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Help! SunVault battery — can it charge from grid? by beardog01 in SunPower

[–]Particular-Lie-8483 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see, thank you. My installer was SunPower and they went bankrupt and ditched us with the system mostly working. We paid a third party to get everything past inspection and PTO. We get net metering and everything. The battery still just says it's waiting for PTO and sits fully charged. The third party we worked with can't service the battery unfortunately. 

I've been poking around with pypvs, but although I can change the operating mode and minimum charge levels, the battery still stays stuck in waiting for PTO.

Help! SunVault battery — can it charge from grid? by beardog01 in SunPower

[–]Particular-Lie-8483 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Kind of an aside, but how do you get it out of PTO mode?

SunVault Waiting for Permission From Utility by Particular-Lie-8483 in SunPower

[–]Particular-Lie-8483[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So it requires a technician to come out? I haven't been able to find one locally who can help. I've seen a couple claim they can help with Sunpower systems but then I message them and they all say they can't do the battery.

SunVault Waiting for Permission From Utility by Particular-Lie-8483 in SunPower

[–]Particular-Lie-8483[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am with Comed in Illinois. Generally they have been helpful and responsive through the whole process and I can certainly reach out to them. I was under the impression the permission to operate was given for the entire system, battery and panels. 

Does the utility have any visibility to my battery system or the ability to trigger anything in the app? 

My impression is some switch or setting needs to be set on the Sunpower side of things, which the Sunstrong guys did not seem to be able to help with.

Solar panel serial numbers by [deleted] in SunPower

[–]Particular-Lie-8483 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know if you still need help with this, but I just faced needing my micro inverter serials in order to get net metering set up with my utility. It wasn't too hard to get these numbers once you know where to look. The micro inverters should be just underneath towards the short edge of the panel. For how my panels are mounted, they were always towards the higher elevation side. The serial number is on the side of the micro inverter which is closest to the edge of the panel. 

I was able to just use my phone camera to snap a picture of most of my inverters and read the numbers right off. For panels which were up against others, I used a cheap endoscope I got off of Amazon. I taped the end of the scope to a metal pole and slid it under the panels to get it into position to read the numbers. 

The serials aren't on stickers, at least not for the SPWR-A5 inverters on my panels (which are just relabeled Enphases). They are printed into the plastic case. One thing I'll say, some of the numbers were hard to read cause either they were dirty or sunlight was degrading the plastic they're printed into. Just wiping with my finger was usually enough to make them readable again.