Esteemed Wrenches; We recently installed OpticsRE monitoring for an existing off-grid site in Southern Colorado. It is 24v battery bank, 2.2kW PV, 2 Outback Flexmax 60 controllers, nice old Trace SW inverter, and new wind turbine + controller to replace a failed Whisper 200 with worn out furl and yaw bushings.
We installed a FlexMaxDC shunt monitor into the Outback Hub, with the old TriMetric shunt set as "inverter" and a new wind turbine shunt set as "wind" We removed the existing Bogart TriMetric and replaced it with the Mate 3s and , everything is working fine for remote monitoring. But because the Mate can't talk to the Trace inverter, it appears the PV input is subtracting from the inverter output on that shunt. Thinking that moving the PV input to the other side of the shunt will fix that, as the charge controllers are talking to OpticsRE just fine. Questions: When the gasoline generator starts from low SOC (from the Trace SW relay) will the FlexMaxDC Shunt A show a positive charging gain from the generator or does FlexmaxDC only show one way (load or charge)? I don't see any way of separating inverter load vs. generator gain. We will test this next month down there, but it's 5 hours away, we just want to be prepared. Is there any way to graph the FlexMaxDC shunts on the main online dashboard? They seem like a neglected child, only accessible by clicking multiple menus, and just downloading data to a spreadsheet. The idea was to show the client on a real-time graph how much the wind turbine is contributing versus PV. For that main dashboard, we realize that without an Outback inverter/charger, the graph will never show gasoline "generator" but if it showed inverter loads as a gain, that would be enough. Still getting our heads wrapped around OpticsRE, but the setup and commissioning was very easy, and it does work, after running a bunch of CAT5 hardwired; Concrete/Adobe structure filled with remesh blocked all efforts for wifi, The wifi router is located in the solar thermal room downstairs (the ReSol monitoring works great on the thermal) and barely a whiff of it upstairs at the electrical control room....OpticsRE seems to need a pretty robust internet connection. Any thoughts appreciated, this is our first OpticsRE install. Dan Fink Professor of Solar Energy Technology, Ecotech Institute IREC Certified Instructor™ for: ~ PV Installation Professional ~ Small Wind Installer Executive Director, Buckville Energy NABCEP Registered Continuing Education Providers™ 970.672.4342
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