdCtcCnt	0	
43	GdEgyCntIn	0	kWh
44	GdEgyCntOut	0	kWh
45	GdEgyTmh	0	h
46	GdOpTmh		0	h
47	GdRmgTm		0	hhmmss
48	GnDmdSrc	Bat	
49	GnEgyCnt	0	kWh
50	GnEgyTm		0	h
51	GnOpTmh		0	h
52	GnRmgTm	0	hhmmss
53	GnRnStt		Off	
54	GnStrCnt	0	
55	GnStt		Off	
56	h-On		25	h
57	Iac		2	A
58	InvCur		2	A
59	InvCurSlv1	2	A
60	InvCurSlv2	0	A
61	InvCurSlv3	0	A
62	InvFrq		61.9	Hz
63	InvOpStt	Run	
64	InvOpSttSlv1	Run	
65	InvOpSttSlv2	---	
66	InvOpSttSlv3	---	
67	InvPwrAt	-0.1	kW
68	InvPwrAtSlv1	-0.1	kW
69	InvPwrAtSlv2	0	kW
70	InvPwrAtSlv3	0	kW
71	InvPwrRt	-0.1	kVAr
72	InvPwrRtSlv1	-0.1	kVAr
73	InvPwrRtSlv2	0	kVAr
74	InvPwrRtSlv3	0	kVAr
75	InvVtg		119.9	V
76	InvVtgSlv1	119.9	V
77	InvVtgSlv2	0	V
78	InvVtgSlv3	0	V
79	Mode		Operation	
80	Msg		0	
81	OnTmh		25	h
82	OpStt		Operating	
83	OpSttSlv1	Operating	
84	OpSttSlv2	---	
85	OpSttSlv3	---	
86	Pac		-0.3	kW
87	Prio		Ina	
88	Rly1Stt		Off	
89	Rly2Stt		On	
90	RmgTmEqu	178	d
91	RmgTmFul	12	d
92	Serial Number	nnn	
93	Sic1EgyCntIn	0	kWh
94	Sic1PvPwr	0	W
95	Sic1SWVers	0	
96	Sic1TdyEgyCntIn	0	kWh
97	Sic2EgyCntIn	0	kWh
98	Sic2PvPwr	0	W
99	Sic2SWVers	0	
100	Sic2TdyEgyCntIn	0	kWh
101	Sic3EgyCntIn	0	kWh
102	Sic3PvPwr	0	W
103	Sic3SWVers	0	
104	Sic3TdyEgyCntIn	0	kWh
105	Sic4EgyCntIn	0	kWh
106	Sic4PvPwr	0	W
107	Sic4SWVers	0	
108	Sic4TdyEgyCntIn	0	kWh
109	Soh		100	%
110	TotBatCur	-4.8	A
111	TotExtCur	0.6	A
112	TotExtPwrAt	0	kW
113	TotExtPwrRt	0	kVAr
114	TotInvCur	4	A
115	TotInvPwrAt	-0.3	kW
116	TotInvPwrRt	-0.3	kVAr
117	TotLodPwr	-0.3	kW
118	TotMccLodPwr	0	kW
119	TotSicBatCur	0	A
120	TotSicDyEgyCntI	0	kWh
121	TotSicEgyCntIn	0	kWh
122	TotSicPvPwr	0	W
123	TotTmh		0	h
124	Vac		119.9	V

In case anyone is interested in what it looks like when the Sunny Island slews the frequency to throttle back power production on the Sunny Boys, here's an event capture showing the frequency shift:



We also got the Power over Ethernet security camera for remote monitoring installed inside the container, and it is up and working:



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Re: Gulf Island Off-Grid System - Part 4

It was another productive week:



A long trench with 4/0 AL Teck cable to bring power down to the shop.



The solar array is all fenced in to keep animals from chewing on our solar cables (and to meet code).

We also wired up all the Sunny Sensor Boxes and are preparing the building service entrances. Everything is almost done!

We're very happy with the system so far. Everything is working very well, now we just need to see how it works in the middle of the winter, after several weeks of rain and cloud.

P.S. For those of us who don't follow all of the posts on the NAWS forums, we have a subsequent thread talking about surge protection for our system - http://forum.solar-electric.com/showthread.php?20959


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