My first thought too, did nobody in the company review the data for a whole year? If they did how could they possibly have thought the numbers were correct?
I looked at their building on a map and it's clearly an office building, not a data center. It's even a shared office building, with 4 different companies in it. They may have a rack or two on site for development/testing stuff, but that would be about it I guess. The 25-ish kW power draw sounds about right. Proper datacenters do megawatts of power.
Reminds me of the joke about how many it professionals does it take to change a light bulb? None as it is a hardware problem. Well it is disappointing that intelligent people have missed something so blooming obvious. Not good PR for this organisation.
When it comes to the battery system I would first look at why the phases are out of balance and if it could be changed before going further. Also different battery manufacturers have different solutions to phase balancing.
Balancing the phases is often done in industrial installations, after all the equipment is installed and working. Some machines can draw a lot of current while others may ve voltage sensitive. One of the worst "offenders" are welding machines, since the run off 2 phases, this causing seriouse imballance.
@@johanncover1988 Usually that's true, however at work we do have a machine made for the US market that runs 230V, which means that it loads just a single phase on our 3-phase system with about 20 A. There is no 3-phase version of that machine. So the 3-phase UPS that it's connected to is seeing a somewhat unbalanced load. Now that UPS feeds many other things as well, so it's not in any way under a critical load and for the whole plant perspective those 20 amps out of balance is not even noticeable. Our total grid load is usually about 40MW. But for a smaller operation those 20 amps can be a bit of a pain in the butt because the neutral is seeing some load and if you have common ground/neutral (older installations) this means that the protective ground can see some voltage and you get a risk of ground currents all over the place that can lead to some quite annoying or even troubling results. E.g. shielded network cables will suddenly see some serious current. I have seen that some 25 years ago causing a CRT monitor to flicker in a strange way.
Right call, a battery is never going to pay for itself just supporting loads on Mondays from the weekend. They should also look at consumption reduction, this is by far the most cost effective way to make a difference, can they stop using resistive heaters, use a/c units instead, can they automate the lighting, can they switch off certain equipment at certain times of the day, audit appliances, put hot water boilers on time switches (offices are full of those local heat units), turn instant boiling water taps off out of office hours, etc, etc
@19:00 Not a sparky, but I am a IT Engineer. Trust me that whoever maintains that rack will hate you if you slap a massive battery array in front of it. It would also make accessing the electrical panels more tricky. If it were me, i would put it up against the wall behind you. Still floor mounted, but moved against the wall next to the cupboard rather than free standing in the middle of the room.
Jordan, I work in Industrial around the world and phase balancing is always one of the first things I try to correct. It helps to further diagnose other problems the installation may have, specially reactive power. Then when everything is balanced you then can think about the battery storage you may need. EDIT: The customer really needs more solar production, there is tons of real estate on that building roof that needs to be covered with panels. If it was me my order of priority would be first balance the loads, second install more solar generation and then third battery storage. For measuring data I'm on Fluke's camp. I normally rent a 435-II or a 1760TR when such is needed, since they are an expensive piece of kit.
@@stephengilman6247 The phase balancing results in benefits such as loss reduction (power factor and reactive energy), voltage profile improvement and system reliability improvement. Power factor doesn't look it is a problem here, 0.97 is a good result. You want as close to 1 as possible but in this case if it doesn't go lower than 0.95 the company normally don't have penalties by the service provider. Power factor correction is more likely to happen in customers with lots of Inductive Loads such as motors. Servers by themselves, the PSUs should have power factor correction devices inside per ENERGY STAR program requirements and EN 61000-3-2 norm.
@@black.phoenix. Sounds right my experience was at a refinery with large induction furnaces I worked on the mechanical side but remember that the phases being balanced ment lower electric charges?
@@stephengilman6247 Yes true. By being balanced then power factor correction can then be properly dimensioned. And with those inductive furnaces for sure the company had measures in place to minimize it.
@@black.phoenix. You should see the power factor in a machining shop, unless the machines are relatively new, the power factor makes you want to puke. Lol
BTW, if you want this kind of monitoring on the cheap, look at the Shelly 3EM at about 120 EUR. It basically measures the same things (3-phase V/A/PF 1/s) but comes without data visualisation software. And because it is a DIN-rail device, in any other country than the UK, it can be mounted directly in the consumer unit.
Phase Angle Because when you add all the currents together at the neutral they add up to 0 if they are balanced. If your balanced current was 10A/ phase then you would add 10cos (0) + 10cos (-120)+10cos (120) = 0 for a 3 phase system. If it's not balanced then when you add them all together you will have some current at some angle left over.
Be careful around space for those floor mounted batteries - the rack cabinet in the back probably needs at least a meter in front of it if there's any server kit etc in it, and you'll be mud if you put a battery in the way!
This! - I'm not a sparky but I am a network engineer and my first thought was 'please don't put batteries directly infront of that cabinet!' - Excellent video and well explained for us muggles :)
With that roof they need to replace their panels and add more (400w panels+ now exist) i would not even consider battery's at all the moment if only weeks ends when they charge up (more solar)
Surely at some point it would have flagged that the energy bills would have been huge compared to their expected costs. Just an assumption and also the initial data showed around 3kw of power used then when CTs correctly installed shot up to 20kw. Next time a quick check of where CTs connected will save a bit of time when doing the initial visit 😉
Three phase battery systems are perfectly capable of producing a unbalanced load from a single battery. A 20KW battery with a 20KW inverter can supply 80% on L1 while doing 10% on L2 and L3. This all comes down to the capabilities of the inverter, some will do better with unbalanced loads than others.
Also keep in mind metering. German residential for example sums up phases - you can feed in on only one and still reach a net zero on the meter with a usual 3ph load. So even if you can feed in 3ph no need to worry about cancelling out the individual phases.
Your comments about the weight of the batteries took me back. I am not an electrician but I was installing UPS batteries (just putting them in the rack and plugging them in) and this was on a first floor and the staff in the room below were rather concerned at the weight. IIRC they were 100 Kg apiece and there were three of them. We ended up calling a structural engineer who took one look and said that the floor was 6" reinforced concrete and that there would be no problems.
Offices generally designed for 2.5-3kN/m2 - ie 250-300kgs/m2 - so it’s in the right ballpark - if timber floors / or lighter weight floor system then you’d have to consider it more carefully. I was called to a job where an office had a lighter weight floor construction used - they were concerned about cracks in the ceiling under. Simple diagnosis - they had floor/ceiling filing cabinets storing paperwork above. Was a nice day out.
My first recommendation would be to start by balancing out the 3 phases. I would not be surprised if the switch rack in that room, which is probably the office switching, is all on 1 phase. An other option would be to use a decent UPS system to balance out the phases. Most decent 3 phase UPS systems are able to do that, that way you don't need to worry about that in the Solaredge part of the installation and they have a UPS so they cat survive a normal outage.
That room looks too small to safely install batteries in the middle. Is there not a BS that covers safe working distance, and escape route when working with 3-phase power?
I took one look at the figures at the start & knew straight away they were suspicious - particularly for the size of installation!,Aside from that it's never wise to assume that the last person knew what they were up to.
No need for battery - absolutely no point in the week as the power is all used from the solar anyway so would have to pay grid to feed the battery charge, at weekend there would be enough solar to feed in the battery but would get used overnight so wouldn't last long ... and the cost of the battery solution versus what you would save is minimal at weekend, if you take into account selling the solar back into grid it would take an eternity to have the batteries pay for themselves.
I found it funny that re-balancing was not your first thought. Maybe because we mostly do gensets, but balancing phases is always a consideration and initial start point. We have a Fluke energy meter, but to the best of my knowledge we have used it two or three times.
I only managed to make a jam sandwich & coffee for this video. With Cory’s I made a nice casserole. Nice video - interesting enough. Glad you thought differently regarding supporting batts / inverters on the plasterboard walls. I’m a fanny boy lover of server cabinets. I’d explore the use/sizing of them to suit your requirements. You might be able to wire up off site & wheel it into the building for hook up. Keep the heavy batts on the bottom - inverters above. *you can lock the wheels into position when finished - you can then unlock the wheels if you / others need to move unit out of the way from other equipment - just allow in the cabling for the hook up for it to be moved away It’ll take up less floor space. I’m here all day 👍
@@iansampson2477 depending on the length of the video - it’s a decision I make after the first five minutes or so - this wasn’t in the casserole league unfortunately
Would it be possible to re-balance the phase loadings to reduce import energy costs was my first thought. Good to see that you're thinking about it as a lot of sparks don't.
