both said This is because even if there is only a refrigerator running during the day it will reduce the losses from export limiting and if an effort is made to shift electricity consumption to the middle of the day then losses can be mostly or entirely eliminated. After all, Im a big picture kind of guy. People have done it at fairly low cost with second hand panels and a DC pump.) Single-phase properties can have up to 5 kilowatts of inverter capacity, and 3 phase properties can have up to 30 kilowatts. Since in WA you cant have more than a 5kW inverter on a private residence, I believe there isnt actually export limiting in play, and the inverter itself clips the output AC regardless how much the panels are generating, sadly. Are Tesla Powerwall smart enough to let majority of power export to grid and only start charging battery as inverter approaches its export limit? It clicked, not long after I wrote the comment, My 10 kW system will not go above 10 kW unless my house battery is charging and then it can go to 13.25 kW. Installers must also follow the recommendations of the inverter manufacturer and they may say the limit for panel capacity is less than one-third more than the panels capacity. 0000027818 00000 n 0% Put down your weapons.3. Your meter is on the connection between the mains network on one side and the combination of your inverter and your loads on the other side. This is disappointing as this would be an easy option to implement. Definitely, thats an inverter that is export limited to zero. Depending on their location, some may be constrained to a lesser export level or even no exports at all. 0000009027 00000 n At times MPPT1 is at 600 odd watts while MPPT2 is at 2500 odd watts. I did get on the FiT in the early days for the 66cpkWh, but installed a separate system (which I have since incorporated into my stand-alone system. About 50%. ( MPPT2 always shows better performance than MPPT, usually quite significantly better. How to correctly configure inverter settings. The solar installer or customer must have sought and received pre-approval from us for the requested capacity of the generator. I have 13.25 kW of panels with a 9.8 kW LG Chem battery and a 10 kW inverter export limited to 5 kW. I have seen my panels producing over 13 kW of power when the battery is drawing 3 kW DC power and the battery, house and car 10 kW of AC power. First read the section How Export Limiting Works at the top of this thread. A 5 kilowatt inverter will never supply more than 5 kilowatts of power no matter how many kilowatts of panels it has. This is sufficient to charge a battery, although larger solar systems generally improve the return from batteries. If you are in the solar industry - try to get to the truth, not the sale.5. Okay, so that heading may be a bit of an exaggeration, but improvements the company has carried out appear to have made quite a difference. While I dont know where you are a 4 kilowatt solar system should produce an average of around 18 kilowatt-hours a day in WA. Activities part of Powercors Solar Hotspots program carried out over three months included upgrading infrastructure, adjusting tap settings on street-level transformers, balancing voltage levels on powerlines and various tweakery at zone substations. House batteries should have the capability of being set to turn off when they are fully charged and then on towards the middle of the day. Queenslands Energex area: South East Queensland. After a major works program involving more than 500 different network alterations and other activities across nine key regions among the most constrained parts of the network, Powercors new solar connections export approval rate of just over 60% at the start of the year has increased to above 90%. I realise that all the political parties in the the WA state parliament and especially, the Synergy/Western Power conglomerate, that controls approvals of domestic rooftop photovoltaic systems connected to the SWIS grid, are opposed to domestic rooftop photovoltaic systems (even though we stabilise and sustain the grid), but, I am wondering whether any reason has ever been given by the oppressive authorities, for banning export limited inverters in WA. Can you provide comment and evaluation of power tracing please. My question is should that then eliminate the 5 kw inverter of the powerwall wich Energex claims is part of the 10kw allowance on a single phase? I am not even sure the inverter would support that, but I fear that sadly up to 25% of the PV energy might be going to waste! So an Enphase setup, without a continuously operating Envoy with not be providing this functionality and likely to raise some concerns in the AS4777.2015 certification process if they did not take steps to make sure these functions are always guaranteed to be implemented. endstream endobj 351 0 obj <>/Filter/FlateDecode/Index[17 289]/Length 31/Size 306/Type/XRef/W[1 1 1]>>stream 3. The distributor deals with that by putting the voltage slightly up at the sending end. The fact is that Powercor does not set an upper limit on the size solar panel system you can install, up to 30kW. I am a bit confused about export. Its also unusual for a large solar system to have all the panels facing the same direction. Larger inverters that are export limited are allowed on a case by case basis. It owns and operates the states largest electricity distribution network, and is responsible for more than half a million poles and over 88,000 kilometres of powerlines. Can I share my power excess with me neighbour? The Solar installer is telling me that they just started getting 0kW approvals back for about 9 out of 10 requests and so they dont believe they will be able to do many installs at all going forward. Powercor's network solutions manager Claire Cass said of 32,580 customers connected to solar with Powercor in the last 18 months, only 2023 could not export power. 