Outback FX and Generator Input [RE-wrenches]

Darryl Thayer daryl_solar at yahoo.com
Sat Aug 20 09:15:02 PDT 2005


Dave
I did not measure the efficiency, I could have at the
time, but the system is quite a distance from town. 
One feature I liked was the system was always on the
inverter getting high quality power and lots of surge
capability (which I needed for the well pump).    

I am not sure if efficency of the generation is very
important here.  Hugh Pigot pointed out that it is
best to equlize batteries with the RE source as the
equilization is extreamly inefficent (i think maybe
20%).  The efficiency of the generator operating at
part load to charge batteries might off set any other
factor.  

The generator driving a full wave recitifer might be
slightly less, but if I were to calculate, the
following:  The transformer is supposed to be about 94
to 96% efficent.  The recitifer efficiency is fairly
high, with perhaps a 2 to 3 volt drop from the 60 volt
output of the transformer so that is 3 to 5% loss or
95% efficency.  The MX60 is about 95% efficent, so
multipling (0.95)^3 is about 85%.  I do not remember
the efficiency of the FX but it is far better from
experiance than the old trace and maybe 90 to 95%. 

I am not good at notes, and it has been a long time,
but I remember some problem at set up.  I think if I
went much over 30 amps (maybe 40 amps) at 48 volts
from the MX60 the generator would trip the 20 amp
breaker.  I solved by limiting the MX60 output to 30
amps.  I can not say for sure this is what happened
but it was something like that, perhaps the 20 amp.
gen breaker was really not quite a 20 amp.      

--- "David Palumbo, Independent Power & Light"
<ipl at sover.net> wrote:
> DT,
> Very interesting solution. I am curious as to what
> the efficiency of this
> setup vs. the usual Gen to FX to Batteries setup.
> 
> DP
> 
> <<Jeremy
> I had a similar problem, where on the RE system
> supplied most of the energy, and the generator was 
> rarely needed.  The gen just did not perform.  SO I
took an
> auto transformer and connected to the generator to
> reduce the voltage to 50% and connected into
> full-wave rectfier and hooked the output to an MX60.
Snip


		
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