More accurately balancing the load won't save money as the kW usage will be exactly the same. The main reason for correctly balanced loads is to protect the main cut out fuses in a 3 phase install. It would pay here to balance the load if a battery is needed because then the customer only needs to pay for one 3 phase AC coupled battery inverter rather than 3 single phase AC coupled inverters.
That's good practice no matter what the load demand. Even single-phase split (North Am) inspectors will fail a board that is too lop-sided with loads. The more balanced the over-all load is, the more efficient the distribution is.
@@craigbutler6243 Balancing the load will save a small amount of power. With a well balanced load there will be little or no neutral current and hence minimal heating and power loss in the neutral conductor.
You may have overlooked that a battery doesnt need to be dedicated to a phase a single battery with seperate inverters will be way more flexible and avoid any underutilized capacity with the varying loads. Selectronics only make a signgle phase inverter they use 3 units that can be connected to the same battery one on each phase they work with a number of different battery offerings.
_"According to their data they were exporting tons of power"_ well, if you look at the Solar data yeah, but wasn't their finance dept looking at the actual energy bill? Not just the previous installers at fault, if I were in charge I'd be asking the accountant why they never got paid for the exports!
Er, as soon as Jordan said that they (a cloud storage and computing business probably running many banks of servers) were only consuming 1.something kW during the day ... (the rest of this sentence is left as an exercise for the reader to complete)
@@xmfclick I doubt they're running banks of servers, even when the real total came in a 23kW that's just your average office, I assume their head office. Their banks of servers are likely in a data centre somewhere or more likely in Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure cloud facilities.
Is this a real operating company or just a coverup for some dodgy activity? How come they realize about all this ONE YEAR LATER?!?! Thank you for the video!
@@kirkhamandy Servers are nearly always somewhere else with companies like this, they just rent time from data centres but yes the numbers still should have immediately stood out as suspicious.
When I see the currents at about 8:50 it's clear that you should consider a load balancer. Look at "ferroamp" and see if that's something you'd like to look at further. A battery pack would still be of interest but it wouldn't be as effective with that amount of load going on.
That little Solar Edge inverter looks familiar to me, and it's what I would expect to find in a residential PV setup, not in a commercial property. 3-phase power is pretty common in NL, even in residential buildings .
3 phase isn't common in UK residential. Unless they have a HUGE panel area there's no reason for the inverter to be any different for a commercial premises over residential.
4 kWp of panels is very much a residential sized system - even our 8 year old system was 3.5 kWp. For a commercial sized system, I suspect that triple single phase inverters are quite often better than a single 3 phase one.
? Do you have 120 volt line voltages in for residential in NL. Another question: What is a typical line voltage for internal distribution in small manufacturing premises ?
@24 mins... Totally agree, get balancing issue sorted if viable. Square meterage of solar doesn't seem to be enough to warrant a battery solution...just from the quick graphs looks to be around 25-40% of day to day load. A weekend charge would be used up in a day or less. Phase load, solar generation(then batts)
Why would you a) even consider adding battery storage at all given it's a massive net import and the majority of the time, and b) not install a 3-phase AC-coupled inverter set with shared battery if you actually did install one? Metering point will generally measure net energy usage, balancing the phases individually does not maximise self consumption and net total import to zero.
Though I am not an electrician my main interest is the phase imbalance. My thoughts are that their primary systems are all running off that one phase and the secondary systems are shared between the other two phases. Primary systems - their entire computer system and air conditioning. (Common shortcut to save money on wiring) Secondary systems - standard power outlets, primary office lighting and security lighting.
What i don't get, is why the bloody hell could nobody figure out a place that's obviously some kind of cloud/server hosting, running a shitload of servers, wouldn't be pulling 20 kilowatts? You didn't even check for overall power consumption until now! Or you only just found out it was screwed but...yeah. The previous installers though, seen much worse..at least it didn't catch fire! I'm amazed not one single person noticed the readouts were bullshit! Could do with balancing those phases too..that would help lol
Come on mate! Alarm bells should have been ringing.... How many buildings of that size use only 1.2kW an hour? That's not enough to boil a kettle! Still good work though Also, if you could balance out the power more evenly over all 3 phases their bill would be less.
Sparky from Australia. We would not be allowed to install the batteries where you were thinking as a floor mount. The rules here are quite strict around electrical switch rooms. There are dimensions around the boards and their doors to allow egress for a sparky in the event of a fault. Also over are certain electrical size, a door at each end is required. Worth thinking about the future safety of us sparks I reckon🙂
If the UK was still in the EU, I would say for those use cases get an S20X Pro from E3DC, a daughter company of Hager Energy. Thatˋs a 30KWp inverter with a 20.6-82.4 KWh battery in one system, yes - one box. Unfortunately due to Brexit, I don‘t expect them to bring it over to blighty, as they can not depend on regulations mirroring the EU ones in the future and it is too expensive to create UK-specific ones.
I use Home Assistant OS to read the data from my Fronius Smart Meter and Inverter. I use it to learn about my energy usage, and I've been able to plan when my appliances run.
I think you all might have spotted that with a "sniff test"... seems to me the array is very small, and the AC Load alone would be pretty considerable... We've got a 6kW system at Home, so a system of 3.5 or so seems quite small for a business... 'course I'm just sitting here in my armchair! ;-) Would it make any sense to try to balance the loads *before* considering the addition of batteries on only one of them?
And Jordan probably had, but that would ruin the story wouldn't it ;) Also the chronology of incoming information might have been different than how it was told I guess. But it was great to see how organized and professional Jordan and his team go about to analyze power consumption/balance/needs.
Floorstanding is a good idea as long as there's enough floor space to allow for a working area. They kind of have a weirdly configured room. Wonder if IT could move over slightly? That data loggers pretty neat my only occasion to encounter one was when we had the power company hook a flight data recorder looking box up to our meter since we were kind of the end of the line and occasionally had some weird power issues. they didn't find any information that was useful Unfortunately. this was also like 2002 so I really wonder what the inside of that box looked like. Yeah they just lifted the cover on our meter box and hooked leads up and left it hanging half open for a few days it was interesting.
For measuring voltage with our Fluke 1736 I use inline fuseholders from staubli with 2A fuses ( 120KA ) that are direct connected to the alligatorclip or magnetic adapter . If a lead gets damaged by a door from a switchboard the fuse will reduce the short circuit current greatly. This is something to think off when installing a powerlogger.. personal safety en material safety are easily obtained this way.
I've seen a few battery systems that mount in standard 19" server racks. Marco Reps, the electrical engineering youtube channel took a look at one from SOK and he seemed to like it. Most look like they are in the 5kw range but can be dazy changed to whatever capacity you want (I think the limit on SOK is 15 connected together - so that would be 75kw per inverter/phase!) - they also weigh less per unit so it's less hazardous to maneuver. Might be worth considering if you want to maximize the density in a space where you have lots of vertical space like that utility closet.
Solaredge does Support pylontec batteries (rackmoutable) as well, just use the setting for byd lv battery (we do this as well) and from what I did see, use a total battery size of about 30/40kWh :)
I would recommend install the batteries against the stud wall moving the cabinet out the way. That was you still give IT and other services access to equipment that is on the wall or in the server rack. Mounting on the floor right in front of the db will just piss everyone off.
Been using Chauvin Arnoux for almost 20 years. much better kit than Fluke, love my MFT even if its a chunky beast. Surely balancing the phases is the first priority to sort out before fixing other problems that dont necessarily need fixing??? - Also if i was going to splash out on a battery system for an internet network company - id want it to provide some hours of backup power and not as a feeble way to cut down the leccy bill. who ever was in charge of the solar has nothing to do with the leccy bill other wise they would have noticed almost from the start that something isnt right.
You should never spend any money without being in possession of ALL of the details. They clearly don't just need some work doing, they need the good help and advice as well. I really enjoyed this video. Shame you haven't this level of data for a full year.
