I recently had to fix a similar issue with a dual SI site. No blown Capacitor, but blank screens regardless of power cycles, and good voltages in and out.
Took the covers off and notice a red led illuminated on the bottom left corner of the main circuit board next to the electro-mechanical relay. Talked with support and they stated that was a LBM-3 error (low battery protection error). I question if this is really the case. Regardless, they asked I remove all DC and AC voltage from the SI (meaning remove the voltage completely, not just turning off the internal DC switch, which still gives the circuit board a little power, I used remote battery circuit breakers to do this), wait at least 15 min, then power it back on. It worked for me, and I am watching to see if the problem reoccurs (2 weeks clear so far). Just another data point that a 15min+ power cycle might help in your case. -- Danny Young Engineering Team Lead Solar Energy Solutions Lexington | Louisville | Bloomington | Cincinnati | Evansville | Indianapolis 513-448-5176 (mobile) 877-312-7456 (Main Office) da...@sesre.com<mailto:da...@sesre.com> From: RE-wrenches <re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org> On Behalf Of Nick A Lucchese Sent: Sunday, March 6, 2022 1:16 PM To: RE-wrenches <re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org> Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Sunny Island Troubleshooting Kienan, Sounds like your diagnosis of a blown capacitor is definite proof of a serious repair. However, in my years of playing with the Islands I have fairly recently observed similar behavior with the screens not powering up while there is sufficient DC voltage at it’s terminals. Four times now one of the DC Power trailer systems I am responsible for did the same thing but after a full 45 minutes with the DC breakers completely powered down it then came back on once the breakers were closed again. After the first incident I came back with a Radian to loan them because I thought it was either a complete failure or due to a closed loop communications glitch between the SI’s and the Blue Ion’s Namaka however this still happened even if I tried to fool it by just programming the SI’s with a VRLA charging profile. After some behind the scenes tweaking by Blue Planet’s supportive techs (Jody is the best) the site experienced trouble free closed loop operations for about 8 months until a few weeks ago when we started getting similar shutdowns. I say similar because I was only able to support the customer remotely without being on site but he was describing the same exact thing with the screens being blank while the Classic controllers were indicating above 51 vdc. I was able to verify through the Stellar interface that upon each incident site conditions appeared to be normal with very small load and no less than 31% SOC at the least. This happened three days in a row at about the same time of day and once again after letting Blue Planet know they were able to update some firmware on their end which so far has rewarded the site with trouble-free power once again though we’re only about 12 days beyond the incidents at this point. The other time I observed this was twice on a Multicluster job I installed about 16 months ago. Same thing, no lights on the inverters while the batteries still had reasonable capacity left to give. I don’t recall if it was just the one master cluster or all of them but it appeared to be really bad at first thinking I needed to come up with some extra Islands in a hurry but then after an extended period with the Island's DC breakers open they eventually powered up as if nothing ever happened. The point is there are definitely some deep settings in those inverters not mentioned in the manual where the screens go blank for undetermined reasons. See if an extended off duration works to your advantage before resorting to more burdensome efforts. Then as Chris said call Solar Cowboyz and see if you can speak with Louis. Dang ole Islands man. Good luck, Nick On Mar 5, 2022, at 3:11 PM, Kienan Maxfield <maxfieldso...@hotmail.com<mailto:maxfieldso...@hotmail.com>> wrote: Hello all, I'm troubleshooting an interesting case. It's a DC coupled SMA Sunni Island system with two of the 6048 SI's. I think that the both of the SI's are fried, and I think I know why, but there's a strange twist so I thought I'd ask if anyone here has any insight... So this is a DC Power system, and whoever was building these at DC power made a mistake on the Main wire that connects to the battery, so the connection came loose. When I looked at it for my client, I saw that there is an internal capacitor in one of the SI's that is blown. I assumed that the loose connection cause voltage spikes from the charge controller to damage the inverter. But then I repaired the wiring, and everything powered up fine, and the SI system was putting out perfect power. Then, two days later, I looked at it again because the customer was going to come pick it up, and the inverters were apparently dead. I tried resetting them, but it seems like there's just nothing. The screen won't come on, it won't make any noise, etc. There is good voltage on the DC in terminals. So my question is why they both came on, and why they both fried after the problem was fixed. I mean, it makes sense that they were damaged from the voltage spikes from loose wiring, but I don't understand why they would come on and then finish frying with no load... Other question, I know that with outback inverters, you can normally repair the inverter by replacing a board that is a fraction of the cost of the inverter. Is this so with SMA SI's? And does anyone have a recommendation on how to troubleshoot at a board level, or where to source the boards? I did already tell the customer that I think his inverters will need to be replaced, but just hoping to make sure I don't overlook something first... Thanks, Kienan Maxfield Solar maxfieldso...@hotmail.com<mailto:maxfieldso...@hotmail.com> (801) 631-5584 (Cell) _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Redwood Alliance Pay optional member dues here: http://re-wrenches.org<http://re-wrenches.org/> List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org<mailto:RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org> Change listserver email address & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org There are two list archives for searching. 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