Werner and Ursula Theinert accepted Saul Griffiths' challengeto Electrify Everything. And the lights stayed on during our recent prolonged power outage.
By Werner Theinert
THE Nissan Leaf e+ discussed in my previous articles (The power trip, October 1, 2020) is still going strong with nearly 60,000 kilometres on the clock. It’s still only been charged away from home twice, at a cost of $8 each time at the fast chargers at the Moe Folk Museum. We also sold the van recently and we are now waiting for delivery of the new BYD Seal … Hopefully soon! This will mean that we have electrified everything.
In July/August last year we got sick of waiting (three years) for regulators in Canberra to regulate on bidirectional charging using the car’s 63kWh battery to power the house. It appears that it’s okay to install a battery in your house, as long as it doesn’t have wheels or a steering wheel. We finally decided to install a home battery without a steering wheel which had the capability to make the home power outage-proof.
THE Nissan Leaf e+ discussed in my previous articles (The power trip, October 1, 2020) is still going strong with nearly 60,000 kilometres on the clock. It’s still only been charged away from home twice, at a cost of $8 each time at the fast chargers at the Moe Folk Museum. We also sold the van recently and we are now waiting for delivery of the new BYD Seal … Hopefully soon! This will mean that we have electrified everything.
In July/August last year we got sick of waiting (three years) for regulators in Canberra to regulate on bidirectional charging using the car’s 63kWh battery to power the house. It appears that it’s okay to install a battery in your house, as long as it doesn’t have wheels or a steering wheel. We finally decided to install a home battery without a steering wheel which had the capability to make the home power outage-proof.
This involved upgrading the number of Solar Panels from 12kW to 18.5kW – 6.5kW on the East side roof and 12kW on the West side roof (the original 12kWs of panels). These were then connected to a 15kW Fronius three phase inverter, a 40kWh BYD LFP battery, and three Selectronic 5kW inverters (one for each phase).
After the system was installed by one of the major Bass Coast installers, it required a while for the final inspection to be made. Once it was finally inspected and turned on, it took me quite a while to understand how it was doing its magic. I spent many hours watching the Selectronic website learning how the system worked and how it responded to the various events.
It’s had a major effect on our load consumption curve since being commissioned in early August:
It’s had a major effect on our load consumption curve since being commissioned in early August:
The upgraded Solar PV system was actually producing 6.5kW in late July on one of the sunny days. It will be interesting to see how it performs in June/July of this year.
The real magic happens, however, when the grid power suddenly goes off, as it recently did in a big way for a long time. The Red Phase Selectronic unit (the master controller of the system) immediately disconnects all three Selectronic inverters from the grid and takes over supplying the house (all three phases) with 230Volts @ 50Hz. (This is called ‘Island Mode’.) It does this changeover without even a flicker of the lights or a dip on the TV screen. If the sun is still shining whilst in Island Mode, it continues to supply the house whilst also charging the home battery. Once the home battery is full and the sun is still shining, it then starts charging the car’s battery (if connected). When the car’s battery is full, it then starts heating the hot water service.
When it has finished charging everything and the sun is still shining (this happened on the second and third day of the outage), the master unit communicates with the Fronius solar PV inverter and reduces its output to maintain the home battery between 98 and 100% full. This resulted in the solar PV output being reduced to 0.5kW during the middle of the day when it should have been producing 11 to 13kW. This was because there was no grid connection to export the excess power.
On the second day of the outage, the grid came back, but the home battery system remained in Island Mode for unknown reasons. I checked the Selectronic manual which stated that the unit would not reconnect to a system where the voltage is too high. I checked the grid voltage, which was between 257 and 260V. When the power came back on the fourth day the home battery system reconnected automatically as the grid voltage was back within the limits of the Selectronic Controller.
The other amazing discovery during the power outage was that because we still had power being supplied by the home battery system, the Starlink modem kept the Internet going with WiFi telephone calls still available from the mobile phones at home only, whilst the major phone networks were down.
On the Wednesday of the power outage, I had planned to go to Melbourne by bus from the Anderson roundabout bus station. Whilst waiting for the bus I noticed that the toilet doors were locked because of the power outage, which was rather inconvenient for a few people in search of a toilet. I boarded the bus and as we were driving down the Anderson hill towards Bass my phone suddenly received several text messages (There must been a working phone tower somewhere nearby for a fleeting moment) stating that my visit to Melbourne was no longer required.
I got off the bus at Bass and was eventually able to hitch a ride back to the Bunnings carpark in Wonthaggi, but because the phone towers were all out, I was unable to call for a lift home. I managed to finally find a familiar face in the carpark and get a lift home. Which enabled me to then return the calls and messages from Melbourne due to the magic of the Starlink Modem.
Hopefully the BYD Seal arrives soon, and we can put the final tick in the box for Dr Saul Griffith’s Electrify Everything sign.
The real magic happens, however, when the grid power suddenly goes off, as it recently did in a big way for a long time. The Red Phase Selectronic unit (the master controller of the system) immediately disconnects all three Selectronic inverters from the grid and takes over supplying the house (all three phases) with 230Volts @ 50Hz. (This is called ‘Island Mode’.) It does this changeover without even a flicker of the lights or a dip on the TV screen. If the sun is still shining whilst in Island Mode, it continues to supply the house whilst also charging the home battery. Once the home battery is full and the sun is still shining, it then starts charging the car’s battery (if connected). When the car’s battery is full, it then starts heating the hot water service.
When it has finished charging everything and the sun is still shining (this happened on the second and third day of the outage), the master unit communicates with the Fronius solar PV inverter and reduces its output to maintain the home battery between 98 and 100% full. This resulted in the solar PV output being reduced to 0.5kW during the middle of the day when it should have been producing 11 to 13kW. This was because there was no grid connection to export the excess power.
On the second day of the outage, the grid came back, but the home battery system remained in Island Mode for unknown reasons. I checked the Selectronic manual which stated that the unit would not reconnect to a system where the voltage is too high. I checked the grid voltage, which was between 257 and 260V. When the power came back on the fourth day the home battery system reconnected automatically as the grid voltage was back within the limits of the Selectronic Controller.
The other amazing discovery during the power outage was that because we still had power being supplied by the home battery system, the Starlink modem kept the Internet going with WiFi telephone calls still available from the mobile phones at home only, whilst the major phone networks were down.
On the Wednesday of the power outage, I had planned to go to Melbourne by bus from the Anderson roundabout bus station. Whilst waiting for the bus I noticed that the toilet doors were locked because of the power outage, which was rather inconvenient for a few people in search of a toilet. I boarded the bus and as we were driving down the Anderson hill towards Bass my phone suddenly received several text messages (There must been a working phone tower somewhere nearby for a fleeting moment) stating that my visit to Melbourne was no longer required.
I got off the bus at Bass and was eventually able to hitch a ride back to the Bunnings carpark in Wonthaggi, but because the phone towers were all out, I was unable to call for a lift home. I managed to finally find a familiar face in the carpark and get a lift home. Which enabled me to then return the calls and messages from Melbourne due to the magic of the Starlink Modem.
Hopefully the BYD Seal arrives soon, and we can put the final tick in the box for Dr Saul Griffith’s Electrify Everything sign.