[RE-wrenches] RF interference XW
Hello Wrenches, I have a customer, installed about a year ago, a complete Schneider Electric XW grid-tied system. He claims to be getting very bad AM radio interference around his property, the worst being near the inverter at about 800 kHz. I have yet to investigate this very thoroughly, but I am curious if any other wrenches have seen this issue, and if so, how did you fix it? Thanks -- Mac Lewis * Yo solo sé que no sé nada. -Sócrates * ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
Re: [RE-wrenches] RF interference XW
The only time I ever dealt with this it was bad grounding in the house wiring. Same deal, AM radio interference. I can't remember whether it was a soft ground or a ground loop, but that's where I'd look. Hilton -- Hilton Dier III Renewable Energy Design Partner, Solar Gain LLC 453 East Hill Rd. Middlesex, VT 05602 ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
[RE-wrenches] Batteries and customer service
Hello Wrenches, This is my first go around here in the mailing list. I ve been a lurker for years, I much appreciate all the insight you all have provided. Here is the situation: I have a client with 12 Interstate UL16HCs (24v system, 3 x 4 battery bank) purchased and installed exactly 12 months ago. After 5 months of being installed he thought one of the batteries may be going bad because of some minor corrosion on one terminal and one cell was not using as much water as all the rest . So I disconnected that string after a full charge and let it rest for 8 hours. I then checked the specific gravity with the refractometer as well as the voltage of each battery. Everything looked fine. I called the Interstate warehouse let them know the situation and asked what they could do for me, they said nothing of course. So nothing happened. Fast forward. After speaking to another wrench (I am always up for clients getting more info) who mentioned something about a bad batch of batteries that Interstate received around the time of installation, my client wants to do something. I know the first part of the following question has been hashed out in some detail already, the second part is the most important here... Assuming the one battery is bad, is it worth it to replace the one battery at this stage and call it good? If not, should I or Interstate be responsible for replacing the whole battery bank? Thanks for any and all insight. Cheers, Lou ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
[RE-wrenches] 14 inch aluminum standoffs?
Dear All, While not participating much in the dialog I greatly appreciate your time and knowledge on matters of the Sun. My question is two fold. Are folks using galvanized or hot dipped galvanized in any way, shape or form out there for their mounting systems? I feel like I need to know this as we only use aluminum because our climate is so wet. Yet we are in a situation where using galvanized might be the best and only options, although we am not seeing anything with galvanized that is readily out there either. Fold Two: Does anyone know of a source for 'standoffs' that are greater than 7s but less than say 20? Sincerely, Andrew Koyaanisqatsi President Solar Energy Solutions, Inc. Since 1987, Moving Portland and Beyond to an Environmentally Sustainable Future. 503-238-4502 http://www.solarenergyoregon.com/ Better one's House too little one day than too big all the Year after.___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
Re: [RE-wrenches] Batteries and customer service
Lou, There is nothing in your message that definitively tells me that you have either a bad cell or a bad battery. "Minorcorrosionon one terminal" is normal behavior, especially if the installer didn't coat the terminals at installation. "One cell was not using as much water as all the rest" is a matter of perception. You write yourself that "everything looked fine." It seems to me that you're jumping to conclusions based on the comment of another Wrench without doing sufficient testing first. Get the client to put a measured load on the system without charge. This isn't hard to do with an amp-hour meter in the system - you want a steady load of about 55 A (a C/20 load). If you have a bad cell, it'll show up soon enough. For now, I'm on Interstate's side. Hope this helps, Allan Allan Sindelar al...@positiveenergysolar.com NABCEP Certified Photovoltaic Installer NABCEP Certified Technical Sales Professional New Mexico EE98J Journeyman Electrician Founder and Chief Technology Officer Positive Energy, Inc. 3209 Richards Lane (note new address) Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507 505 424-1112 www.positiveenergysolar.com On 3/15/2013 2:38 PM, Lou Russo wrote: Hello Wrenches, This is my first go around here in the mailing list. I ve been a "lurker" for years, I muchappreciateall the insight you all have provided. Here is the situation: I have a client with 12 Interstate UL16HCs (24v system, 3 x 4 battery bank) purchased and installed exactly 12 months ago. After 5 months of being installed he thought one of the batteries may be going badbecauseof some minorcorrosionon one terminal