hi this is schwa with unbound solar i'm here today to tell you a little bit about
solar edge storage inverters and how they're used with the lg chem battery
now i've put together a mock-up here that's got all of the equipment that you need to be able to
pull something like this together and i ended up having to squish it all in there to be able
to get it all into one shot so be sure that you check with your manufacturer's guidelines
and see if there are any other local codes that you need to follow other than that let's check
it out and see how these pieces go together i wanted to start over here at the main panel this
is going to be where power comes in from grid from your main panel you're going to be feeding
through an ac disconnect and into your store edge inverter this is where we bring the solar
power in and then it also integrates with several other pieces of equipment here it's connected to
the auto transformer it's also connected to this this is the meter box it's a communication gateway
that's inside of here it allows it to track power that's being produced and power that's being used
and here tucked between the storage inverter in the lg chem battery is our backed up load panel
it's also called a critical load subpanel and this is where we want to move our circuits over
from the main panel so that we have power to all of these loads if grid power goes down we
only have 5 000 watts of ac power available if the grid is down for our backed up loads so we'll have
to be kind of conscientious about what we decide to back up we've got some examples over here now
things that you would want to back up television is a good one this uses a few hundred watts that's
not that big of a deal we'll move that circuit over to our backed up load panel lights this
is another good one wanna have that we'll keep those on when the power goes down let's see hot
tub this probably isn't going to work a hot tub is going to pull more than 5 000 watts all by itself
air conditioning i know y'all really like it i do too you're probably not going to be able to back
that up either we need to focus on our smaller things a fridge we've got to keep our food cold
we also have things like a lamp this is extra lighting and then the last thing over here i would
want a backup would be the computer but keep in mind the lg chem batteries got a finite amount of
stored power in there once it gets to be the end of the day you only have the power that's stored
in there until the sun comes out the next day or until the utility power comes back up the point is
if you're running 5000 watts worth of loads on this thing and there's 10 kw in this battery
for the sake of discussion you're only going to be able to run it for about two hours the more things
you have on your critical load sub panel the less time you're going to be able to back it up i like
to tell people they say schwa how long is this battery gonna last me how much power is in there
and i'll say well it's like asking you you know how long you're gonna have a gallon of water it
depends on how quickly you drink it so you do want to try to back up some of your larger loads
let's see what that might take typically people will want to get in and back up their air
conditioning out of all of their larger loads and if you're using something smaller like a 5 6 700
watt air conditioning unit usually something less than a thousand watts and you're only using it for
a couple hours you're only cooling off one room or a small section of your house you might be able to
make this work but if you look over here there not much room in the subpanel it's kind of full
that doesn't really fit though we're backing up a lot of things
keep in mind we're not just working against the 5 000 watt limitation we have on the inverter
but also about the stored power in the battery we only have the power that's being stored in here
so if this really is a critical load and you really need to make this work for you
you may have to get in and make some sacrifices
there now if you really want to keep your air conditioner running and your fridge going you're
going to have to pump the brakes on some of these other things because you've only got a finite
amount of stored power in here until the sun comes back out we've looked at the overall topology of
the system and how the equipment goes together a little bit about what it can provide for us on a
backup perspective now let's take a look at the inside of the inverter and the battery so we can
get a good idea of the terminals and the wiring and some of the stuff we're working with there
the storage has got the terminals for your auto transformer you've got your ac input from grid
here's your ac output to your backed up load panel
your connection to your battery and then back here you've got all your connections for your solar
input i mocked this up so there's not actually a solar array feeding into it and then you've
got your communication wiring which goes out to your gateway and also goes over to your battery
these units come with a digital display and the buttons inside where you can get in and manually
program the thing get it operating and see what it's doing from right in front of the inverter
all of the newer solar edge inverters use set app and they don't have a display
but we still have a handful of these models
that have got the digital display they've got the buttons and you can do everything you need
to do on site without a smartphone or a tablet thanks for taking the time to check out our video
on the solaredge storage inverter and the lg chem battery if you have any questions or concerns
feel free to reach out to us online or give us a call anytime this is josh rice have a great day
you