Do a walk through , Shuffle the loads , Run the logger for a week . ( you don't want surprises ) . In light of the new usage information . Ask about PV up grades before moving forward with storage ! Me thinks 26 Kwh per leg is about it & definitely not on a daily basis in a UK winter . Probably only get it once a week on Sunday . UK winter PV is about 15 - 25 % of production on a average summer day . ( & I mean production not installed PV ) . You can ever have enough panels …........LOL
i do love a good graph, more metrics the better, i have just about every important device at work reporting in to a central server to keep an eye on everything from Projector Lamps being left on, Satellite Quality data, and of course power monitoring. when i look at "tech" companies that dont have any of that as a normal it makes me wonder what other holes they have in the infrastructure.
With Victron you can put one single phase system on and it can be set to export energy coming in on other phases. I have not done one but believe it does depend how the payment meter actually works but it could save a lot of money.
Enjoyed that video Jordan, my PQA was £200, what a positive, likewise how easy it was to repair, but on the flip side, its a Metrel!! and they won't help anyone self diagnose let alone calibrate it, shame really.. However, I've used mine buckets at home, I too analysed my entire home, built a small add on appliance tester with multiple turns on the CT so I can get that magical 1A:1V ratio, able to get
My estimate would be about 80kWh of storage, with about 2/3 on 1st phase, and 1/6 on each of the 2 other phases. If they are set up for TOU they may even be able to use the batteries to help loadshift.
120 deg between each phase. so an equal load they cancel out to neutral. Power factor less than 1 is when current & voltage are out of phase, eg non resitive load, such as motors cooling etc.
I wouldn't bother with battery storage unless it's for a ups type system I would go with more panels on the roof and getting the flammable things out that are stored in that room
Now that you have a PEL103, you can do a great job of monitoring that usage for those EACH premises! Glad that Chauvin Arnoux have given you the kit. I've not had any luck engaging with them. For starters, the phase rotation has always shown red on every installation monitored - hoped this would be a handy facility but just ignore now. Downloading of data via USB is incredibly slow and software far from great (and Windows only). I paid extra for magnetic tips that you demo but have never once been able to use them for the reasons described and the fact that they would fall out too easily. I certainly think that every electrician should own a power and energy logger these days
Please give me a call or email at Chauvin Arnoux and ask for Kevin. We can talk you through the phase rotation indicator and any other features of the PEL. Details pinned above.
@@martinsutherland4810 our details are included in the video description, unfortunately youtube won't let me post them here. You could message me via linkedin too if that's easier.
The Server/network Stack needs Frontaccess and the Electrical Panels Space in Front to just stand there and work on it.^^ I would sugest put that Guitare case away! And remove the Small Closet on the opposite wall of the Panels. I am shure they will find other place to store this stuff and their Wineglass Boxes^^ You now got plenty of Wall and Floorspace back to install your Stuff properly and out of the way. You can still stack your Batteries there on the Floor if the Walls arent Strong enough. Or Just put more Serverrack Closets in there. If you use such Rackmounted Systems. That would be the most flexible in the future. As Storrage goes just from the feeeling not even looking at the exact data. I think they will not need any storrage capacities at all. But work on the consumption side switching some circuits or appliances arround to even out the phase consumption. And a deeper look into their machine use and power need. Can it be shiftet, swapped or be more intelligent used maybee upgradet. For example Heating/Cooling with Heatpump Systems who use the higher Solar Input in the Summer. Well we will see.. Batteriestorrage is still realy expensive and power often just way to cheap to be an option if you just think of the costs. If you want to go Zero Import from the Grid.. well thats an interresting Task. But Most of the time its more easy to first install way more Solar. There are avialable Solarspace like the vertical Wall or a fence who can be more efficient in the morning or evening to catch more solar you need there. Places you would not have thought about 10 years ago.
I wish our house was only using 0.3KW on average. lol In both the current house and old one, we were always using around 700W at all times, even after trying to unplug and reduce things. Only a few TVs, PCs, two fridge/freezers, and a chest freezer now, but it's still quite a lot. The problem right now is the standing charge. Around 50p per day on electric, and 50p per day on gas. Electric tariff is around 32p per KWh here now, which is almost double what it was in 2015. Gas tarriff is only 10p per KWh, so definitely best to use a bit of gas heating at times, otherwise we're paying 50p per day for gas, for no reason at all. It's like paying for a gym membership every month, but *never* going. lol
Balanced phases is even more important if you ever install a dual UPS where one UPS can take all the load while the other is down for maintenance (so an N+1 type system). I had a situation where the customer added new kit without our knowledge and just like in this case most went into the red phase. When we took down one UPS for maintenance, the red phase on the remaining UPS was overloaded so the UPS went into bypass - we effectively no longer had a UPS. Until the phases were rebalanced or load on the red phase reduced, we couldn't do any UPS maintenance (and until you do you don't really now how good the batteries are), and it was a real struggle to get the customer to do anything because none of the kit could be switched off - it was a 24/7 high priority system (hence the need for an N+1 UPS). That was a bit of a nightmare with all sorts of departments involved. One even wanted to blame the maintenance group for the situation. Buck passing as usual...
The function of the neutral conductor is to take residual current back to earth, most appliances aren’t 100% efficient so the remaining load travels down the neutral back to the centre pin of the star transformer aka earth. Most 3 phase motors don’t require a neutral because they have been designed to be balanced across each phase so the neutral is not require because there is no residual current that needs to be taken to earth
Why would you go with 3 single phase battery systems? The load on L1 would mean it has no excess power to charge during the day so it would be useless at night. Just put in a 3 phase system, the meter averaging would mean that the equal export/import on the 3 phases would cancel out.
Two pieces of kit that I have been using since 2006, a thermal imager and a Fluke 435. If you do 3 phase industrial work, they worth the capital outlay. You should should consider investing in a thermal imager, even an entry level unit. I have been getting involved in more renewable energy project, and the DC side of the projects, battery connections etc. A thermal report handed in with your project documents just takes you to a higher level than the rest. A power analyser is great, but the monthly insurance cost required due to the huge risk of leaving a expensive power meter on site (especially one with a screen) has to be considered. It is better to invest in a plain box type recorder with no screen.
No don’t put batteries in front of the switch boards. Combination of access and fire safety. You may need to consult the relevant BS on battery storage too. Also again I’ve caught you stand on the 2nd top step (no no) get taller ladders as needed
Its possible that its not the previous installer fault. When they asked to shut down the entire site to install non-split CTs onto the incomers I can predict the response. Non electrical engineers would not have spotted the load was much lower than expected. I guess they just sent the invoice and walked away.
So they want to buy an expensive battery bank to store electricity during the day, when general grid demand is high and they could be selling the surplus into the grid, then use the electricity at night when power from the grid is at its cheapest. Makes sense.
It makes absolutely zero sense to install separate batteries for each of the phases. Separate inverters, sure, but all running from a common battery bank, to actually balance the load.
11:20 Ah, magnet contacts from Electro-PJP. French company I've had happy business with in previous years, and they even contacted me to ask my local expertise when they were developing a product they hoped to market over here. They do some lovely kit, but much of it is vastly expensive unfortunately. Makes sense that Chauvin use their parts though. Y'know, being French an' all...
As to your question of why one could see 'zero current' on the 'neutral' lead, it's because the UK (at least in this instance) is using a 'Y' connection, as opposed to a 'delta' one. In fact, albeit with different results, one can load a balanced triple (do you call them 'treble'?) feed with either...with some other considerations pending, not least if the neutral is included at the point of generation or not. My turn to ask a question (I'm a technologist more than an electrician, albeit many electricians surprise me with how little they seem to know on phase difference...a la: "Split Phase" when they mean *split feed* or *double rail* which is ubiquitous in North Am residential and light commercial use. It's single phase (think current, not voltage to make this easier) but *center tapped to neutral* (in effect ground/earth, albeit not in reality, due to line and insertion loss) such that it's 240v 'side-to-side' and 120v side to neutral. Unbeknownst to many, North Am domestic is able to provide 240v outlets, handy for tools, heavy kitchen mixers, toasters....and *E-V rechargers*! Laundry dryers and kitchen stoves are almost always 240v. But it's all *single phase*!) The question: This may be standard practice, I don't know, but if your modules are producing DC, then aren't you pooling the DC output of the modules into one battery bank, and then inverting to three phase after that? The inverter itself should be able to balance load distribution to the three legs as needed.
