[RE-wrenches] trouble shooting system with Sun Tie

[Randy Brooks]

Dana,

I thought Xantrex recalled all the ST1500s and replaced them with  
XR2500s.  Mine was, years ago.  You might check with them about this.

Good luck,

Randy Brooks
Brooks Solar, Inc.
Solar Power for People
140 Columbia View
Chelan, WA  98816
509-682-9646
Randy at BrooksSolar.com
www.BrooksSolar.com

On Sep 11, 2008, at 3:23 PM, Dana Brandt wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I was called out this week to trouble shoot a system I didn't install.
> It's a five year old 1.44kW system with the following: Sun Tie ST 1500
> inverter and 12 Astro Power modules. It only produced 634kWh last
> year. With our sun here, the shading, orientation, equipment, etc. it
> should have produced around 1123kWh.
>
> I've heard a lot about Sun Tie failures, but don't know the details.
> What are the common failure modes? Is it likely that a failure of the
> Sun Tie would leave it operating, but only producing half what it
> should?
>
> When I showed up the system was producing 950W on a relatively sunny
> day - seemed pretty reasonable. After restarting the inverter it only
> produced around 150W. Is the MPPT very, very slow to find that sweet
> spot, or what was going on there?
>
> The system is comprised of three strings of 4 modules each. When I was
> there all three strings were producing about the same current, so that
> leads me to believe it's not a module failure.
>
> To make things more fun, the modules were installed at two different
> orientations. One string is at 38d slope, 30d east of true south,
> while the other two are at 36d slope, 75k east of true south. This
> certainly has a detrimental impact on the performance, but it doesn't
> seem to me that it could account for all of that energy loss.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Thanks a lot!
>
> Dana
>
> --
> Dana Brandt
> Ecotech Energy Systems, LLC
> www.ecotechenergy.com
> dana at ecotechenergy.com
> 360.510.0433
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