FoxESS Community - Owners & Installers Forum

My EPS box has a second input labelled "inverter 2".....
Following several long (7 hour+) duration power cuts where the PV and battery were fortunately sufficient I wondered if I could connect a small (3kW) 230V ac generator to this input
Obviously I would need to manually start it which wouldnt be a problem and from the diagram it appears it would supply the WHOLE house load plus battery charge if, say there was no PV input so it would need limiting to 3kW...
I am forward thinking in case of more long duration power cuts where there could be no PV so the generator would effectively be "the grid" and the house would run from the battery or PV if possible with any excess loads provided by the battery and inverter as per normal, under low house load the generator would mainly be charging the battery ready for later demand

I did also consider rectifying the ac from the genny into DC (yes, I am aware of the dangers of high voltage DC and would take relevant precautions) and connecting that to one of the spare "PV" inputs, the spec says this can be 80 to 500V but internet searching discourages this idea as the DC supply would be dirty unlike the pure DC from PV or battery and the MPPT in the inverter would probably play havoc with the genny output

anyone

I have no doubt you could make something work but it will not be easy and will be well off the page as far as normal Fox installations are concerned - there is quite a long post here which touches on this viewtopic.php?t=894

I don't have the Fox EPS/ATS switch, none of that was available when I did my install but mine does allow a generator to be manually switched in once the inverter batteries have been consumed to power my protected circuits.

Thanks, I have re-posted in that topic post

The manual transfer setup you mention seems like the practical route for most people, since automatic EPS/ATS gear changes the whole design. What matters is making sure the changeover is genuinely break-before-make so the inverter never sees the generator while it is still energizing the protected circuits. If your batteries are already depleted when you switch over, does the inverter stay fully isolated, or does it still try to sync? That detail is what I would want clarified before recommending anything similar to someone else.