Excuse my ignorance,nice as the Gucci app data is worth having but isn’t there an electric meter for import output? How else will they know what to charge.
With single batteries on each phase I guess they sync to the frequency of that phase. But I assume that a system like this could not work in island mode unless those independent batteries can correctly maintain the sync between phases but a full 3P battery would not have this issue.
Three phase and neutral currents: Basically each phase is a sine wave. But the phases are 120° apart. So if there is a load on each phase, the sine waves will cancel each other out and the neutral only carries the difference back to the transformer star point. Now if the neutral is broken along the way (PEN fault), the voltages will be all over the place. This is because V=IR. The resistance of devices stays the same and the current has to get back to the transformer. So the low resistance phase (high load) will drop in voltage and the high resistance phase will increase in voltage. In this video it would likely be: Phase 1 at 40A would go to 150v (6000w) Phase 2 and 3 at 20A would go to 300v (6000w) Assuming a break on this installation neutral only. But not likely to stay like that as things start blowing up. Plus there may be some current returning via earth if it's a TN-C-S system which would pull the voltages closer together. But of course beware the shocks on the metalwork.
Did they not think to check why they were still being billed by the electricity supplier if they were supposedly making almost all of their own electricity?
I am watching this in June, and going back the age of the (6 months) and adding a month in for data collection seems to indicate an October-November collection interval. That's not peak solar generation, so sizing batteries based on this data would lead to undersizing unless compensated for.
I'd also speak to them about power management. I've managed to save a lot with just reconfiguring pcs for better power management. 5% less speed in return for 15% less power.
It’s technically not quite correct that with the same load across the phases (in A) the neutral conductor would carry no current. This also needs balanced power factor or phase angle. It does work for a big 3 phase motor, doesn’t need to be true for different loads though.
If a hosting company cannot tell what their power consumption is how the heck can they be trusted to have redundant power systems in place with generators, batteries etc.. also leaving heaters on and then turning them off? unless this is just some portable ones for an office, but then I would be thinking H&S. Honestly sounds like they dont know how to run a datacenter/hosting and I dont think this video shows the company in a good light.
Good video but didn’t think you could connect solar edge battery to the three phase inverter. I believe there is new three phase inverter coming out next year which will allow it. Just stick normal AC coupled battery in
If the loads were perfectly balanced neutral current would be more or less zero because it would flow between phases-the neutral current is effectively the amount of phase current imbalance in the system, its virtually impossible to balance all the single phase loads
Judging by your data & the numbers generated if they installed 1/3rd more panels on the solar panel bank they would be able to be totally self sufficient & be able to buildup enough stored power to run the nights & weekends without stressing the system under Idle & during Peak load... As for the battery capacity here in the states we would check each system withing the entire grid, Then check how much peak amperage in KWH & KWA and whatever the number is at peak usage we double the capacity for that systems battery bank.. Example system one uses 43 KWH, That bank would have a battery that can contain double that amount of storage it uses at peak system load
It would be interesting to see the economic case for installing batteries. Also is your added monitoring now ignoring the load which it was originally measuring? How does your data compare with the supplier figures for consumption and export? After all it is those figures which the bill is based on.
One question regarding having batteries in a power distribution room is that when lithium iron battery’s charge there’s potentially a problem of toxic emissions and even explosion having batteries next to electrical equipment. Shouldn’t batteries be stored in a separate ventilated room. Lithium iron batteries can during charging give off hydrogen. Just a thought
Your invite to send in an explanation of 3 phase return. In a 3 phase generator, there are only 3 cables exiting the unit, and each supplies power at 120 degrees out of phase with the next one in the system. There are two styles of 3 phase generator. In one of them, there actually is NO earth, and the individual phase units are connected in a circular fashion and the other ends of each phase generator unit is connected to the phase lines. In an Earthed system, one end of each of the 3 phase units is connected in a star point which is earthed. It is to that point that our usual "Earth" is actually eventually connected, sometimes many hundreds of miles distant. The Phase lines are in turn connected to a junction of two of the 3 generator pairs. In a "balanced" load situation, the current on the Neutral cable on a "normal" or balanced 3 phase supply would be approximately zero (if not zero) because the power drawn on each of the 3 phase lines would be very close to, if not, equal, thus not needing or causing any return of unbalanced current flow on the Earth. But if that supply comes from a generator that does not have an earth, the unbalance, if any, would only go back to the nearest 3 phase transformer. Incidentally, I am not a sparkie, and have had no tuition in this field. How good is my explanation???
So I would have a lot more questions. Does the power phase usage imbalance continue on Weekends? Does the solar system have a three phase inverter or single phase? How does the power company calculate the over all usage, does it just add up power in each phase including (negative) exported power, or does it treat each phase as a separate charging item which could be drawing or exporting power? Where I live the power company meters the total power usage just adding imports and exports together. I would tend to want to balance the phase usage and keep the whole system three phase if the solar system produced 3 phase power. Then add a 3 phase battery system. Using three single phase battery systems seems more complex. To me the three separate battery system idea has a lot of issues. How are you going charge the three separate battery systems giving more power to the larger battery? What happens if the phase loading changes because of a new piece of equipment? If the power company just meters total power usage and the solar system was single phase you could just use one single phase battery system and put it on the high load phase?
We had solar panels fitted in 2016 and batteries added in 2019 on our 1920s house. The question is how can we tell if it's all fitted correctly? I must admit that I have never been impressed with the savings that we get.
So this is just an office block? This can't be powering their data centre because surely that would be roughly the same power demand 24/7. Would have generator backup too.
I can't believe that a Web hosting company thought that they were only using 300 watts of power per hour even if it was overnight
My first thought too, did nobody in the company review the data for a whole year? If they did how could they possibly have thought the numbers were correct?
I looked at their building on a map and it's clearly an office building, not a data center. It's even a shared office building, with 4 different companies in it. They may have a rack or two on site for development/testing stuff, but that would be about it I guess. The 25-ish kW power draw sounds about right. Proper datacenters do megawatts of power.
Loads of IT folks are clueless about anything below the OS.
Reminds me of the joke about how many it professionals does it take to change a light bulb? None as it is a hardware problem. Well it is disappointing that intelligent people have missed something so blooming obvious. Not good PR for this organisation.
@@atkt62 Indeed! One can only hope they are more attentive to checking their data backup and restore regime?
When it comes to the battery system I would first look at why the phases are out of balance and if it could be changed before going further.
Also different battery manufacturers have different solutions to phase balancing.
Balancing the phases is often done in industrial installations, after all the equipment is installed and working. Some machines can draw a lot of current while others may ve voltage sensitive.
One of the worst "offenders" are welding machines, since the run off 2 phases, this causing seriouse imballance.
I too would try to analyse that imbalance, and consider reducing it before deciding to size batteries to fit it.
Towards the end of the video, he talks about phase balancing.
KISS, keep it supid simple. It's so much easier and simpler to balance the loads.
@@johanncover1988 Usually that's true, however at work we do have a machine made for the US market that runs 230V, which means that it loads just a single phase on our 3-phase system with about 20 A. There is no 3-phase version of that machine. So the 3-phase UPS that it's connected to is seeing a somewhat unbalanced load. Now that UPS feeds many other things as well, so it's not in any way under a critical load and for the whole plant perspective those 20 amps out of balance is not even noticeable. Our total grid load is usually about 40MW.
But for a smaller operation those 20 amps can be a bit of a pain in the butt because the neutral is seeing some load and if you have common ground/neutral (older installations) this means that the protective ground can see some voltage and you get a risk of ground currents all over the place that can lead to some quite annoying or even troubling results. E.g. shielded network cables will suddenly see some serious current. I have seen that some 25 years ago causing a CRT monitor to flicker in a strange way.
