Colleagues:
I was invited to troubleshoot a Sunny Island system. What I found is a Sunny Island mini-grid system behaving oddly. The generator, when started with the SI, would run for a few minutes and then shut down. Further investigation revealed that the SIs were indicating that the inverters were sending lots of power back to the generator, even with the Sunny Boy turned off. I don't know if this was actually the case, nor can I grasp how this could happen. The system was programmed as a PV/Gen only system. Fortunately I reached an off-grid tech at SMA and we were able to resolve the issue. I am not sure what we did but I suspect that simply rebooting the Sunny Islands was the cure. I post this in case any of you experience this problem and could benefit from my experience. Also, I want to understand this better. Could it be true that the inverters could send power to the generator? I know the circuitry is there to sell to AC2, which is how this system would work as a true grid-interactive system, but how did it get triggered? Was it battery-selling to the generator? I welcome any comments. What I am starting to think is that the Sunny Island system, like any feature rich system, is complicated and has the potential to be less reliable than simpler systems. On the plus side I could also think of these systems as job security for the knowledgeable technician. Sincerely, 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
