Matt's OB Installation [RE-wrenches]

[Joel Davidson]

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I am sure we will hear more from Matt. It would be good to hear from anyone
who has advice about OB installation and settings to avoid such problems.

With this said, I visited Wade Webb's OB installation at the IN-CITY
OFF-GRID! Audubon Society LEED Platinum Green Building in Pasadena. See
http://www.outbackpower.com/spgm/index.php?spgmGal=OutBack%20Extreme
and
http://www.buildinggreen.com/hpb/energy.cfm?ProjectID=234

Congratulations to Wade Webb, OB and the Audubon Society for making a little
piece of the world a better place.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matt Tritt" <solarone at charter.net>
To: <RE-wrenches at topica.com>
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2004 8:21 PM
Subject: RE: Surrette (was HUP Solar One?) [RE-wrenches]


Allan and others,

While I'm on this nasty subject, I think it's kind of my wrenchly duty
to tell you all about an Outback quad stack I've been doing - for the
past week no less.

First I have to say that John at OB has been extremely responsive and
helpful in dealing with the problems that developed. Without him on the
phone for seemingly endless periods we'd probably still be there trying
to figure what to do to make the thing work.

To make this a short story, we hooked up and programmed everything
exactly as directed by John (the manual is, IMHO, basically useless)
over the phone. This is a split-phase install so we have two pairs of
L1s and L2s, an X-240 with fan, etc. The PSDC is crammed to over-flowing
with stuff, as is the DC box. Everything worked fine when we fired those
babies up. Everything worked fine when we connected to AC in from the
big Onan (45 kW). But, when we disconnected the generator from the
inputs - POP POP ka-POW!

No two inv., that's slave 1, shot sparks and the dreaded smoke monster
out of the cooling inlet and tripped the DC breaker (175 amps) in a loud
and colorful display of high priced pyrotechnics you normally have to
pay for. Actually we did! Being only too familiar with that particular
sound, my bet is that a number of FETs blew along with who knows what
else.

John was quick to ship a new replacement though, and we returned to
install it, only to find that inv. #4 (slave 3) had committed suicide in
our absence. At least it's brain had, so John has sent us a replacement
board, which we intend to do a transplant with on Monday.

The owner is not exactly pleased with all this sturm und drang going on
in their inverter room, especially since I talked her into upgrading
from a fairly recent pair of 4048s (that I also sold her), which worked
pretty damned well.

All you guys who have been in this field as long as I have are only too
familiar with this story, or at least the script, and know that this is
just kind of the deal in our line of work. Still, you would think that
by now you would be able to pull something out of its shipping box, put
it up and away it would go doing just what it's supposed to do, without
having to make lots of trips and lose lots of $$$ in the process.

I'm not complaining about Outback here; this kind of problem is not
limited to them in any way, but wouldn't it be cool if there were
nothing to complain about? I import wind turbines and solar pumps by the
way, so I'm no stranger to having the shoe on the other foot. No matter
how well conceived and built something might be, there's always room for
improvement!

Matt T

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