Right call, a battery is never going to pay for itself just supporting loads on Mondays from the weekend. They should also look at consumption reduction, this is by far the most cost effective way to make a difference, can they stop using resistive heaters, use a/c units instead, can they automate the lighting, can they switch off certain equipment at certain times of the day, audit appliances, put hot water boilers on time switches (offices are full of those local heat units), turn instant boiling water taps off out of office hours, etc, etc
@19:00 Not a sparky, but I am a IT Engineer. Trust me that whoever maintains that rack will hate you if you slap a massive battery array in front of it. It would also make accessing the electrical panels more tricky. If it were me, i would put it up against the wall behind you. Still floor mounted, but moved against the wall next to the cupboard rather than free standing in the middle of the room.
that rack needs some cable management
Jordan, I work in Industrial around the world and phase balancing is always one of the first things I try to correct. It helps to further diagnose other problems the installation may have, specially reactive power.
Then when everything is balanced you then can think about the battery storage you may need.
EDIT: The customer really needs more solar production, there is tons of real estate on that building roof that needs to be covered with panels.
If it was me my order of priority would be first balance the loads, second install more solar generation and then third battery storage.
For measuring data I'm on Fluke's camp. I normally rent a 435-II or a 1760TR when such is needed, since they are an expensive piece of kit.
Totally agree balancing the phases also makes your electric cheaper? and consider power factor correction
@@stephengilman6247 The phase balancing results in benefits such as loss reduction (power factor and reactive energy), voltage profile improvement and system reliability improvement.
Power factor doesn't look it is a problem here, 0.97 is a good result. You want as close to 1 as possible but in this case if it doesn't go lower than 0.95 the company normally don't have penalties by the service provider.
Power factor correction is more likely to happen in customers with lots of Inductive Loads such as motors. Servers by themselves, the PSUs should have power factor correction devices inside per ENERGY STAR program requirements and EN 61000-3-2 norm.
@@black.phoenix. Sounds right my experience was at a refinery with large induction furnaces I worked on the mechanical side but remember that the phases being balanced ment lower electric charges?
@@stephengilman6247 Yes true. By being balanced then power factor correction can then be properly dimensioned.
And with those inductive furnaces for sure the company had measures in place to minimize it.
@@black.phoenix. You should see the power factor in a machining shop, unless the machines are relatively new, the power factor makes you want to puke. Lol
BTW, if you want this kind of monitoring on the cheap, look at the Shelly 3EM at about 120 EUR. It basically measures the same things (3-phase V/A/PF 1/s) but comes without data visualisation software. And because it is a DIN-rail device, in any other country than the UK, it can be mounted directly in the consumer unit.
Phase Angle Because when you add all the currents together at the neutral they add up to 0 if they are balanced. If your balanced current was 10A/ phase then you would add 10cos (0) + 10cos (-120)+10cos (120) = 0 for a 3 phase system. If it's not balanced then when you add them all together you will have some current at some angle left over.
Be careful around space for those floor mounted batteries - the rack cabinet in the back probably needs at least a meter in front of it if there's any server kit etc in it, and you'll be mud if you put a battery in the way!
This! - I'm not a sparky but I am a network engineer and my first thought was 'please don't put batteries directly infront of that cabinet!' - Excellent video and well explained for us muggles :)
Turn the cabinet around 90° to the right if possible. Solves any issues that way.
I was also cringing at blocking access to the electrical panel.
As an IT guy, don't box the rack in too much, remember that they have to get stuff in and out of it.
With that roof they need to replace their panels and add more (400w panels+ now exist) i would not even consider battery's at all the moment if only weeks ends when they charge up (more solar)
Surely at some point it would have flagged that the energy bills would have been huge compared to their expected costs. Just an assumption and also the initial data showed around 3kw of power used then when CTs correctly installed shot up to 20kw. Next time a quick check of where CTs connected will save a bit of time when doing the initial visit 😉
Three phase battery systems are perfectly capable of producing a unbalanced load from a single battery. A 20KW battery with a 20KW inverter can supply 80% on L1 while doing 10% on L2 and L3. This all comes down to the capabilities of the inverter, some will do better with unbalanced loads than others.
Also keep in mind metering. German residential for example sums up phases - you can feed in on only one and still reach a net zero on the meter with a usual 3ph load. So even if you can feed in 3ph no need to worry about cancelling out the individual phases.
Your comments about the weight of the batteries took me back. I am not an electrician but I was installing UPS batteries (just putting them in the rack and plugging them in) and this was on a first floor and the staff in the room below were rather concerned at the weight. IIRC they were 100 Kg apiece and there were three of them. We ended up calling a structural engineer who took one look and said that the floor was 6" reinforced concrete and that there would be no problems.
Offices generally designed for 2.5-3kN/m2 - ie 250-300kgs/m2 - so it’s in the right ballpark - if timber floors / or lighter weight floor system then you’d have to consider it more carefully.
I was called to a job where an office had a lighter weight floor construction used - they were concerned about cracks in the ceiling under. Simple diagnosis - they had floor/ceiling filing cabinets storing paperwork above.
Was a nice day out.
UPS batteries have generally been lead acid hitherto.
Solar storage generally use lithium or LiPo so much less weight
My first recommendation would be to start by balancing out the 3 phases. I would not be surprised if the switch rack in that room, which is probably the office switching, is all on 1 phase. An other option would be to use a decent UPS system to balance out the phases. Most decent 3 phase UPS systems are able to do that, that way you don't need to worry about that in the Solaredge part of the installation and they have a UPS so they cat survive a normal outage.
Was going to ask why not balancing the usage first. But you alredy wrote about that :)
That room looks too small to safely install batteries in the middle. Is there not a BS that covers safe working distance, and escape route when working with 3-phase power?
I took one look at the figures at the start & knew straight away they were suspicious - particularly for the size of installation!,Aside from that it's never wise to assume that the last person knew what they were up to.
Always the best at explaining how to do things properly and how to save money
No need for battery - absolutely no point in the week as the power is all used from the solar anyway so would have to pay grid to feed the battery charge, at weekend there would be enough solar to feed in the battery but would get used overnight so wouldn't last long ... and the cost of the battery solution versus what you would save is minimal at weekend, if you take into account selling the solar back into grid it would take an eternity to have the batteries pay for themselves.
Working in Power Factor Correction. Logging Data is such a helpful tool 👍🏻
I'd recommend balancing out the load on the phases first.
Yep, a data centre that only used 4kw would be very suspect. You can hear about that just in fan and air handling.
That's about there with one room holding two racks that never run at full capacity.
Good video, your delivery was spot on Jordan, can really tell you enjoyed this one
Was really interesting!
I found it funny that re-balancing was not your first thought. Maybe because we mostly do gensets, but balancing phases is always a consideration and initial start point. We have a Fluke energy meter, but to the best of my knowledge we have used it two or three times.
In Australia that would be considered too far out of balance.
I only managed to make a jam sandwich & coffee for this video. With Cory’s I made a nice casserole.
Nice video - interesting enough. Glad you thought differently regarding supporting batts / inverters on the plasterboard walls. I’m a fanny boy lover of server cabinets. I’d explore the use/sizing of them to suit your requirements. You might be able to wire up off site & wheel it into the building for hook up. Keep the heavy batts on the bottom - inverters above.
*you can lock the wheels into position when finished - you can then unlock the wheels if you / others need to move unit out of the way from other equipment - just allow in the cabling for the hook up for it to be moved away
It’ll take up less floor space.
I’m here all day 👍
How did you know to start with a jam sandwich rather than the casserole?
@@iansampson2477 depending on the length of the video - it’s a decision I make after the first five minutes or so - this wasn’t in the casserole league unfortunately
@@messageobliquespe100 Let me know when you next make a casserole, it might take awhile to arrive from Australia, but I'm in.😀
Surely anyone with half a brain looking at the nature of the business and panel area would have immediately said "hang on a minute?".
Would it be possible to re-balance the phase loadings to reduce import energy costs was my first thought. Good to see that you're thinking about it as a lot of sparks don't.
More accurately balancing the load won't save money as the kW usage will be exactly the same. The main reason for correctly balanced loads is to protect the main cut out fuses in a 3 phase install. It would pay here to balance the load if a battery is needed because then the customer only needs to pay for one 3 phase AC coupled battery inverter rather than 3 single phase AC coupled inverters.
