Hi

I have spent a week assisting commissioning a large off grid Xantrex XW6048 based system.
System has eight Inverters eight SCC solar charge controllers a generator autostart and a gateway. Batteries are Exide 1400 Ahr cells with nine banks of 24 cells each running at a nominal 48 Vdc Battery voltage 12600Ahr. 30kVA generator as back up (second 30kVA gen set getting overhauled.

I was initially asked to "help get the Auto Generator start working"

On a system review it appears that the communications bus is overloaded.

The eight Solar chargers were then split off to a seperate network and have been left with no network connections to the inverters.

(I note the book suggests that inverters only go to 18kW systems. Hey I am just trying to help get the system working...)

It appears that the eight inverters load share nicely and start sequentially, I did not get to full load and did not have any of my usual test equipment with me.

We could not get the gateway configured, and note as the book says we get the system time messed up if the gateway is not on the network.

We could not get the Xantrex XW config tool operational to the PC. (Trying to communicate with a dual inverter network).

When commissioning the Automatic generator starter we could only get this working by splitting the inverter and SCC networks. (We do have an old software version installled in one of the eight SCC and this is the one that has a lower yield than the other seven with newer software. This is as supplied as the crew that installed the equipment has never got the communications link to the PC operational)

Once the Generator was on automatic control we set about commissioning the charge controllers in the inverter/chargers.
The book says they work independently, our observations are that they work together when networked???? We could not get charge currents over 50% of the rated breaker value for the entire system. Thus charge currents of about 30 A into a battery pack of 12600Ahr from a 30 kVA Gen set.

My current thinking is to abandon the chargers in the XW6048 and provide two chargers to go directly from the generators to the 48 Vdc battery pack and get the generator load up to about 80% with the charger. ( I would start one with AGS and the other with an AUX contact switched when inverter load is above say 20kW (peak of solar panels) OR a very low batt voltage.)

This would allow the system to be automated and not run the generator at low loads (due to glazing) Change over switching is in place to run the island on generator if the inverters fail.

I have left the island and may return in March to finish commissioning and training the operators. The installation crew are still working on the island three weeks out of four and can do some testing.

Does anyone have suggestions for integration of a large system with Xantrex 6048?
Any clues to getting the software upgrades via the PC link working?

Suggestions for a battery charger (or two) to convert the L1-N-L2 (110Vac L-N) 30kVA generator to 48Vdc (nom) 500 Amp (nom) for boosting the battery pack when load is high or solar output is low?

Any changes possible to get the load from the generator controlled so combined AC load on generator to AC load on island and charger is controlled to be about 80% of generator capacity?

Thanking you in anticipation
David