0000029011 00000 n Im trying to get some unbiased advice on whether or not we should add more solar. Victorias Jemena network area: A small but crowded chunk of North and Western Melbourne. Finally! 0000018244 00000 n Also, if you are on the main grid the amount of power you are allowed to export can still be below the limits given or even zero, depending on how much additional solar capacity the local grid can handle at your location. I was told to set Power Limit to ON. Ill upgrade the Endeavour Energy area from Ugly to Bad, since things are clearly not all bad there. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. This applies to both single-phase and three-phase properties. Allows installation but has an export limit. Definition A low voltage embedded generation connection in CitiPower and Powercor is defined as "an LV EG system with a total system capacity greater than 30kVA for a three-phase IES or non-IES (excluding ESS) network connection that is: hb```f``sd`c`edd@ A >hp`86s8::\ MNmOe0pYuR`i g G7@ $n@]A#&S_2.dx f If you are using Enphase microinverters which is extremely likely the whole system can be export limited using the Enphase Envoy gateway. In addition, all modern solar inverters must comply with AS4777.2015 at least. There may well be a tipping point in battery prices where a drought of mid day solar will be followed by very little evening use and possibly large numbers of households abandoning the grid altogether. With permission export limiting can be used to install larger systems. Theres more good news, with further improvements to come. 0000001575 00000 n Heres the Fronius Smart Meter that you need if you want to export limit a Fronius inverter it will add about $500 to the cost of the system: An example of how export limiting works You have an inverter thats exported limited to 5 kilowatts. If you dont get under the covers and look carefully at the logs you might miss this, or think it is a cloud coming over, rather than voltage triggered throttling. I can also see specific profiles for other grid networks, such as Ausgrid and Ergon, that likely have specific requirements of the inverters. Assume positive intention.4. 0000009573 00000 n But this is at least partially because when you throttle back output, you also reduce the amount of voltage rise you are causing on your local connection to the point of interconnect which is probably contributing to the issue. The MSO helps us manage and keep our network safe for solar customers. No unfortunately. Unfortunately, the meter companies and inverter manufacturers cant get their shit together, and the utility meters refuse to talk to the inverters. At the time of the powerwall install I also had the Gateway installed at an extra cost so I could keep using the generated power from the powerwall and during solar production when the powergrit fell out without danger for the grit workers because the Gateway instantly falls and prevent power to the grit. 0000038484 00000 n As batteries currently operate they charge from power in the morning that could otherwise be sold rather than from power that may not be able to be sold in the middle of the day. 306 0 obj <> endobj Reminder: In Australia, you are allowed to install 33% more panel capacity than the inverter capacity for example, a 10 kW inverter can have up to 13.33 kW of panels attached. Ronald They did say that with future upgrades we could reapply, but I cant find a way to do this. In an Enphase system, that is with the Envoy-S with consumption monitoring. I cant justify the cost of adding additional solar if the max I can export with Essential energy is 3kwh. Information on whether export limiting is allowed can be found here, but I am going to present the information differently for both ease of use and to make my boss think Ive done something useful. If your solar company provides you with the Solar pre-approval (SPA) number for your pre-approval, we can check specifically what was decided on with regards to exporting. See image at http://www.johnrogers.com.au/battery_charging_noon.jpg, CORRECTION: My 13.25 kW system will not go above the 10 kW inverter limit unless my house battery is charging and then it can go to 13.25 kW. 1. given that we are working from home all the time these days. Were continually investing in our networks and aim to keep customers informed if additional export capacity becomes available in their area. (Although they will also allow an additional 5 kilowatts of battery inverter capacity.) (Image from Finns Tesla App). If so, it would make replacing the whole system more viable which is exactly what I wanted to avoid (and such a waste!). Technically, what will happen is the inverter will reduce the solar systems output so the generation will be forgone, but I dont want to go into too much detail in this article. AC Output Data In my mind though the Smart meter at the box would adjust the export limit in line with what the house is consuming? The good news is, if you had a total of 6.6 kilowatts of solar youd probably loose very little due to export limiting if you consume half the output of a 3 kilowatt system and can export 3 kilowatts. Some battery powered cars can not be programmed to only recharge at particular times of the day, and, so, if someone drives one to work (that is, if and when battery powered cars become affordable to the working class) and home after work, then puts the car on the charger, the drain to the grid, that would consequently occur, during peak demand hours, needs to be covered. At the moment a battery system is unlikely to pay for itself, but you could install a system that is larger than what makes financial sense for your current situation and hope home batteries will fall in price over the next few years. If at any moment in time you are generating more solar electricity