Alert on system reporting but power = 0?

Questions
#1

what is the right way for me to configure the alerts to handle this situation:

my inverter reported normally all day, however, it for some reason faulted while trying to synchronize with the grid. therefore, although it was reporting (open circuit) voltages all day, it was also reporting 0 instantaneous power and 0 energy produced in each sample. i didn’t notice this till the early afternoon and so lost a day of generation (rebooting the inverter fixed the problem.)

i see that you can alert on average power < some amount in some time window, but i wonder if that’s the right way to capture this situation.

thanks!

#2

that,s what i have done ,works well for me,as when it stops making power i need to know asap-Jim

1 Like
#3

thanks - yeah right before posting the question i set that average power thing up and it actually fired on the morning’s lack of generation so it looks like it’s going to work.

rob

#4

Also the list of alerting options described below -

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#5

thanks. the double slash in that url makes the link broken but of course if you remove the extra slash it can be seen.

one question i have about the low power alert is the time window. for tracking this kind of problem (failure to synchronize with grid) it seems like it would be useful to tie this to sunrise time rather than a fixed time of the day. for instance if i set it up for sunrise on a typical summer day here in the northern hemisphere, the alert will be firing all the time in the winter since the sun comes up much later. does PVO have any notion of sunrise/sunset times built into the code?

or maybe it’s more straightforward to add an alert for a system that is normally reporting but reporting 0 power, and then not worry about the time? or is that what this alert is already predicated on?

thanks

rob

#6

The time window is fixed. Another idea topic should be started for a dynamic sunrise/sunset time window alerting feature.

This is the only option at the moment. The time window may be widened to cover all seasons.

#7

i just realized that when this problem happens, because the inverter is not loading the panels at all, the DC voltage jumps way out of normal range. so that is another way to detect if the inverter has failed for some reason.

i don’t see any way to trigger alerts on arbitrary parameters, unless i missed that in all the settings. is there a way to get an alert on DC voltage > some amount?

#8

If it is uploaded as an Extended Parameter then an alert can be set when the value reaches a low/high threshold.

#9

thanks. i think i might have run out of extended parameters. had to add AC voltages on phase1 and phase2… anyway my problem turned out to be the utility setting their voltage too high and the inverter would not start reliably in that condition. i think for now the alert that i have set up will suffice as the problem should not happen nearly as frequently now.