What about if you combinate the and to connect in the position L1 L2 L3 by combinate L2 L1 L3
Could be balanced
That's good practice no matter what the load demand. Even single-phase split (North Am) inspectors will fail a board that is too lop-sided with loads. The more balanced the over-all load is, the more efficient the distribution is.
@@craigbutler6243 Balancing the load will save a small amount of power. With a well balanced load there will be little or no neutral current and hence minimal heating and power loss in the neutral conductor.
@@stephenbell9257 I wouldn't expect that to be as big a factor in what they actually get billed, as any plausible improvement in power factor could.
You may have overlooked that a battery doesnt need to be dedicated to a phase a single battery with seperate inverters will be way more flexible and avoid any underutilized capacity with the varying loads. Selectronics only make a signgle phase inverter they use 3 units that can be connected to the same battery one on each phase they work with a number of different battery offerings.
Surely with the finance department should have raised issues why aren't they getting any monthly income from the exports? 😅
_"According to their data they were exporting tons of power"_ well, if you look at the Solar data yeah, but wasn't their finance dept looking at the actual energy bill? Not just the previous installers at fault, if I were in charge I'd be asking the accountant why they never got paid for the exports!
Missed your comments, and said the same.
Er, as soon as Jordan said that they (a cloud storage and computing business probably running many banks of servers) were only consuming 1.something kW during the day ... (the rest of this sentence is left as an exercise for the reader to complete)
@@xmfclick I doubt they're running banks of servers, even when the real total came in a 23kW that's just your average office, I assume their head office. Their banks of servers are likely in a data centre somewhere or more likely in Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure cloud facilities.
Is this a real operating company or just a coverup for some dodgy activity? How come they realize about all this ONE YEAR LATER?!?! Thank you for the video!
@@kirkhamandy Servers are nearly always somewhere else with companies like this, they just rent time from data centres but yes the numbers still should have immediately stood out as suspicious.
When I see the currents at about 8:50 it's clear that you should consider a load balancer. Look at "ferroamp" and see if that's something you'd like to look at further.
A battery pack would still be of interest but it wouldn't be as effective with that amount of load going on.
That little Solar Edge inverter looks familiar to me, and it's what I would expect to find in a residential PV setup, not in a commercial property. 3-phase power is pretty common in NL, even in residential buildings .
3 phase isn't common in UK residential. Unless they have a HUGE panel area there's no reason for the inverter to be any different for a commercial premises over residential.
4kW peak worth of pannels is not that big, wouldn't it have been cheaper to get a mono phase inverter and hook it up to the most loaded phase?
4 kWp of panels is very much a residential sized system - even our 8 year old system was 3.5 kWp.
For a commercial sized system, I suspect that triple single phase inverters are quite often better than a single 3 phase one.
@@JasperJanssen 100% agree.
? Do you have 120 volt line voltages in for residential in NL. Another question: What is a typical line voltage for internal distribution in small manufacturing premises ?
@24 mins... Totally agree, get balancing issue sorted if viable. Square meterage of solar doesn't seem to be enough to warrant a battery solution...just from the quick graphs looks to be around 25-40% of day to day load. A weekend charge would be used up in a day or less.
Phase load, solar generation(then batts)
Why would you a) even consider adding battery storage at all given it's a massive net import and the majority of the time, and b) not install a 3-phase AC-coupled inverter set with shared battery if you actually did install one? Metering point will generally measure net energy usage, balancing the phases individually does not maximise self consumption and net total import to zero.
Though I am not an electrician my main interest is the phase imbalance.
My thoughts are that their primary systems are all running off that one phase and the secondary systems are shared between the other two phases.
Primary systems - their entire computer system and air conditioning. (Common shortcut to save money on wiring)
Secondary systems - standard power outlets, primary office lighting and security lighting.
What i don't get, is why the bloody hell could nobody figure out a place that's obviously some kind of cloud/server hosting, running a shitload of servers, wouldn't be pulling 20 kilowatts? You didn't even check for overall power consumption until now! Or you only just found out it was screwed but...yeah. The previous installers though, seen much worse..at least it didn't catch fire! I'm amazed not one single person noticed the readouts were bullshit! Could do with balancing those phases too..that would help lol
Come on mate!
Alarm bells should have been ringing....
How many buildings of that size use only 1.2kW an hour?
That's not enough to boil a kettle!
Still good work though
Also, if you could balance out the power more evenly over all 3 phases their bill would be less.
Sparky from Australia. We would not be allowed to install the batteries where you were thinking as a floor mount. The rules here are quite strict around electrical switch rooms. There are dimensions around the boards and their doors to allow egress for a sparky in the event of a fault. Also over are certain electrical size, a door at each end is required. Worth thinking about the future safety of us sparks I reckon🙂
If the UK was still in the EU, I would say for those use cases get an S20X Pro from E3DC, a daughter company of Hager Energy. Thatˋs a 30KWp inverter with a 20.6-82.4 KWh battery in one system, yes - one box. Unfortunately due to Brexit, I don‘t expect them to bring it over to blighty, as they can not depend on regulations mirroring the EU ones in the future and it is too expensive to create UK-specific ones.
I use Home Assistant OS to read the data from my Fronius Smart Meter and Inverter. I use it to learn about my energy usage, and I've been able to plan when my appliances run.
I think you all might have spotted that with a "sniff test"... seems to me the array is very small, and the AC Load alone would be pretty considerable... We've got a 6kW system at Home, so a system of 3.5 or so seems quite small for a business... 'course I'm just sitting here in my armchair! ;-)
Would it make any sense to try to balance the loads *before* considering the addition of batteries on only one of them?
And Jordan probably had, but that would ruin the story wouldn't it ;) Also the chronology of incoming information might have been different than how it was told I guess. But it was great to see how organized and professional Jordan and his team go about to analyze power consumption/balance/needs.
Floorstanding is a good idea as long as there's enough floor space to allow for a working area. They kind of have a weirdly configured room. Wonder if IT could move over slightly? That data loggers pretty neat my only occasion to encounter one was when we had the power company hook a flight data recorder looking box up to our meter since we were kind of the end of the line and occasionally had some weird power issues. they didn't find any information that was useful Unfortunately. this was also like 2002 so I really wonder what the inside of that box looked like. Yeah they just lifted the cover on our meter box and hooked leads up and left it hanging half open for a few days it was interesting.
For measuring voltage with our Fluke 1736 I use inline fuseholders from staubli with 2A fuses ( 120KA ) that are direct connected to the alligatorclip or magnetic adapter . If a lead gets damaged by a door from a switchboard the fuse will reduce the short circuit current greatly. This is something to think off when installing a powerlogger.. personal safety en material safety are easily obtained this way.
I've seen a few battery systems that mount in standard 19" server racks. Marco Reps, the electrical engineering youtube channel took a look at one from SOK and he seemed to like it. Most look like they are in the 5kw range but can be dazy changed to whatever capacity you want (I think the limit on SOK is 15 connected together - so that would be 75kw per inverter/phase!) - they also weigh less per unit so it's less hazardous to maneuver. Might be worth considering if you want to maximize the density in a space where you have lots of vertical space like that utility closet.
*daisy chained
What inverters/chargers are ‘open’ enough to use the SOK battery. The inverters I’ve looked at only fully compatible with their own make of battery
I'd look at re-balancing the phases too
Solaredge does Support pylontec batteries (rackmoutable) as well, just use the setting for byd lv battery (we do this as well) and from what I did see, use a total battery size of about 30/40kWh :)
I would recommend install the batteries against the stud wall moving the cabinet out the way. That was you still give IT and other services access to equipment that is on the wall or in the server rack. Mounting on the floor right in front of the db will just piss everyone off.
Been using Chauvin Arnoux for almost 20 years. much better kit than Fluke, love my MFT even if its a chunky beast.
Surely balancing the phases is the first priority to sort out before fixing other problems that dont necessarily need fixing??? - Also if i was going to splash out on a battery system for an internet network company - id want it to provide some hours of backup power and not as a feeble way to cut down the leccy bill.
who ever was in charge of the solar has nothing to do with the leccy bill other wise they would have noticed almost from the start that something isnt right.
