William,
Thanks for your input. The actual grid voltage I measured never went
above 132VAC in the sell mode. It also has the same error even when
not in the sell mode. I noticed the Mate showed a higher voltage than
my Fluke meter so I tried to calibrate the Mate but it kept flashing
between 260 - 130 V like it thought was stacked with another
inverter. This lead me to check other grid settings but did not turn
up any thing irregular. Still the grid voltage has never been
anywhere near the AC high V limit of 140V.
The frustrating thing about the Outback tech support was when the
homeowner called and he described the situation and asked that they
talk to me the installer. I got on the phone and started to describe
the problem but I was constantly interrupted by the tech support
person, who clearly did not want to talk to me, and they asked that
the homeowner be put back on the phone. Then they went through an
explanation that it won't hurt anything to run the inverter and the
the grid just might be running hot. My impression was that this
person was just following a script and when things did not follow the
script they did not know what to do. I don't understand why tech
support would not want to talk with the installer who is doing the
trouble shooting !
Normally I call tech support directly myself but this homeowner wants
to be involved in understanding his system and I encourage that.
Outback menus are not very user friendly and it can be difficult for
homeowners to navigate. I need to go back and do some more
investigating .
Any other insights would be appreciated.
Jon
On Apr 10, 2009, at 1:39 AM, William Miller wrote:
Jon:
1. Outback inverters are notorious for reporting errors
incorrectly. Often the errors are a clue, but not the actual
error. As an example, a shorted AC output might report a "Low
Battery Voltage" error because when the output is shorted, the
battery draw is momentarily very high, reducing it's voltage. Look
for a related symptom.
Have you been able to monitor the AC voltage during inverter sell
operation? High AC voltage in a grid-tie system can be caused by
actual, intermittent high grid voltage and/or inadequate feeder
size, allowing the inverter to push up the voltage at the inverter
end of the feeder. I've seen a bad breaker cause this as well. In
any of these described cases, the inverter error reporting would be
accurate.
2. Outback sends out a standard kit of three field-replaceable
boards. You rarely need to replace all of the boards. You need to
figure out which board(s) to replace or, ask tech support. I guess
when in doubt, one could replace all three. It appears you have
narrowed the problem down to not one of the three boards.
Good luck.
William Miller
At 08:28 PM 4/9/2009, you wrote:
I have a customer with an Outback GTFX 3048 that has an"over voltage
AC in" warning but when I check the voltage with my Fluke meter it
shows a normal range 122 - 126 V . In the Mate grid menu the AC high
Volts is set at 140 V . The customer called Outback support before I
could get to him and they told him he needed to have me change all 3
boards out. They sent the boards so I went ahead and changed them
out, but the same error occurred again. We called Outback support
again but did not get a satisfactory answer on how to fix it.
Has anyone else run into this problem ? I suspect the Mate may be
flaky.
Jon
Jon Haeme Innovations
Kempton, IL _______________________________________________
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