[RE-wrenches] Outback Grid Problems

[R Ray Walters]

What faults were you seeing when it wouldn't sell? Was grid voltage or frequency off? Or was it power factor issue? 
I might need some technical ammo to persuade the Utility into swapping their transformer.

R. Walters
ray at solarray.com
Solar Engineer




On Mar 31, 2010, at 1:32 PM, penobscotsolar at midmaine.com wrote:

> Ray, Believe me when I say I have gone through all the exercises described
> so far by our esteemed colleagues. I think you will find the problem is
> with the customers transformer. I continue to make impressive amounts of
> kwh since the swap out last week.
> 
> