Thread: Home solar output throttling

Originally Posted by edddo

Are you sure that when throttled, that solar power is available to the household, or to a battery? I thought it just put you on the grid.

Yes, the solar will provide power to anything it can - just because the inverter can’t pump it into the grid because the local voltage is too high it doesn’t mean you can’t use your own power.

My seller/installer does not agree with you - When part throttling it will feed the house and battery but when it is off it forces me onto the grid..but perhaps some setups are different.

Originally Posted by edddo

My seller/installer does not agree with you - When part throttling it will feed the house and battery but when it is off it forces me onto the grid..but perhaps some setups are different.

What make and model inverter do you have - that’s different from any other system I’ve heard of - usually you use what you want and any you aren’t using goes back to the grid if it is available to take it (ie the local grid voltage not being too high). Grid power is only used when you are consuming all of the available solar or it’s dark, etc.

Why would a system be designed to not give the grid power OR you power - that doesn’t make any sense.

Originally Posted by Homestar

Most more modern inverters have a connection for batteries now so that's another option, but not a cheap one - well worth doing if you're in the market for an EV so you can effectively charge it for nothing overnight off the batteries.

I've never seen the maths on that stack up. Pay $x for a battery to save $y on electricity. Over the lifetime of the battery anytime I've done the sums x>y. Has it improved?

Originally Posted by roverrescue

I’ve noticed some potential loss on our 9.8kW system
AGL have an upper daily limit on the 17c FIT
Once that limit is reached no more nice FIT

We now have an invertet pool heater which will happily eat as much power as it is fed (19kW unit from memory) but that’s heating effective NOT 19kW usuage

Anyways

A question - does anyone know a way to control a load on a specific circuit via the output of an array?

The heater doesn’t really care about turning on and off

It would be nice to have the heater ONLY running if day the array output is 5kW or greater ???

S

Link to inverter, put a smart controller on pool heater.
Use IFTTT to control based on output.

Originally Posted by BradC

I've never seen the maths on that stack up. Pay $x for a battery to save $y on electricity. Over the lifetime of the battery anytime I've done the sums x>y. Has it improved?

I think it’s borderline - certainly didn’t work with AGM but with the price of Lithium and Sodium falling and both having extremely long life cycles, would be interesting to run the numbers - I’ll have a play.

Originally Posted by Tombie

Link to inverter, put a smart controller on pool heater.
Use IFTTT to control based on output.

My Fronius inverter has load management support, able to switch up to 4 relays depending on criteria set on a web page. I use it to switch my HWS.

Originally Posted by Homestar

What make and model inverter do you have - that’s different from any other system I’ve heard of - usually you use what you want and any you aren’t using goes back to the grid if it is available to take it (ie the local grid voltage not being too high). Grid power is only used when you are consuming all of the available solar or it’s dark, etc.

Why would a system be designed to not give the grid power OR you power - that doesn’t make any sense.

@Homestar

This is my system Solax Power Station | Sunshine Coast Solar Power