than you need, the excess is exported to the grid. For example, our Solar Enablement program is intended to allow more customers to connect a 5kVa solar PV system with export capacity. The Good: In these locations, properties can usually install up to 10 kilowatts of solar inverter capacity if they have single-phase power and up to 30 kilowatts with 3 phase power. This extra meter adds to the cost of a solar system. I just dont understand it. I prefer a profile that just has the voltages set to a high voltage threshold, and if I have to sacrifice V-W mode, so be it. 0000037419 00000 n I dont quite understand how the DC energy from the inverter can go to my home circuits first, before any excess current is fed into the grid. ARTICLE WRITES: Queenslands Energex area: South East Queensland. Thanks Ronald! VAr (var % rated VA) If we consider a home in Sydney where no electricity is used during the day, and all the solar panels face directly north, then the percentage of output that will be lost due to a 5 kilowatt export limit would be: So even in a worst-case situation for Sydney, an 8 kilowatt solar system that is exported limited to 5 kilowatts will only lose 4% of generation. The installer has been able to get the system through WP in the past as the inverter can limit the export to grid to 3kva. Is this correct? There are versions without this consumption monitoring (old Non -s version of Envoy and even the Envoy-S without consumption monitoring). We are in an area where only about 20% of the homes have solar. Victorias AusNet network area: The eastern third of Victoria, not including Melbourne or French Island. What is the go generally with adding an additional solar system to your home? But you probably would not recover the cost of the battery within its lifetime. I got a question about export limiter that I hope to get some answers from the community. I was always of the belief that a 5kW inverter limited the total output/ production from my 6.5kW solar system to 5 kW, irrespective of what is being used in the house. An option is to take your pumps off-grid and run them independently off a separate off-grid solar system. Ready for some quotes? I havent made any applications yet, but Ill certainly be asking this question when I get quotes!. Contracts and resources for connection agreement, Vegetation clearing requirements for new powerlines, Registered Electrical Contractor resources, Rapid Earth Fault Current Limiters (REFCL), Endorsement for wholesale demand response. No-one seems to have replied Dirk, so I will try. This seems technically impossible, because theres only a wire going from the inverter to the meter (the export or feed in to the grid) and a wire going from the meter to my homes main fuse. As discussion of the topic of export limiting, is continuing, what,if any, is/are the direct effect differences to electricity grid load (as in the load on the wires, not the load as the term used for meaning demand), between a 5kW inverter, and a 10kW inverter with 5kW export limiting? And for this reasons, I have increasingly seen that it is more challenging to run micros without the envoy which would no doubt be extra code required in later versions of the envoy to enforce implementation of various AS4777 and export limiting requirements that cant be done in the micros alone. They hid the problem pretty well, because they do tend to reduce the amount of shutdowns. The solar PV system is connected to the network via an inverter. %%EOF 0000005986 00000 n Then the information that was left was cut to make the piece more introductory, but perhaps all these reductions made the article like my favorite World War II movie Abridged Too Far. Please keep the SolarQuotes blog constructive and useful with these 5 rules: 1. For any amount above the daily export, you will receive our standard retailer feed-in tariff of 5 . These consumption spikes go past the Solar energy being limited suggesting were drawing from the grid! And Set Power Limit to 100%. The reason for this query, is that, in the past, my understanding has been that, in WA, where export limiting is apparently, banned by the gratuitously oppressive state parliament, and, where a limit of a 5kW output inverter, is allowed, for a single phase grid connection on the SWIS grid, a limit of 6.66 kW of panels generating capacity, is imposed for single phase connections to the SWIS grid, and, thence, the limit of panels generating capacity, to which the federal solar panels rebate applies, for such a connection, has been the 6.66kW. Metered and a non metered version. Wouldnt it be better for the inverter to display its total actual potential output under current conditions? The 7kW charger achieves full charge in 6 hours, and one The whole system of domestic rooftop photovoltaic systems, needs to be reviewed; by both the legislatures and regulators, and, by the components (especially the inverters) manufacturers. 0000038752 00000 n So, I am pretty much left in the dark about whether all the energy my panels are theoretically producing is being utilised, or (which is my fearful assumption) up to 1.6kW are wasted whenever the panels produce more than 5kW AC. Allows installation but has a zero export limit. I think of it like the rate at which water is flowing out of a hose. Powercor says it has contacted all solar customers within the previously impacted areas to let them know about the companys progress and to encourage them to consider reapplying for exports. Unfortunately, the inverters parameters such as Export Limitation are all password protected, and so far I have been unable to even determine who knows this password. While losses increase as the solar power system size goes up, even with 10 kilowatts of panels which is twice the export limit, only 13% of generation is lost. Assume positive intention.4. There are profiles that still conform