and one cell was not using as much water as all the rest. So I disconnected that string after a full charge and let it rest for 8 hours. I then checked thespecificgravity with the refractometer as well as thevoltageof each battery. Everything looked fine. I called the Interstatewarehouselet them know the situation and asked what they could do for me, they said "nothing" of course. So nothing happened. Fast forward. Afterspeakingto another wrench (I am always up for clients getting more info) who mentioned something about a bad batch of batteries that Interstatereceivedaround the time of installation, my client wants to do something. I know the first part of the following question has been hashed out in some detail already, the second part is the most important here... Assuming the one battery is bad, is it worth it to replace the one battery at this stage and call it good? If not, should I orInterstateberesponsiblefor replacing the whole battery bank? Thanks for any and all insight. Cheers, Lou ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
Re: [RE-wrenches] Batteries and customer service
Lou: At 1 year you are just within the allowable window. I would monitor the bank over the next two months after replacement to see if the SG remains consistent from cell to cell. William Miller At 01:38 PM 3/15/2013, you wrote: Hello Wrenches, Assuming the one battery is bad, is it worth it to replace the one battery at this stage and call it good? If not, should I or Interstate be responsible for replacing the whole battery bank? Thanks for any and all insight. Cheers, Lou ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
[RE-wrenches] Question re fine stranded cable with Sunny Island inverters
Wrenches, A small issue, drawing on the collective wisdom here: For an upcoming quad-stack installation of Sunny Island inverters, I foolishly ordered some fine stranded copper 1/0 Cobra X-Flex Cable because of its flexibility. In this situation, because of NEC ampacity requirements on our total DC cabling (this system also has a single Radian for some dedicated loads) we are only running 125 amp DC breakers on each SI inverter. Our issue is that the SI installation manual specifically notes not to use fine stranded cable into the terminal lugs. This was news to me. We can purchase 1/0 Ilsco or Panduit copper pigtail adapters to make the connection into the terminals of the inverters, but they are $10 to $14 each, and we need eight of them. Is using doubled up #4 or #2 the only solution? Are there any other suggestions that will allow us to use the 1/0 X-Flex? Thank you, Allan - Allan Sindelar al...@positiveenergysolar.com NABCEP Certified Photovoltaic Installer NABCEP Certified Technical Sales Professional New Mexico EE98J Journeyman Electrician Founder and Chief Technology Officer Positive Energy, Inc. 3209 Richards Lane (note new address) Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507 505 424-1112 www.positiveenergysolar.com ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
Re: [RE-wrenches] Question re fine stranded cable with Sunny Island inverters
We used to use ferrules on smaller conductors. Both insulated and uninsulated are available. A quick search came up with this source: http://www.ferrulesdirect.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY http://www.ferrulesdirect.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGYStore_Code =FDCategory_Code=UNFERR Store_Code=FDCategory_Code=UNFERR can't say I've used the larger sizes and you might be in the hole even more after acquiring the correct crimping tool. -Glenn From: re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org [mailto:re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Allan Sindelar Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 6:58 PM To: RE-wrenches Subject: [RE-wrenches] Question re fine stranded cable with Sunny Island inverters Wrenches, A small issue, drawing on the collective wisdom here: For an upcoming quad-stack installation of Sunny Island inverters, I foolishly ordered some fine stranded copper 1/0 Cobra X-Flex Cable because of its flexibility. In this situation, because of NEC ampacity requirements on our total DC cabling (this system also has a single Radian for some dedicated loads) we are only running 125 amp DC breakers on each SI inverter. Our issue is that the SI installation manual specifically notes not to use fine stranded cable into the terminal lugs. This was news to me. We can purchase 1/0 Ilsco or Panduit copper pigtail adapters to make the connection into the terminals of the inverters, but they are $10 to $14 each, and we need eight of them. Is using doubled up #4 or #2 the only solution? Are there any other suggestions that will allow us to use the 1/0 X-Flex? Thank you, Allan - Allan Sindelar mailto:al...@positiveenergysolar.com al...@positiveenergysolar.com NABCEP Certified Photovoltaic Installer NABCEP Certified Technical Sales Professional New Mexico EE98J Journeyman Electrician Founder and Chief Technology Officer Positive Energy, Inc. 3209 Richards Lane (note new address) Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507 505 424-1112 www.positiveenergysolar.com http://www.positiveenergysolar.com/ ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
