Solaredge Inverter/Battery Functional Question

Qyburn

Hi,

One of the solutions on offer, to comply with DNO restrictions is Solaredge with their DC coupled battery. For those with this system, or knowledge of it, can anyone answer any of these ..
1) does the inverter power apply to just the output, or does it also limit battery charging? For example 3.6kW inverter, can it accept more than 3.6kW from the panels with the excess going into the battery?
2) can the battery export, or can the stored energy only be used locally?

I'm sure there are other questions, but i can't think of them just at the moment. 

vienly

1) The Inverter is only limited to input/output from grid, so DC>AC & AC>DC 3.6kWh max, it can only charge the battery at 3.6kWh max from grid going from AC>DC.
The battery can charge up to 5kWh direct from panels (DC>DC) without any conversion from inverter regardless how of big it is.

2) The battery can export to grid if you use something like Home Assistant to do so.

Qyburn

vienly said:

2) The battery can export to grid if you use something like Home Assistant to do so.

Thanks, from a quick look Home Assistant looks to be a separate piece of software that needs a computer of some sort running 24/7. Is that correct?  Do you have any details on how you configured yours? Aside from the overhead of a separate system to do this, I wonder how complex it is to configure.

In the absence of something like this what happens when the battery's full and solar generation exceeds the 3.6kW, is power just lost? What you'd want is surplus power going into the battery then exported when solar generation drops below 3.6kW.

vienly

Home Assistant can be installed on almost hardware but the most popular is raspberry pi 4, it's not too difficult but it is a rabbit hole and will consume time to tinker it to work, but once done you'll have full access to do anything you want with the inverter/battery.
There are guides on youtube, which is where I started and it is worth investing some time into that if you want to go down that route, once you get familiar with Home Assistant you'll probably start branching off and making other things in your home 'smart'.

When the battery is full and solar generation exceeds the 3.6kW, yes power is lost.
This is exactly how I configure mine, to have surplus power going into the battery then exported when solar generation drops inverter rating.

Qyburn

Thanks. Does this mode of operation rely on HA directly controlling the Solaredge gear, ie HA needs to run all the time? Or does it program the Solaredge which will then continue to work in that way of its own accord?  I was assuming the former, but the first results I found were talking about HA changing settings not normally accessible to the end user.

From my point of view I'm looking for the max I can get within DNO export limits. If my export is capped by that limit, I want the excess to build up in the battery, then export overnight so the battery starts each day quite low. 

vienly

It needs to run all the time, the reason why it's best on a raspberry pi 4 is because of the very low power consumption, something around 3Wh which is literally nothing.

Qyburn

vienly said:

It needs to run all the time, the reason why it's best on a raspberry pi 4 is because of the very low power consumption, something around 3Wh which is literally nothing.

I assume you actually mean 3W in which case it is quite low but not quite nothing, 26kWh per year. But it's not really about the power, it's another piece of equipment with power supply etc that needs to be installed somewhere and looked after.