Wrenches, Here's one that has me quite stumped, and perhaps one of you esteemed Wrenches has an answer or suggestion.
In 2000 we installed a clean, basic budget off-grid system in a new remote manufactured home for a client, a single woman who lives quite consciously and frugally. The system was 24V, 600W of PV, Trace DC175, DR2424 inverter, Solar Boost 50, eight golf cart batteries and a Tri-Metric, along with a Sun Frost RF16 and Staber washer. The system had worked perfectly for her, and we replaced her batteries with same last year. She called a couple of weeks ago because her life situation had changed and she now worked from her remote home using cell phone and satellite internet. The new satellite equipment had been troublesome and had already been replaced, but would still shut down intermittently. Given that she had already replaced the electronic equipment with same, I suggested that she finally was facing the problem of modified-square wave DR waveform. I said that while there were no guarantees, a switch to a sine wave inverter would likely cure the problem. On Friday I removed the DR and installed an Outback FX2524T. No other changes, other than longer 2/0 cables. I changed a few settings for flooded batteries and her generator using a service-truck Mate, but did not sell one with the system. Everything booted up properly, job done, let me know how it works out. Friday evening she called with no power. The red "error" LED was lit. I had her reboot the inverter with the DC breaker, and all was restored. The only thing she had run was the Staber washer. I assured her that the inverter could handle a DC reboot without trouble. The next day (yesterday) she left a message that she had six times overloaded while completing the wash load with the Staber. Everything else was fine. On Monday she will call for an explanation of what is happening and advice on how to correct it, and I won't have any. What would allow a Staber to run fine on mod-square DR power, but overload an FX of the same capacity? The Staber was likely ordered with notification of the need for a mod-square control board, as they instructed in the early days, but I wouldn't expect it to be incompatible with sine-wave AC. Not having expected this problem, I didn't go hunting for problems such as a ground fault in the washer circuit. I haven't done any troubleshooting, of course, but would like to have some idea what to look for. The only anomaly that I noticed was that some of her Tri-Metric program settings had changed from what I checked when I replaced the batteries: CEF of L98 instead of H97 meant she always showed 100%, and a couple of other settings weren't what they should have been. I noted this and reset it, but considered it an unexplained glitch, as though a nearby lightning surge had scrambled some settings without damaging anything, or she had inadvertently pressed the wrong button sequence and changed settings. Now I'm wondering about extraneous things: a bad ground? Mice chewing through the laundry circuit (although she has cats.)? What would cause an overload to be detected by the FX that wouldn't have tripped the DR all these years? All ideas and solutions would be appreciated. I will likely have to make a return trip, not under warranty, though. Allan Sindelar al...@positiveenergysolar.com NABCEP Certified Photovoltaic Installer EE98J Journeyman Electrician Positive Energy, Inc. 3201 Calle Marie Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507 505 424-1112 www.positiveenergysolar.com
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