[dkhaz]

Had a question asked recently and wanted to get other's opinion on it.

If you only have a PV installed, if the power goes out, your grid interactive inverter will detect loss of utility power and shut down.

If you have a PV installed with a backup generator, once you disconnect the main breaker, and startup the gen set, you will have power. The inverter should see this power and then come back online. You will now have the KW rating of your gen set plus whatever solar you are producing.

Any problems with a setup such as this?

 

[woodchuck2]

To be honest i have not dabbled in solar much but to be honest i would put the generator inline before any inverters and just use a whole house transfer to switch power back and forth from the grid. My concern would the Grid Interactive inverter backfeed the stand by generator, if it does how will the generator lose line sense and turn and off. Of course the solar would only be an addition if it were daytime.

Hopefully someone else with more knowledge of this will post a better response.

 

[saynever]

Edit: do a quick search for grid-tied vs off the grid solar systems.




That seems wrong to me. never did any solar and am only an A3.

The transfer switch or setup should disconnect both the main power and the solar power from the generator power.

My understanding is that unless the array is feeding a battery bank/back up unit (probably still wrong…..have never done solar or even looked at the code book for anything solar related) any loss of utility power should disconnect the solar from the home. With that disconnected the generator can then be run safely.

 

[woodchuck2]

A product i have looked at and will be using in the future on a job supplied by the customer is a APT Power Center that can control AC line feed, DC battery feed, solar feed, gas generator feed and wind generator feed. You may want to look into something like this so the panel will control what source to use to satisfy the load being used.

I have a couple crappy pics of it, the customer picked it up used from another fella living off the grid. I have not wired it in yet but i did take the cover off and inspected it. Wiring it in appeared easy but exactly how it will work to satisfy the loads i do not know.

 

[hfd419]

A grid tie in Solar (used for net metering) should be tied in upstream from your meter socket. If the grid loses power it will then shut off as well. Then your gen set which is tied in after your meter socket will sense loss of power and operate normally with an automatic transfer switch. This eliminates any backfeed into the grid which if someone would get hurt from you could be liable for.

 

[Fault Current]

The solar PV tie could be made at the E-panel supplied by the generator. That way it will activate once generator picks up the load. If it was connected ahead of the transfer switch it will never backfeed. It will only come online when utility power is back up.