Hello, I have a strange situation. My neighbor bought a home that has 16 rigid solar panels installed directly to the grid using an Enphase Combiner DC/AC inverter. This inverter bypasses the home’s panel but instead goes right to the meter, which is very odd. There are no batteries. He recently purchased an AC500 and wants to divert the output of the panels into the AC500. The Enphase says it’s rated for 65Amps (but there are 2 20amp breakers installed in it). I could bypass the Enphase and just make a DC/DC connection to the AC500 but then I think I’m limited to 15Amp/1,500 watt input through DC1. I can’t tell if there are micoro-inverters installed on the 3rd story roof, which I assume there are, so I don’t want to rewire the whole thing to make multiple strings. Therefore, I’m thinking the best route is simply take the AC load from the Enphase as that would be a faster charge input anyway over the DC input.
Two questions:
Can the AC500 take 65amp input and internally step it down to 50amp? Any risks there?
What happens on cloudy days where the 16 panels are only producing, say, 1000 watts? Does it matter that the circuit is a 50amp input but under performing? Will the AC500 will simply take whatever watts are there even if it’s just a trickle?
Is there anything else I should consider here? This is an odd situation with the existing grid wired solar panels.
Amps arent that important, because they get pulled. The AC500 take as much amps its max supported and leave the rest unused
I dont know if i understand this question right. You want to connect you AC500 by AC instead of DC/PV Input. The AC Input get feed by solar panels and a inverter and the AC500 gets plugged into it?
Yes, there are 16 panels with DC-to-AC inverter that came with the house. It looks like the inverter is rated to handle 64 amps, although there are 2 20-amp breakers in the inverter so I’m not exactly sure, yet, how much power is coming out of it. I think this a very simple question and exposes my lack of knowledge, but sometimes stupid questions end up being good questions. Other times, they are just stupid question.
Given the variable nature of solar output into the existing inverter, does that present any problems as an AC input for the AC500? Normally grid AC input from the home panel is consistently at 15amp/1850 watts (or 30amp/3000 watts). So what happens when the wattage is variable from an AC source?
Now that I’m typing this, I think I know the answer. In a separate situation, so you aren’t confused, I have an AC300 that I recharged with a propane generator that was misbehaving and the wattage was all over the map between 300 -950 watts. The AC300 handled that just fine. (As it turns out, my generator was rated at only 8amps so I downgraded the input on the Bluetti to match the generator, 8amps, and it consistently got between 900-950 watt input.
So to re-ask, does having variable wattage input cause any problems for the AC500? The inverter is rated at 50amp but maybe the output is only 500 watts. In theory, the output on the inverter will vary between 0 watts, at night, and 50,000 watts in perfect conditions. I assume that is fine, yes?
Enphase Power Control enables four features in the grid-tied Enphase Energy System:
IQ Battery oversubscription mode: This feature limits the charge/discharge current and
enables more battery capacity to be installed in grid-tied systems. The feature ensures that
the total continuous output current from the batteries does not exceed 80% of the battery
breaker rating.
Battery import/export only mode: The battery import-only feature ensures the Enphase
IQ Battery never exports any power to the grid. Battery export - only feature ensures that the
Enphase IQ Battery never imports any power from the grid but can export to the grid.
Enphase IQ Battery can operate either in Battery import-only mode or Battery export-only
mode.
Main panel upgrade (MPU) avoidance mode: This feature limits the current backfeed into
the main panel and removes the need to upgrade the main panel, reducing costs for the
homeowner and effort for the installer.
Aggregate power export limit mode: This feature ensures that the aggregate power exported to
the grid is limited to the Aggregate Power Export Limit (PEL) defined by the installer.
Figure 1 provides a birds-eye view of the point of current being measured and limited using Enphase
Power Control for each feature.
I just had him log in. He has the Enhase IQ Combiner 3C ES. It’s rated for max output of 65A but it only has 20A breakers inside.
