yeah good points.Using strut I don’t think its necessary to connect each panel as they all connected already on the steel, you just want to get rid of any static and put everything at same potential, will have to read up a bit more on that i have a old text book i need to dig up. I put in a new spike and going to connect it to my main earth bar will have to get some earth cable then for the panels.
I saw a pic once of a lightning strike on a bunch of panels, it was not pretty. Where i am there is some serious lightning.
So managed to install MPPT and the PV DB for north array and updated firmware ect and its picking up on the system whoohoo. But got some weird error messages afterwards and seem to be getting a grid meter message too. any ideas why it gave these right after i switched everything back on.
Yes and seems to be back on as normal but it dropped yesterday after switching back on and then again this morning as per the error message pic. I will just keep an eye on it and see what happens
If you don’t have one, the system raises a warning to let the installer know (before he leaves the site… if he doesn’t live there) that something is not right.
You then set it to Inverter/Charger.
That setting allows you to choose the “zero point” in your system. It can either be an external meter (such as the Carlo Gavazzi), or it can be the input of the Multi itself. If you don’t have an external meter, just choose inverter/charger and you’re done.
Does the orange light come on as well?
Your picture just captured the green light indicating it has power. The orange indicate it is communicating with your GX device
yes i actually checked last night and its working again normally, its just weird that the two errors for grid meter only came on after switching back on yesterday, maybe i should check if i didn’t bump the usb on the octo after connecting the ve.direct cable
By the way that GX error #48 always happen when you upgrade the MPPT firmware. You can just ignore that. It fixes itself.
Then also, your Carlo gets its power from the power input, so when the grid goes down so will it. So having a meter warning after a grid loss is also not strange. When the grid is back it will power up again and the GX should switch back to using it.
ahhhh ok didn’t even think of that, very good point, yeah that grid loss was a little power drop this morning, kitchen plugs switched off while i was making breakfast. I have just never really noticed the grid meter alarm after grid loss will keep that in mind.
OK I think I know why that might have happened. As the log also shows, it cleared after 24 seconds. So it could be that it just took a little too long that one time to find the grid meter.
There is a 60 second timeout on the meter. If the power is on (ie the Multi has AC on one of its inputs) and the meter is gone… and it has been gone for the last 60 seconds: Raise a warning.
So a simple explanation is that maybe it took a bit longer than 60 seconds for whatever reason.
Edit: I just realised it is necessary to check if the active input is marked as a Generator. Cause an active AC input from a generator WITH a missing grid meter is not a reason to panic… the grid is down, the meter will be missing.
Edit 2: Also note that it is a warning. A warning means “something needs attention but the system is up and running”. An Alarm is “something is broken and the system is either not running or soon it won’t be…”.
Edit 3: After a more thorough perusal, I see the generator case is already handled. If you have a Quattro with two inputs, the grid meter is AWOL (cause the grid is down) and the generator is powering things… it also won’t complain about the grid meter. So it’s most likely just the timing went a bit wonky and you had an intermittent warning. Ignore it. If it happens frequently… then talk to me. Well, preferably report it through an official channel. This is not one.
I envy you that sunshine even though Cpt has more irradiation than Pta over 12 months … the last ±4 weeks we are living that one month of proper Cpt weather.
I have a similar problem. Clouds clouds everywhere. But that is a nice problem to have
And from my calculations this is the first of our ±7 wet years so perhaps we need to invest in more panels while it is wet…
Hey I think you guys just did something to the Gauteng weather, we had a massive downpour early this morning and now it’s all miserable and wet, very strange for up here, please keep your Cape winter weather to yourselves.