Great to see you are a long time fan of Chauvin Arnoux
You should never spend any money without being in possession of ALL of the details. They clearly don't just need some work doing, they need the good help and advice as well. I really enjoyed this video. Shame you haven't this level of data for a full year.
Do a walk through , Shuffle the loads , Run the logger for a week .
( you don't want surprises ) .
In light of the new usage information .
Ask about PV up grades before moving forward with storage !
Me thinks 26 Kwh per leg is about it & definitely not on a daily basis in a UK winter .
Probably only get it once a week on Sunday .
UK winter PV is about 15 - 25 % of production on a average summer day .
( & I mean production not installed PV ) .
You can ever have enough panels …........LOL
i do love a good graph, more metrics the better, i have just about every important device at work reporting in to a central server to keep an eye on everything from Projector Lamps being left on, Satellite Quality data, and of course power monitoring. when i look at "tech" companies that dont have any of that as a normal it makes me wonder what other holes they have in the infrastructure.
Would be nice to see the cost benefit analysis of the proposed install?
With Victron you can put one single phase system on and it can be set to export energy coming in on other phases. I have not done one but believe it does depend how the payment meter actually works but it could save a lot of money.
Enjoyed that video Jordan, my PQA was £200, what a positive, likewise how easy it was to repair, but on the flip side, its a Metrel!! and they won't help anyone self diagnose let alone calibrate it, shame really.. However, I've used mine buckets at home, I too analysed my entire home, built a small add on appliance tester with multiple turns on the CT so I can get that magical 1A:1V ratio, able to get
My estimate would be about 80kWh of storage, with about 2/3 on 1st phase, and 1/6 on each of the 2 other phases. If they are set up for TOU they may even be able to use the batteries to help loadshift.
120 deg between each phase. so an equal load they cancel out to neutral.
Power factor less than 1 is when current & voltage are out of phase, eg non resitive load, such as motors cooling etc.
I wouldn't bother with battery storage unless it's for a ups type system I would go with more panels on the roof and getting the flammable things out that are stored in that room
Now that you have a PEL103, you can do a great job of monitoring that usage for those EACH premises! Glad that Chauvin Arnoux have given you the kit. I've not had any luck engaging with them. For starters, the phase rotation has always shown red on every installation monitored - hoped this would be a handy facility but just ignore now. Downloading of data via USB is incredibly slow and software far from great (and Windows only). I paid extra for magnetic tips that you demo but have never once been able to use them for the reasons described and the fact that they would fall out too easily. I certainly think that every electrician should own a power and energy logger these days
Please give me a call or email at Chauvin Arnoux and ask for Kevin. We can talk you through the phase rotation indicator and any other features of the PEL. Details pinned above.
Hi Kevin, thanks for responding. I can't see any contact details pinned though?
@@martinsutherland4810 our details are included in the video description, unfortunately youtube won't let me post them here. You could message me via linkedin too if that's easier.
Showing off with your Crapple Crapbooks?
The Server/network Stack needs Frontaccess and the Electrical Panels Space in Front to just stand there and work on it.^^
I would sugest put that Guitare case away! And remove the Small Closet on the opposite wall of the Panels.
I am shure they will find other place to store this stuff and their Wineglass Boxes^^
You now got plenty of Wall and Floorspace back to install your Stuff properly and out of the way.
You can still stack your Batteries there on the Floor if the Walls arent Strong enough. Or Just put more Serverrack Closets in there. If you use such Rackmounted Systems. That would be the most flexible in the future.
As Storrage goes just from the feeeling not even looking at the exact data.
I think they will not need any storrage capacities at all.
But work on the consumption side switching some circuits or appliances arround to even out the phase consumption.
And a deeper look into their machine use and power need.
Can it be shiftet, swapped or be more intelligent used maybee upgradet.
For example Heating/Cooling with Heatpump Systems who use the higher Solar Input in the Summer.
Well we will see.. Batteriestorrage is still realy expensive and power often just way to cheap to be an option if you just think of the costs.
If you want to go Zero Import from the Grid.. well thats an interresting Task.
But Most of the time its more easy to first install way more Solar.
There are avialable Solarspace like the vertical Wall or a fence who can be more efficient in the morning or evening to catch more solar you need there. Places you would not have thought about 10 years ago.
I wish our house was only using 0.3KW on average. lol
In both the current house and old one, we were always using around 700W at all times, even after trying to unplug and reduce things.
Only a few TVs, PCs, two fridge/freezers, and a chest freezer now, but it's still quite a lot.
The problem right now is the standing charge. Around 50p per day on electric, and 50p per day on gas.
Electric tariff is around 32p per KWh here now, which is almost double what it was in 2015.
Gas tarriff is only 10p per KWh, so definitely best to use a bit of gas heating at times, otherwise we're paying 50p per day for gas, for no reason at all. It's like paying for a gym membership every month, but *never* going. lol
Brilliant video once again keep up with the great work. I love how you explain things and every video is interesting to watch
Glad you enjoy it!
Balanced phases is even more important if you ever install a dual UPS where one UPS can take all the load while the other is down for maintenance (so an N+1 type system). I had a situation where the customer added new kit without our knowledge and just like in this case most went into the red phase. When we took down one UPS for maintenance, the red phase on the remaining UPS was overloaded so the UPS went into bypass - we effectively no longer had a UPS. Until the phases were rebalanced or load on the red phase reduced, we couldn't do any UPS maintenance (and until you do you don't really now how good the batteries are), and it was a real struggle to get the customer to do anything because none of the kit could be switched off - it was a 24/7 high priority system (hence the need for an N+1 UPS). That was a bit of a nightmare with all sorts of departments involved. One even wanted to blame the maintenance group for the situation. Buck passing as usual...
The function of the neutral conductor is to take residual current back to earth, most appliances aren’t 100% efficient so the remaining load travels down the neutral back to the centre pin of the star transformer aka earth.
Most 3 phase motors don’t require a neutral because they have been designed to be balanced across each phase so the neutral is not require because there is no residual current that needs to be taken to earth
Did nobody think that was a very small energy use for such a large building? 6 times that logged. 🤨
Surprised you aren’t going with rack mounted batteries here.
That would seem to be the most practical approach here.
Why would you go with 3 single phase battery systems? The load on L1 would mean it has no excess power to charge during the day so it would be useless at night. Just put in a 3 phase system, the meter averaging would mean that the equal export/import on the 3 phases would cancel out.
Two pieces of kit that I have been using since 2006, a thermal imager and a Fluke 435. If you do 3 phase industrial work, they worth the capital outlay. You should should consider investing in a thermal imager, even an entry level unit. I have been getting involved in more renewable energy project, and the DC side of the projects, battery connections etc. A thermal report handed in with your project documents just takes you to a higher level than the rest. A power analyser is great, but the monthly insurance cost required due to the huge risk of leaving a expensive power meter on site (especially one with a screen) has to be considered. It is better to invest in a plain box type recorder with no screen.
If they use 22kw, they need a lot more solar panels to be off grid
If I've got it right, why did your customer not notice their electricity bills had not dropped? Missed comment below.
No don’t put batteries in front of the switch boards. Combination of access and fire safety. You may need to consult the relevant BS on battery storage too.
Also again I’ve caught you stand on the 2nd top step (no no) get taller ladders as needed
Get 3phase and somewhat change phase loads by changing MCB locations on the busses.
Also load during night might not be the same as during the day. exclude daytime power usage.
Yes, need more solar panels. Definitely. They are cheaper.
Its possible that its not the previous installer fault. When they asked to shut down the entire site to install non-split CTs onto the incomers I can predict the response.
Non electrical engineers would not have spotted the load was much lower than expected.
I guess they just sent the invoice and walked away.
So they want to buy an expensive battery bank to store electricity during the day, when general grid demand is high and they could be selling the surplus into the grid, then use the electricity at night when power from the grid is at its cheapest. Makes sense.
Feed in tariffs in the UK are poor these days.
Jordan, make sure the Ct's are 250Amp not 100Amp or you will still be getting incorrect readings
It makes absolutely zero sense to install separate batteries for each of the phases. Separate inverters, sure, but all running from a common battery bank, to actually balance the load.