the microinverters to AS4777.2:2015, but can disable Volt-Var/Volt-Watt, change the power factor to 0.9 (some grid operators require this), turn off export altogether or set specific maximum export levels like 1kW, 3kW etc., or configure to satisfy specific grid network requirements. If you use a pre AS4777.3:2005 the limits are probably even higher, but you loose some other features (like frequency ramping which is probably very sensible to have if you want to be a good grid citizen), and you probably are not supposed to run those unless it is a pre 2016 install. Will this mean any additional system would be limited to 0kW output?? I was lucky to have an early approval, so limited to 10Kw (or due to bad calculation by the approver, 8.6Kw, where he said ALL the Neutral current went down the common Neutral wire, where in fact only the difference between the phases goes down the Neutral (2 phase, 180 degree). Please confirm the maximum export limit in the relevant section of this application.. But you may as well just get a standard inverter and send your excess electricity into the grid. If you cant store the power (too expensive) and you cant export it, why the requirement (or desire) to put in large systems? Please make sure you engage early with our team through eConnect to check on network capacity for your customers. Of course the manufacturers dont want this to be public knowledge and pretend that once you paid for a system you are set for life (yours, not that of the system). The loss figures above are for Sydney and are affected by the climate. 5kW export limiter imposed on one inverter. Ronald was born more years ago than he can remember. What I find is installers dont seem to like it when I tell them my plan. Its moderately cheaper and the solar feed-in tariff youll receive will lower your electricity bills and increase the amount of clean energy available for others to use. We have had solar for 6 years and just recently moved homes. Do you know the situation here? This is often referred to as 'network constraints'. 0000028229 00000 n Many Australian homes are not allowed to export more than 5 kW to the grid. You can see from the profile name that it ensures the microinverters conform to the AS4777.2:2015 Australian standard that governs inverters, and it enables the advanced Volt-var and Volt-watt controls for adjusting export power when the grid voltage gets too high (as opposed to abruptly shutting off all export power when grid voltage is too high, which happens without Volt-var and Volt-watt). But your situation is complicated by already having a 3 kilowatt system. 0000037380 00000 n Notify me of follow-up comments by email. If that doesnt worry you then you can get a battery and just hope it mostly pays for itself. The daily export limit is averaged across your billing period (calculated by multiplying the number of days in your billing period by your daily export limit of 14 kWh). A Decent Battery From sonnen. Does anyone have similar experience with powercor? Tasmania: Under 1% of Tasmanians are on SWER lines, so the generous export limit should often be available. I could easily share my excess power for the time I am not irrigating my crops. This certainly goes well beyond initial configuration and reporting. In future, will powercor allow export limit if they upgrade transformer? No active system controls whether you use inverter of imported power. Has the oppressive authority in WA ever given a reason for not allowing export limited inverters in WA? I do NOT have a device in my meter box that could tell the inverter anything about consumption and feed in energy. Im in the Endeavour Energy area. 0000037686 00000 n As has been explained (and COSTED) on previous occasions batteries are VERY cost-effective.IF you stay away from the hi-tech/overpriced/dependence-creating/unproven battery-systems advocated by commercially self-interested parties. So, the whole of the system of restrictions and available components, for domestic rooftop photovoltaic systems, needs to be reviewed, to provide for greater usage demands during peak demand hours, greater battery storage provisions (and financial assistance for householders to implement big behind the meter battery storage systems, and, regarding the fragile, decrepit SWIS grid, the allowance of large capacities of panel generation, limited export, inverters, such as the hybrid one that I proposed. Or, if you want a lower cost method of dealing with blackouts, you can get yourself a small generator. But a sub optimally configured grid sometimes forces installers into implementing setting that are probably less than ideal if the high voltage events in the grid were just occasions where there is too much generation and they do want have all generators throttle back to allow some time for rebalancing supply and demand. Off the main grid, rural properties can have 3 kilowatts of inverter capacity. We just had a 30kW inverter solar install for our business and it has been limited to 1.8kW export. But still the solar companies keep trying to sell it to me.. In exchange, the customer receives a small rebate on their bill for every kilowatt-hour (kWh) they export. As a single example, the Renault Kangoo ZE van (I think that it is the only battery powered cargo van currently available in Australia) has a 33kWh battery, and, To go further, Kangoo Z.E boasts a Z.E 33 (33kWh) battery, 0000029403 00000 n I have 3 x PV systems on one phase. hooked up to an energy efficient 44kW motor for a real-world I know in the movie the Bad was worse than the Ugly, but thats not the way Im doing it. What made the situation all the more frustrating is periods of high congestion which can threaten the stability of a local network can be quite brief. So what goes throgh the meter, in either direction, is the difference between what you generate and what you use.