OutBack [RE-wrenches]

Todd Cory, Mt. Shasta Energy Services toddcory at finestplanet.com
Wed Jan 16 15:35:54 PST 2008


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Last week we had a 11.5 hour grid outage during a big snow/ice storm. 
After about 10 hours the batteries got down to 60% SOC I decided to 
kludge my old construction use Honda 2600 watt genny into the GVFX to 
see what would happen. I had never tried this because I did not think it 
would accept the power, but I was in a pinch and amazingly it DID work.

I could only set the AC2 setting for 9 amps before the voltage and FQ 
started to drop, but that yielded a charge of around 20 amps which was 
wonderful. As the FX goes not offer generator support, every time a big 
load came on, the genny burped and the FX disconnected and reconnected.

Of course about 1.5 hours after I got this operational the grid was 
restored, but I wanted the wrench list to know this does work even with 
a poorly regulated AC source.

Now have to install a manual transfer switch on the inverter input to 
chose between the two sources and also go into the mate and tell it to 
use AC2 which has the lower input limit. Not something I would want my 
average customer to have to do... but it did work.

I loved how automated the SW was when doing this. I have several grid 
tie with battery backup systems going in for this coming summer and am 
considering the XW because of the FX generator charging difficulties. I 
like to make my installations as easy as I can for the customer.

Todd


Christopher Freitas --- OutBack Power wrote:

>Marco - 
>
>The GT versions of the OutBack FX have only a single AC input still and 
>have limited compatibility with generators still.  These issue are 
>something we have been working on - just haven't completed it yet. 
>
>Part of the challenge we are facing is the large expense of relisting 
>the product with UL/ETL these days - the last round of testing for the 
>"updated" UL1741 standard was very expensive.  This causes us need to 
>batch our changes together and requires us to have a higher confidence 
>level in the software going into the testing as we do not want to have 
>to stop the testing or retest after some changes were required.   
>
>We have recently been testing the grid-tie versions of the FX inverters 
>with some of the common inverter-generators and have found good 
>performance.  The only caution I have is that the ratings on these 
>generators are optimistic - the Honda 3000 is rated for only 2300 watts 
>continuously and its hard to get more than about 2000 watts out of it 
>without its electronic overcurrent protection tripping off.  Very low 
>fuel consumption though for the watt-hours delivered.  
>
>One nice option is to use a DC generator of course - which also solves 
>the issue of poor AC power quality when running sensitive AC loads on a 
>loaded generator.  It also makes the AC wiring simpler and the system 
>easier to operate for the customer I think.  I just wish there was more 
>DC output generators models available in the market.  
>  
>


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