11:20 Ah, magnet contacts from Electro-PJP. French company I've had happy business with in previous years, and they even contacted me to ask my local expertise when they were developing a product they hoped to market over here. They do some lovely kit, but much of it is vastly expensive unfortunately. Makes sense that Chauvin use their parts though. Y'know, being French an' all...
As to your question of why one could see 'zero current' on the 'neutral' lead, it's because the UK (at least in this instance) is using a 'Y' connection, as opposed to a 'delta' one. In fact, albeit with different results, one can load a balanced triple (do you call them 'treble'?) feed with either...with some other considerations pending, not least if the neutral is included at the point of generation or not.
My turn to ask a question (I'm a technologist more than an electrician, albeit many electricians surprise me with how little they seem to know on phase difference...a la: "Split Phase" when they mean *split feed* or *double rail* which is ubiquitous in North Am residential and light commercial use. It's single phase (think current, not voltage to make this easier) but *center tapped to neutral* (in effect ground/earth, albeit not in reality, due to line and insertion loss) such that it's 240v 'side-to-side' and 120v side to neutral. Unbeknownst to many, North Am domestic is able to provide 240v outlets, handy for tools, heavy kitchen mixers, toasters....and *E-V rechargers*! Laundry dryers and kitchen stoves are almost always 240v. But it's all *single phase*!)
The question: This may be standard practice, I don't know, but if your modules are producing DC, then aren't you pooling the DC output of the modules into one battery bank, and then inverting to three phase after that? The inverter itself should be able to balance load distribution to the three legs as needed.
Excuse my ignorance,nice as the Gucci app data is worth having but isn’t there an electric meter for import output?
How else will they know what to charge.
With single batteries on each phase I guess they sync to the frequency of that phase. But I assume that a system like this could not work in island mode unless those independent batteries can correctly maintain the sync between phases but a full 3P battery would not have this issue.
Island mode with only 4kW peak worth of pannels and such a large load would not be logical... That would be a tiny UPS
Three phase and neutral currents:
Basically each phase is a sine wave.
But the phases are 120° apart.
So if there is a load on each phase, the sine waves will cancel each other out and the neutral only carries the difference back to the transformer star point.
Now if the neutral is broken along the way (PEN fault), the voltages will be all over the place.
This is because V=IR.
The resistance of devices stays the same and the current has to get back to the transformer.
So the low resistance phase (high load) will drop in voltage and the high resistance phase will increase in voltage.
In this video it would likely be:
Phase 1 at 40A would go to 150v (6000w)
Phase 2 and 3 at 20A would go to 300v (6000w)
Assuming a break on this installation neutral only.
But not likely to stay like that as things start blowing up.
Plus there may be some current returning via earth if it's a TN-C-S system which would pull the voltages closer together.
But of course beware the shocks on the metalwork.
Did they not think to check why they were still being billed by the electricity supplier if they were supposedly making almost all of their own electricity?
this video is top notch
I am watching this in June, and going back the age of the (6 months) and adding a month in for data collection seems to indicate an October-November collection interval. That's not peak solar generation, so sizing batteries based on this data would lead to undersizing unless compensated for.
As everyone else says.
Don't bother with batteries unless they want it for ups reasons.
And just put more solar up and get those phases sorted out.
I'd also speak to them about power management.
I've managed to save a lot with just reconfiguring pcs for better power management.
5% less speed in return for 15% less power.
I don't understand either their electricity bill would be a lot bigger than expected, and/or they owe whoever they are selling the excess to
It’s technically not quite correct that with the same load across the phases (in A) the neutral conductor would carry no current. This also needs balanced power factor or phase angle. It does work for a big 3 phase motor, doesn’t need to be true for different loads though.
Exactly right! Most people do not understand 3p in enough depth
Unsurprisingly, John Ward has a video on this :o)
If a hosting company cannot tell what their power consumption is how the heck can they be trusted to have redundant power systems in place with generators, batteries etc.. also leaving heaters on and then turning them off? unless this is just some portable ones for an office, but then I would be thinking H&S. Honestly sounds like they dont know how to run a datacenter/hosting and I dont think this video shows the company in a good light.
Good video but didn’t think you could connect solar edge battery to the three phase inverter. I believe there is new three phase inverter coming out next year which will allow it. Just stick normal AC coupled battery in
If the loads were perfectly balanced neutral current would be more or less zero because it would flow between phases-the neutral current is effectively the amount of phase current imbalance in the system, its virtually impossible to balance all the single phase loads
Well, very interesting and informative. QUESTION: What happened to the requirement that switch rooms are not used as general storage areas?
Judging by your data & the numbers generated if they installed 1/3rd more panels on the solar panel bank they would be able to be totally self sufficient & be able to buildup enough stored power to run the nights & weekends without stressing the system under Idle & during Peak load... As for the battery capacity here in the states we would check each system withing the entire grid, Then check how much peak amperage in KWH & KWA and whatever the number is at peak usage we double the capacity for that systems battery bank.. Example system one uses 43 KWH, That bank would have a battery that can contain double that amount of storage it uses at peak system load
I would guess the installation of 3 100kwh batteries once phases are balanced for future with more strings of cells
It would be interesting to see the economic case for installing batteries. Also is your added monitoring now ignoring the load which it was originally measuring? How does your data compare with the supplier figures for consumption and export? After all it is those figures which the bill is based on.
As for the economics of the battery, it will only be active 2 out of 7 days so that dramatically increases it's break even time to beyond economical
One question regarding having batteries in a power distribution room is that when lithium iron battery’s charge there’s potentially a problem of toxic emissions and even explosion having batteries next to electrical equipment. Shouldn’t batteries be stored in a separate ventilated room. Lithium iron batteries can during charging give off hydrogen. Just a thought
These days's more and more LiFePo4 batteries are used. These have toxic fumes when on fire, but do not burn by themself. So no issues there.
Your invite to send in an explanation of 3 phase return.
In a 3 phase generator, there are only 3 cables exiting the unit, and each supplies power at 120 degrees out of phase with the next one in the system. There are two styles of 3 phase generator. In one of them, there actually is NO earth, and the individual phase units are connected in a circular fashion and the other ends of each phase generator unit is connected to the phase lines. In an Earthed system, one end of each of the 3 phase units is connected in a star point which is earthed. It is to that point that our usual "Earth" is actually eventually connected, sometimes many hundreds of miles distant. The Phase lines are in turn connected to a junction of two of the 3 generator pairs.
In a "balanced" load situation, the current on the Neutral cable on a "normal" or balanced 3 phase supply would be approximately zero (if not zero) because the power drawn on each of the 3 phase lines would be very close to, if not, equal, thus not needing or causing any return of unbalanced current flow on the Earth. But if that supply comes from a generator that does not have an earth, the unbalance, if any, would only go back to the nearest 3 phase transformer.
Incidentally, I am not a sparkie, and have had no tuition in this field. How good is my explanation???
So I would have a lot more questions. Does the power phase usage imbalance continue on Weekends? Does the solar system have a three phase inverter or single phase? How does the power company calculate the over all usage, does it just add up power in each phase including (negative) exported power, or does it treat each phase as a separate charging item which could be drawing or exporting power? Where I live the power company meters the total power usage just adding imports and exports together.
I would tend to want to balance the phase usage and keep the whole system three phase if the solar system produced 3 phase power. Then add a 3 phase battery system.
Using three single phase battery systems seems more complex. To me the three separate battery system idea has a lot of issues. How are you going charge the three separate battery systems giving more power to the larger battery? What happens if the phase loading changes because of a new piece of equipment?
If the power company just meters total power usage and the solar system was single phase you could just use one single phase battery system and put it on the high load phase?
Defo would like a deep dive on the logger and interpretation
You can’t have floor mount batteries in there, they use that room for band practice!
We had solar panels fitted in 2016 and batteries added in 2019 on our 1920s house. The question is how can we tell if it's all fitted correctly? I must admit that I have never been impressed with the savings that we get.
surely their bill will show what they use and what they export although not by time.
So this is just an office block? This can't be powering their data centre because surely that would be roughly the same power demand 24/7. Would have generator backup too.
Does that room have AC? I'd be concerned about heat buildup for the comms rack kit with the additional batteries and inverters if not
Yes, when he climbs the ladder you see a mini split on the wall above the door.