Friends:
I met with the AV crew yesterday. They are completely unwilling to run the system without a UPS. I have some choices: 1. See if we have a real problem, and if so, how bad is it? 2. Temporarily disable the Sunny Boy inverters to see if eliminating the Frequency Shift Power Control (FSPC) makes the UPS happier. I have done this and am waiting for results. 3. If the above creates good results, consider removing the Sunny Boy inverters and rely on direct DC battery charging, maybe by using Morningstar MPPT-600 charge controllers. 4. Find out if the inverters, generator or both are causing a problem. 5. If it is the generator, have it repaired or try to reprogram the Sunny Island inverters to disable transfer and utilize battery charging only. Has anyone done this? 6. If it is the inverters, have them repaired or select another product. 7. If I am confident that power quality is adequate, mute the UPS and ignore it. I will let you know how this progresses because I think there is interest and others have experienced similar problems. William Gradient Cap_mini Lic 773985 <http://www.millersolar.com/> millersolar.com 805-438-5600 From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Steve Jefferson Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:11 AM To: RE-wrenches Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] More Sunny Island power problems Afternoon William, The communication is there to send the signal to the Sunny Boys to go into off-grid mode, when the grid fails. Frequency shift still occurs when current is not needed from the SBoy’s. I typically would not recommend that a UPS circuit be placed in the protected loads panel. The UPS is looking for grid issues, and I think the frequency shift feature would probably fall under that. As for the SI frying the UPS, it is my opinion that the UPS failed. It should have disconnected and started to provide backup power to its loads when the SI started to shift the freq. That’s its job. I Still think it is a good idea to examine the SI data, maybe you can figure out if the SI was in Freq shift mode when the UPS failed. Thanks SMA America, LLC Steve Jefferson Service Line Supervisor 3925 Atherton Ave Rocklin, CA 95765 - 3714 U.S.A. Tel: +1 916 625 3185 (direct) Fax: +1 916 625 0871 Mobile: +1 916 622 4253 Email: steve.jeffer...@sma-america.com <http://www.sma-america.com/> www.SMA-America.com <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQWzPuyqhzo&feature=youtu.be> cid:image001.png@01CF1CFA.FE18BEB0 This email and any attachments thereto may contain SMA America, LLC confidential, privileged and private material for the sole use of the intended recipient. Any review, copying, or distribution of this email (or any attachments thereto) by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender immediately and permanently delete the original and any copies of this email and any attachments thereto. Thank you. From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of William Miller Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:55 AM To: 'RE-wrenches' Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] More Sunny Island power problems Mac: I will review the data. Thanks! William Gradient Cap_mini Lic 773985 millersolar.com <http://www.millersolar.com/> 805-438-5600 From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Mac Lewis Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:46 AM To: RE-wrenches Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] More Sunny Island power problems William, As far as I understand, the communication is supposed to take away the need for frequency shift. Have you pulled the data off of the Sim card and looked for frequency shift? On Aug 15, 2014 10:24 AM, "William Miller" <will...@millersolar.com> wrote: Friends: A Sunny Island mini-grid system I am maintaining also does not play nice with a UPS unit. So much so that the system reportedly fried a Furman UPS unit yesterday! This should not be! The UPS unit is supposed to protect downstream equipment and should be able to protect itself as well. I need to rent some high quality power monitoring equipment to monitor voltage, frequency and distortion. I need one three phase unit in the power building and I need something more compact for the AV equipment room. Does anyone have a recommendation for models that might work in this scenario? The thought occurred to me that the system by which the Sunny Island varies line frequency may be problematic for sensitive electronics. I have connected the Sunny Island master to the Sunny Boys with RS485 and programmed the Sunny Boys for off-grid. Can this allow the two systems to communicate to regulate PV charge without relying on frequency shifting? Thanks in advance. William Gradient Cap_mini Lic 773985 millersolar.com <http://www.millersolar.com/> 805-438-5600 _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Redwood Alliance List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change listserver email address & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out or update participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
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