Quick question here:
I know the default grid setpoint is 40W. What would be the downsides to reducing this?
40W per hour over a month adds up…
I set all my single phase installations to 20Watt, works fine for me…
Jip, also 20w.
The downside is only in if your meter trips, or if you push back power and don’t get paid for it (or worse your meter charge you for the power pushed back)
In my case if I use the ET112 meter to include everything (stove and oven) then the MP II push power back up when the stove/oven is used and this trips my prepaid meter. I could get it to be less an issue by setting the ESS Grid point to 300W while the oven was in use, but that is not a long term solution. So I removed the ET112 and now the Multiplus do not know about the oven’s usage and all is fine.
I only have 1kW solar panels installed (soon to be 2kW) so the stove will not be using solar power anyway.
So my setting I kept at 50W. Might lower it when the extra panels are installed.
Okay, I set mine to 20W, will see how that goes.
So I don’t yet have a prepaid meter, but my understanding is that the newer prepaid meters shouldn’t do that? Any appliance on your circuits that quickly turns off would cause this to happen, though. Like a kettle/microwave/iron also.
You should see microwaves, induction plates … it is like for example +2kw then -2kw then +500w - then -500w … draw all over the show as they do their thing.
Cost me cents on the rand when system has to feed back on the PAYG meter.
My BEC23 meter was replace with a shining new BEC23 during lockdown. It’s the new one that does this. I did hear there is a code that the municipality can request from Conlog and load that will deactivate this resetting “feature”.
It was easier to just remove the meter from the equation for now.
Oh great, I really hope I don’t have this issue when they put me on a prepaid meter.
In Cpt they install a ITron PAYG meter, when you register.
Conlog’s have issues, yet can be adjusted, if the Munic makes the effort. Otherwise a Conlog may cause a wee bit of a hassle.
So would the ITron PAYG meter work? I fall under the CoCT municipality.
Jip, that is what I have … what CoCT installed.
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A small positive value is a good thing. The reason is that at zero, the accuracy of the meter is low and your signal to noise ratio is terrible. In other words, it is easier to aim and hit 10W or 20W than it is to hit zero. Nevertheless, if you don’t have a meter that trips easily, zero also works just fine…
Guess that begs the question, what do you have it set as? 
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Mine is set to 10W.
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Bumping an old one here but better than starting a new topic.
Has anyone seen a relationship between the setpoint and reliability of grid feed-in?
So setpoint is set to default 50w. The prepaid meter is of the correct variety where it doesn’t mind a little backfeed here and there. About once or twice a week I would get an error that the grid has dropped and then it instantly reconnects, the Victon runs its checks and reconnects.
I’ve since dropped the setpoint to 20w, since then the Multiplus drops the grid around twice a day, which often seems to line up with a high wattage device starting up.
Anyone seen this happen themselves? I mean in the end, it makes no difference as the Multiplus just runs off of batteries for that period. Can one assume that the prepaid meter is curring power for a short time. To the point that there is no saving in lowering the setpoint for energy saving as when the Multiplus reconnects, it then runs everything off grid for a little while.
It takes time for you inverter to correct itself and not produce too much power. During this time it will do a bit of feedback.
Now if your grid setpoint is set to 50w the inverter tries to always use 50w from the grid. You meter will start it’s timer from when the power is reversed, or in other words as soon as the power goes negative. That means you have a 50W buffer before the meter will start it’s countdown, or 20W buffer if that is what you changed it too. A smaller buffer will mean the meter starts counting sooner and for longer, thus you will see more trips, while with a larger buffer setpoint you will see less trips.
I have one of those verys sensitive prepaid meters and when a large load like the oven suddenly stops the inverter has to recover from producing 2000W to 0W which took too long and the meter would trip going into a gridloss alarm.
To fix that I could set the gid setpoint to 500W while the oven was in use which mitigated the problem, but was not a solution. In the end I am now not using the ET112 meter, but the Multi’s own, and also removed the oven which mostly solved the problem.
Then I got the meter fixed and now I don’t have the issue at all anymore.
@calypso , in short the gridpoint setting can have a large influence on these type of trips.
Million dollar question
How? 
Replaced it?
City of Cape Town has been installing Enlight Sienna prepaid meters, and in both installs that I am managing I have no issues whatsoever. The grid setpoint on both is set to 0W, and the discrepancy between the grid usage as measured by the ET112 and the prepaid meter is within what I would consider the noise margin. Neither prepaid meters have ever tripped, but I do get charged in both directions, which is a fair tradeoff.
I have AC coupled solar on the one install, and I found that during the day Venus OS would raise the grid setpoint slightly. I have countered that by setting the AC coupled grid feed-in to 100W which counters it almost perfectly: My grid usage when the sun is shining is pretty much 0.
Yup, it has to do that to always leave some portion of the work for the PV-inverter, otherwise the Multi and the PV-inverter both aim for the same goal, and whoever gets there first does all the work. Which means the Multi may be powering loads from the battery while you have PV available.
The number is 2% of the maximum power of the PV-inverter, but no less than 70W.
I also have the Enlight Sienna meter and mine is set to 4W, and track the et112 /grid/30/Ac/L1/Energy/Forward / reverse kWh (only reads 0.1kWh accuracy) and its about 1% to 5% with in line with the pre paid.