Re: [RE-wrenches] Batteries and customer service
Lou, In addition to what Allan said, if you perform the discharge test, measure the terminal voltage across each battery. If you find one battery that drops in voltage more than the others, continue to check/record that voltage over time. This method will expose a weak or bad cell in a series string before the 20 hour test is complete. Interstate, or any battery manufacturer I know of, will not warrant to replace an entire bank if a cell/battery is defective. Let's talk Interstate batteries. A few year ago they decided to stop selling the high quality, made in the USA, US2200 battery. The import battery that replaced it has a notorious track record for low capacity, low voltage, difficulty charging and short life. I am speaking from experience having analyzed (discharge tests) and diagnosed several dozen small battery systems. One thing I found out, and this comes from an Interstate Engineer and Specialist, is that the new GC2-HD must be charged daily for 2-4 hours at 2.55 volts per cell. That's 15.3 volts for a 12 volt system. opinionI do not know if their L16 comes from the same manufacturer but my opinion is buying Interstate batteries are not worth the risk for the small cost savings. Of course, I say this about any other manufacturer of poor quality batteries./opinion Larry Crutcher Starlight Solar Power Systems On Mar 15, 2013, at 2:57 PM, Allan Sindelar wrote: Lou, There is nothing in your message that definitively tells me that you have either a bad cell or a bad battery. Minor corrosion on one terminal is normal behavior, especially if the installer didn't coat the terminals at installation. One cell was not using as much water as all the rest is a matter of perception. You write yourself that everything looked fine. It seems to me that you're jumping to conclusions based on the comment of another Wrench without doing sufficient testing first. Get the client to put a measured load on the system without charge. This isn't hard to do with an amp-hour meter in the system - you want a steady load of about 55 A (a C/20 load). If you have a bad cell, it'll show up soon enough. For now, I'm on Interstate's side. Hope this helps, Allan Allan Sindelar al...@positiveenergysolar.com NABCEP Certified Photovoltaic Installer NABCEP Certified Technical Sales Professional New Mexico EE98J Journeyman Electrician Founder and Chief Technology Officer Positive Energy, Inc. 3209 Richards Lane (note new address) Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507 505 424-1112 www.positiveenergysolar.com ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
[RE-wrenches] bad battery = system overvoltage = dead inverter
This has been happening all too frequently here. We live in a big area of off grid homes, dozens of systems. Lost a customers Trace 2624 this morning; One L-16 in older 24v bank opened internally. PV array/MPPT control zorched inverter as soon as the sun came up. First indication of problems last nite when customer hit microwave to warm up dinner and inverter went crazy. This morning the bad battery showed 3.2v (yes, I would expect 2 or 4 also) the rest the usual 6+v. Turned on PV array, bad battery immediately up to 11v (yes, 6v L16). Somebody needs to build a battery condom with big stacked diodes on a big heat sink or some such solution. A voltage brick wall for system charging inputs. MPPT PV controllers do NOT protect a inverter from input overvoltage if all or part of the battery bank disappears! And last year we saw a nice battery box fire and zorched inverters due to similar -- dual 48v L16 strings, one cell failed and opened, other string dumped everything into the bad one, smoke and flames. Parallel fusing would have stopped that..but not stopped the loss of dual stacked XW inverters from PV overvoltage. Or am I missing something here? Dan Fink, Executive Director; Otherpower Buckville Energy Consulting Buckville Publications LLC NABCEP / IREC accredited Continuing Education Providers 970.672.4342 ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
Re: [RE-wrenches] bad battery = system overvoltage = dead inverter
Hi Dan, You can do it! You are looking for a circuit called a crowbar. It is a SCR that turns on when a certain voltage is exceeded. Typically implemented with an SCR and a zener diode. The SCR, when turned on, shorts out the battery. And BAM you blow the big fuse in the battery bank or before the load you are trying to protect. So the SCR needs to be able to handle the fuse blowing current for just long enough to blow the fuse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowbar_%28circuit%29 You could make a variant of this that trips a shunt trip circuit breaker. Midnite sells some shunt trip breakers that could be suitable. More expensive to do it this way, however. -James Jarvis APRS World, LLC On 3/15/2013 10:05 PM, Dan Fink wrote: This has been happening all too frequently here. We live in a big area of off grid homes, dozens