Enjoyed a family reunion today. Last year I was conscripted to sit on the board, luckily I don’t have any official position or job like some cousins. I guess if I would have any job description it would be the “gatekeeper” because I live the closest to the reunion grounds and it was logical for me to have a key to the gate. I’ll try to remember to post some of the pictures of the waterfall and creek on the grounds, I used to climb the waterfall as a kid but now I walk up the hill to its side to get to the top. I forgot to take photos of the old 250+ year old iron smelting furnace. The relative that does the groundskeeping outdid themselves this year and cleared a lot of brush around the furnace so you could walk all the way around it to the top of a hill and see down into the furnace.
really nice electricity central!!
Hello,
This year or rather next year I’m going to try a new experiment.
Some of you have surely tried this before: growing potatoes from the fruit, specifically potato fruit, not tomatoes.
I hope I’ll manage to get some fine potatoes next year.
By the way, if you have any advice, I’m all ears.
the Tone way, always the best. I told you pv is adictive. Do you stay off grid? For minimizing standby consumption? Deye is hard to beat. Is that 15 k inverter? I have two 12 k and still have to test off grid and my 15 kW compressor…and laser, and press brake. Victron might be sturdier in such a situation.
And Catl released his sodium batteries , price comparable to lfp now. Cant wait to see it develop in a year or two. Hard to catch up with the Chinese. Missed chance again in Europe.
Joep, thank you for the kind words, which I don’t deserve, the essential machine in “off-grid” mode is the generator, today was a quick test, the engine rotates at 700 rpm, producing pure 4 kW of electricity. According to calculations, this is the torque that this engine could achieve on wood gas.
Wow. Tried that before but it wasnt really effective. Are you satisfied? Do you have any numbers? The MPPT wants half power. Dont know what I did wrong.
Andris used another mppt with good results. I didnt use the Deye but Growatt. But almost the same range, i guess.
And you are ready for another 16 kWh 
MPPT keeps searching for more voltage. The best way I could see was to bypass MPPT altogether, which in consumer terms is more likely using an inverter for wind generation.
Those typically use 3-phase ac for the generation in the first place.
Hello,
I think Tone’s solution is the best one: connect the generator to the photovoltaic inputs.
If there are no available inputs left, you could potentially use a separate inverter configured for micro-inverter operation.
While there is indeed a dedicated generator input, the problem with it is that the inverter synchronizes with the generator upon startup, which causes momentary power interruptions.
In fact, I had to disconnect from the grid because the voltage difference between phases was too great, causing the inverter to trigger a safety shutdown.
The result was a momentary power cut every two minutes and your electronic devices certainly won’t appreciate that.
I would also like to add that, as Sean said, MPPT mode isn’t ideal; it’s better to use manual settings, just like with a wind turbine.
Joep, if you don’t have that option, a firmware update adds it.
just downgraded the software for better off grid capabilities. Very exciting for me, if you do it wrong you can ruin your inverters. Software is way out of my comfort zone.
Rectify the generator and feed it to the inverter is a safe way for your electronics but rather insuffient (I think).
You know you cant run grid and generator the same moment on the Deye?
I have never tried running the generator and the grid simultaneously, but it makes sense since it is a backup solution.
I fully understand that with your country’s grid-injection system (which ours has adopted), you likely want to generate power using the generator when it is most profitable.
I think Tone’s solution is the best one, as the inverter will simply use the generator just as it would solar panels or a turbine.
Joep, this inverter has the option, as David said, to connect “wind turbines”, and offers a table for configuring the power consumption (current) according to the voltage, which is ideal for my needs.
Brief explanation:
-When the voltage is lower than 480V, the current is 0A, or the inverter does not consume energy
-when the voltage increases, the inverter starts consuming more and more electricity, current - power
-when we reach 550V (the highest possible voltage for adjustment) I set the power consumption, current to a value that the generator cannot exceed, this is actually a “brake”
Since I intend to run the engine on wood gas, I need to make sure that the inverter does not overload the generator so much that its voltage collapses, but that it only collects the available energy, this is ensured by setting this voltage/current “curve”.
In the inverter menu, we set the total power that we intend to connect to the DC inputs, this is the sum of the power of the solar panels and the power of the “generator”,… if this value is set too low, the inverter will limit the power to this value and the generator will not be loaded,…
Are you going to use genset as a regular power source or just a supplement to main source from solar field?
Tone, what kind of generator is that? It looks very much like an induction motor. I’ve seen 3-phase induction motors set up with capacitors so they can produce single phase power. Or alternatively, connected to the grid so they can back feed it and run your meter backwards or at least offset some of your usage.
Kamil, greetings. The generator is supposed to work when there is no sun, of course I intend to use wood as an energy source … the winter period is long.
Greetings to you too Martin. This is a “regular” asynchronous electric motor, but I added capacitors for excitation, which are in the first cabinet, from which I get three-phase electricity, it flows further through the choke, then through the three-phase rectifier, and the capacitors finally smooth the DC voltage. This DC voltage powers the inverter, well, here is the settings folder (currently) according to which the inverter takes energy. I intend to slightly increase the engine speed, so that the electric motor-generator will rotate at least 60 Hz, and I need to replace the three-phase capacitor with a slightly smaller one.
Hello Tone,
I see things differently: it is possible to start the generator automatically once the battery level drops to a certain percentage say, 20% and to shut it off once another level is reached, such as 80%.
This method seems easier for me to manage.
Currently, heating elements for the house switch on automatically in winter when the batteries are full and the panels are generating power.
I plan to use the same approach for the generator; initially, it will run on diesel, though I hope to switch it to wood gas one day.
Very intersting. Learned something again. Thanks. And David you still can use the contact in your Deye to switch on the generator.
But Tone, why bother to make ac-dc and ac again? Why not forget the capacitors ( or only small ones for blind current) and let the motor run 52 Hz? Difficult to keep it stable at 52 Hz? Or just because there is enough woodfuel?
Grid and generator can work simultaniously. The Deye even stops the generator frequency wise when the batteries are full.
I visited JO yesterday and got to see the logging truck, sawmill and the rebark.
We also looked at the place where he takes his wood to the car, got a little jealous of everything.
Also saw what the wind had done to his forest, didn’t get all that jealous of this, my god what work, looks like many years of work to figure it out.
I’ve been meaning to have a rebark, but I have almost no small bushes in our forest, so I use the edges after sawing for car firewood, but JO says that the rebark is difficult to cut squares, it becomes like long sausages, so I’ll have to think about this for a while, I hope your offer is still there Johan if I try sometime.
I was most interested in how the drive worked and how big the logging truck was, got some idea of what I could possibly do with my logging truck, a very successful day in Bäsna Thanks JO, just a shame that I ruined a whole day for you.
Joep, I don’t know if you understood my intention,… “why don’t I connect the generator to the generator input”?
For the generator input, I can only set the nominal power of the generator, so the inverter will load the generator up to this power, I see the problem in that if the gas quality drops, the engine will no longer be able to provide this power, the revs drop and the rationer will cut off the generator, … in contrast, if I use the DC input, for which I can set the values as desired, the generator will be optimally loaded, or even unloaded in the event of poor gas. I will increase the last setting on the V12 to a value that the generator will not be able to overcome and will act as a brake.
I also assume that if I produce a nice clean DC voltage, this is better for the long-term operation of the inverter than the AC voltage with harmonics that comes from the generator.
Thanks for the visit Jan. I enjoyed it. Not a ruined day at all. Only letdown was your wife didn’t allow y’all to DOW here. I would have liked to take a look at your new woodburner.