I would advise against using CAT-5 cabling for any RS-485 data communications, it is not an appropriate tool for the job. This is a common poor practice in the solar industry.
4 conductor shielded, 24AWG jacketed cable is what SMA recommends, and is appropriate for this purpose. Glenn Burt (many years of data comms experience B4 solar) From: re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org [mailto:re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of mac Lewis Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2012 9:41 PM To: RE-wrenches Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] AC coupling and Outback inverters Hi Kirk, I would consider the Sunny Island option. Everything integrates nicely. You can use the smartformer to get 240Vac if you need it at the critical loads. This would give the Sunny Island Frequency control over the Sunny Boy (assuming you can run Cat 5 to the Sunny Boy). Good Luck. On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Kirk Herander <k...@vtsolar.com> wrote: I have AC-coupled an Outback quad-stack with multiple SunnyBoy 6000US inverters and its been running fine for 4 years. I used the off-grid version of Outbacks. Now I have an application where a customer wants to add battery backup to an existing SunnyBoy 5000US system. And expand his array by a couple KW. So Im thinking of using a GT Outback w/ batteries to handle the critical loads and feed the extra 2kw of PV (charging the batteries through an MX60) to the grid. And Id like to AC-couple the SunnyBoy so the original 5 kw array can also charge the batteries, BUT I remember, at least I think so, that the GT inverter cannot be AC-coupled, only the off-grid version. Is this correct? Thanks. Kirk Herander VT Solar, LLC dba Vermont Solar Engineering NABCEPTM Certified installer Charter Member NYSERDA-eligible Installer VT RE Incentive Program Partner 802.863.1202 _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Options & 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 -- Mac Lewis "Yo solo sé que no sé nada." -Sócrates
_______________________________________________ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Options & 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