of systems. Lost a customers Trace 2624 this morning; One L-16 in older 24v bank opened internally. PV array/MPPT control zorched inverter as soon as the sun came up. First indication of problems last nite when customer hit microwave to warm up dinner and inverter went crazy. This morning the bad battery showed 3.2v (yes, I would expect 2 or 4 also) the rest the usual 6+v. Turned on PV array, bad battery immediately up to 11v (yes, 6v L16). Somebody needs to build a battery condom with big stacked diodes on a big heat sink or some such solution. A voltage brick wall for system charging inputs. MPPT PV controllers do NOT protect a inverter from input overvoltage if all or part of the battery bank disappears! And last year we saw a nice battery box fire and zorched inverters due to similar -- dual 48v L16 strings, one cell failed and opened, other string dumped everything into the bad one, smoke and flames. Parallel fusing would have stopped that..but not stopped the loss of dual stacked XW inverters from PV overvoltage. Or am I missing something here? Dan Fink, Executive Director; Otherpower Buckville Energy Consulting Buckville Publications LLC NABCEP / IREC accredited Continuing Education Providers 970.672.4342 ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org -- -James Jefferson Jarvis APRS World, LLC +1-507-454-2727 www.aprsworld.com ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
Re: [RE-wrenches] Question re fine stranded cable with Sunny Islandinverters
Alan: Use a ferrule on the inverter end of the wire. Makes fine strand cable suitable for normal lugs Burndy has some that they say are for fine strand (Class K) cable. http://www.burndy.com/products/new-products/bare-ferrules.aspx They look exactly the same as the cheaper un-insulated ferrules from ferrules direct. http://www.ferrulesdirect.com/ Best Regards, John Berdner General Manager, North America SolarEdge Technologies, Inc. 3347 Gateway Boulevard, Fremont CA 94538 USA (*Please note of our new address.) T: 510.498.3200, X 747 M: 530.277.4894 From: re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org [mailto:re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Allan Sindelar Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 3:58 PM To: RE-wrenches Subject: [RE-wrenches] Question re fine stranded cable with Sunny Island inverters Wrenches, A small issue, drawing on the collective wisdom here: For an upcoming quad-stack installation of Sunny Island inverters, I foolishly ordered some fine stranded copper 1/0 Cobra X-Flex Cable because of its flexibility. In this situation, because of NEC ampacity requirements on our total DC cabling (this system also has a single Radian for some dedicated loads) we are only running 125 amp DC breakers on each SI inverter. Our issue is that the SI installation manual specifically notes not to use fine stranded cable into the terminal lugs. This was news to me. We can purchase 1/0 Ilsco or Panduit copper pigtail adapters to make the connection into the terminals of the inverters, but they are $10 to $14 each, and we need eight of them. Is using doubled up #4 or #2 the only solution? Are there any other suggestions that will allow us to use the 1/0 X-Flex? Thank you, Allan - Allan Sindelar al...@positiveenergysolar.commailto:al...@positiveenergysolar.com NABCEP Certified Photovoltaic Installer NABCEP Certified Technical Sales Professional New Mexico EE98J Journeyman Electrician Founder and Chief Technology Officer Positive Energy, Inc. 3209 Richards Lane (note new address) Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507 505 424-1112 www.positiveenergysolar.comhttp://www.positiveenergysolar.com/ CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail and its attachments are intended only for the use of the individual or entity who is the intended recipient and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure or any type of use under applicable law. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient, or the employee, agent, or representative responsible for delivering the e-mail to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please reply immediately to the sender. P Please think of the environment before printing this email ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
[RE-wrenches] solar ramp
Does anyone know of any specific instances of a solar ramp problem in California? In that the curtailment of solar production (clouds) has caused a problem on the utility grid? -- Paul N. Israel, President Sunlight Solar Energy, Inc. 541/322-1910 Direct 860/617-6527 Cell p...@sunlightsolar.com Www.sunlightsolar.com Want to stay current on the latest local incentives, solar equipment maintenance, and tips for sustainable living? Click here, * http://sunlightsolar.com/meet-us/newsletter-archive/* for our free quarterly e-newsletter! *P** Please consider the environment before printing this email. * This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify me by replying to this message and delete the original, any copy of this e-mail and any printout made. ___ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