He logged into his app and yesterday he produced 20.0kWh. Here is a screenshot. So he’s generating plenty of power but he says he’s getting an $8 monthly credit in the current config, which is insane.
Thank you!
the reference given and especially the graph allows me to understand your neighbor’s system.
First of all, before trying to answer your questions: your neighbor’s system is very sophisticated and integrated: if he wanted to reduce electricity consumption from the grid even further, the best solution would have been to integrate proprietary batteries (in phase IQ battery 5p…). I understand that the system can then avoid injecting the solar surplus into the grid to store it on the proprietary batteries, this would have been ideal.
1. Can the AC500 take 65amp input and internally step it down to 50amp? Any risks there?
I understand that you want to plug the AC500 into an AC outlet at your neighbor’s house. Of course, first of all, the house outlet must support the intensity configured in the AC500 settings. If the socket supports, you do not have to worry about an intensity problem on your “enphase combine” and your ac500: the power (intensity) that your ac500 will consume will come first from the power provided by the solar panels(and injected in the home grid by the microinverters) and not consumed. If the available solar power is lower than that required by the AC500, it is the grid which will provide the additional power (so no problem between the 65A… which moreover characterizes the max intensity that your enphase combiner can support, but it is not the intensity provided by the solar panels - which is lower).
What happens on cloudy days where the 16 panels are only producing, say, 1000 watts? Does it matter that the circuit is a 50amp input but under performing? Will the AC500 will simply take whatever watts are there even if it’s just a trickle?
If solar production is low and insufficient to power the AC500 completely, the AC500 will draw energy from the grid.
If you look at the beautiful graph you gave, you see that 3.5 kWh were exported to the grid, mainly between 9am and 12pm. I understand that ideally you will not want to export the excess solar power, not consumed by the devices in the house, to the grid but you want to store this free solar energy in your ac500 and its batteries. So you have to configure the AC500 so that it charges between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m., and set the intensity high enough so that you can capture most of the unused solar surplus (which will be exported to the grid) but the adjusted intensity must not be too high because in this case the AC500 will partly charge on the grid.
Thank you! The plan is to install a new Protran subpanel on the home so we can designate 10 emergency circuits to run on battery. As such, we’ll install whatever receptacles we need to optimize inputs between the main panel, subpanel, and Enphase.
One more question.
With the AC500, can I have two AC inputs by repurposing DC1/2? I see in the AC500 manual on Page 17, there looks to be an option called Dual Charging that suggests you can use DC1 hooked to a wall outlet. Am I misunderstanding?
If so, then I can have the 50amp Enphase recharge via the main AC input. Then supplement from the grid via DC1.
(Or in reverse, if the Enphase is in fact limited to only 20amp.)
Hmmm the passage you quote is indeed ambiguous, and this has misled you. The dc1/dc2 input (page 9, number 14) is only for the solar input, it can only take direct current (12-150V DC, 15A max each) not alternating current. This means you can only connect dc1 and dc2 to solar panels, cigarette lighter socket, or an ac to dc adapter. Above all, don’t connect dc1/dc2 to alternating current. AC power is only available from the AC input socket 13 (page 9).
I figured and that’s disappointing. I was hoping. Any ideas on how I might take both inputs? One from the Enphase Combiner and one from grid when the panels aren’t producing?
I wonder if I can reconfigure the Combiner to output via DC.
Update: I just got a response back from Bluetti. I can use the T500 AC adapter to convert AC to DC on the AC500 but it tops out at about 4-500 watts. The AC500 documentation is very unclear (or wrong). Further, the T500 documentation states it only works for the AC300. Since the DC inputs on the AC500 share the same connectors as the AC300, I was having a hard timing understanding why it also doesn’t apply for the AC500. They just confirmed that the T500 adapter, in fact, DOES work on the AC500. I haven’t tested it yet. If anybody is interested, I can post the results.
