1KW Power Station happily powers 1KW load for 30 minutes

 

Here's the inverter inside the wooden power station housing.





So I finished weatherproofing the 1KW power station housing earlier this week and tried it out in the garden.




The DPC (damp proof course) plastic stapled to the pine should allow the unit to survive the rain for a few hours :)



The unit provides AC out (1000W for 2 hours) and AC in and PV in to recharge the batteries.






The unit needs bigger wheels and some kind of handles to allow it to be wheeled around more easily.



The 1150W microwave was too much for it and caused the inverter to beep before shutting down. (Reducing the power rating on the microwave made no difference).



A 700W toaster worked OK.



As it only draws 761W





The PV input also worked OK. This allows the inverter to charge the batteries using a solar panels.



And the inverter's display showed the batteries PV charging :)




So bringing the power station back inside the kitchen to try a 1000W load on it.




It is pulling down 900+W quite happily for tens of minutes



And does a great job cooking curly fries off-grid :)



I haven't got RS232 communication to the inverter going yet so I cannot graph the energy use. But the Renogy app allows me to monitor the two 12v 100Ah batteries which are wired in parallel.




I have already tested the two commands (QPIRI and QPIGS) I will need to send to the hybrid inverter to get information from it :)





pi@sionnach:~ $ /home/pi/.local/bin/mppsolar -c QPIRI

Command: QPIRI - Current Settings inquiry

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Parameter Value Unit

ac_input_voltage 230.0 V

ac_input_current 4.3 A

ac_output_voltage 230.0 V

ac_output_frequency 50.0 Hz

ac_output_current 4.3 A

ac_output_apparent_power 1000 VA

ac_output_active_power 1000 W

battery_voltage 12.0 V

battery_recharge_voltage 11.5 V

battery_under_voltage 10.5 V

battery_bulk_charge_voltage 14.1 V

battery_float_charge_voltage 13.5 V

battery_type AGM

max_ac_charging_current 20 A

max_charging_current 50 A

input_voltage_range Appliance

output_source_priority Utility first

charger_source_priority Solar + Utility

max_parallel_units 0 units

machine_type Off Grid

topology transformer

output_mode single machine output

battery_redischarge_voltage 13.5 V

pv_ok_condition As long as one unit of inverters has connect PV, parallel system will consider PV OK



pv_power_balance PV input max current will be the max charged current

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





pi@sionnach:~ $

pi@sionnach:~ $

pi@sionnach:~ $ date

Mon 10 Jun 15:31:11 IST 2024

pi@sionnach:~ $

pi@sionnach:~ $

pi@sionnach:~ $

pi@sionnach:~ $

pi@sionnach:~ $ /home/pi/.local/bin/mppsolar -c QPIGS

Command: QPIGS - General Status Parameters inquiry

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Parameter Value Unit

ac_input_voltage 1.0 V {'icon': 'mdi:lightning'}

ac_input_frequency 0.0 Hz

ac_output_voltage 228.0 V

ac_output_frequency 50.0 Hz

ac_output_apparent_power 0 VA

ac_output_active_power 0 W

ac_output_load 0 %

bus_voltage 401 V

battery_voltage 27.23 V

battery_charging_current 0 A

battery_capacity 95 %

inverter_heat_sink_temperature 317 °C

pv_input_current_for_battery 1.0 A

pv_input_voltage 49.1 V

battery_voltage_from_scc 27.0 V

battery_discharge_current 0 A

is_sbu_priority_version_added 1 bool

is_configuration_changed 0 bool

is_scc_firmware_updated 0 bool

is_load_on 1 bool

is_battery_voltage_to_steady_while_charging 0 bool

is_charging_on 1 bool

is_scc_charging_on 1 bool

is_ac_charging_on 0 bool

rsv1 0 A

rsv2 4 A

pv_input_power 31 W

is_charging_to_float 0 bool

is_switched_on 0 bool

is_reserved 0 bool

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



So next I need to wire up a RPiZW (https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero/) to send these commands and provide a web portal so someone can connect to it from their mobile phone browser and see a graph of energy use, battery capacity, current power, etc.





















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