Outback Inverters - Master / Slaving [RE-wrenches]

[Matt Tritt]

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It should be a great relief to Christopher that our errant quad stack is
up and running at last. The repairs all worked as hoped thanks to the
quick response and shipment of replacement parts, not to mention all the
direction from John and Greg.

There are two minor things that came to light (ha ha): When the
generator powers down, there is a very noticeable transfer time (with
flickering) before the inverters take over. This was what was happening
when the inverter failed to begin with so we were a bit nervous during
testing. The other thing has to do with the MX 60 apparently being
involved with some comm. error messages and other problems with some
programming of the inverters. All problems vanished when we disconnected
the controller from the hub. Therefore, we are leaving it disconnected
since the two displays (Mate and MS60) are adjacent anyway. We also
noted that the MS60 works fine with the hub and Mate when the inverters
aren't connected to the hub.

I'm glad (in a masochistic way) that we had this weird stuff happen
where and when it did since we now know the system inside and out and
have memorized the programming quite well. This is good since I have an
8-stack on the horizon and also want to use pairs of 3648's for our
off-grid (and maybe grid-connected) 6 kW Eoltec windturbines (and the
Bornay 3 kW units).

Many thanks to Outback again for all their help! I feel that any wrench
should feel comfortable in working with their equipment and their
technical service.

Matt T



-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Freitas --- OutBack Power
[mailto:cfreitas at outbackpower.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 11:41 AM
To: RE-wrenches at topica.com
Subject: RE: Outback Inverters - Master / Slaving [RE-wrenches]


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Aaron's Thinking Putty in grown up handfuls. It's the 
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I forgot to comment on this section of Gary's posting:

Windstream Solar-Gary wrote:
> I'm attracted to the technology in this product, but am concerned 
> about
> what would happen if one of the inverters in this quad stack goes
down. 
> Yes, it's nice to watch the HUB10 scanning away--but what if something

> in this complex integrated system gets sick? How about some procedures

> (that my clients can understand) to run a minimal system on 1 inverter

> if the hub goes down, or on 2-3 inverters if one or two go down or one

> quits? And what if it's the Master? What-if's and clear documentation 
> matter so much when the lights go out...

The design of the OutBack FX inverter stacking "network" is designed to 
allow for as much fault tolerance as possible - for example a slave 
inverter can be shutdown, removed and restarted while the system is 
running loads without any problems occurring...  This is one of the 
reasons that there was a significant delay in getting the HUB on the 
market - we had found a flaw in the approach which allowed a failed unit

to shutdown the system (which we corrected in the final design).  The 
inclusion of the X-240 also makes the system more fault tolerant as 
well.

The HUB itself has two different communication paths - the one used for 
stacking is independant of the MATE's communication - so an electrical 
failure of the MATE/HUB is not likely to cause a failure of the stacking

system.  The work the MATE does simply improves the operation of the 
stacked system - so a stacked system works without the MATE - just not 
as well under some specific conditions (such as charging).  

Failure of a MASTER FX inverter will shut down the system - but 
remastering the stacked system is pretty straight forward - I have 
talked one customer through doing it already (the problem ended up being

a damaged CAT5 cable, BTW) and I advise, for now, telling the customer 
to call us directly.  We will be coming out with more documentation 
(Robin is really on my a** now to get it done - Thanks!) so keep 
posted...

Christopher Freitas
OutBack Power Systems, Inc.
cfreitas @ outbackpower.com  
www.outbackpower.com
Arlington WA USA
Tel 360 435 6030  

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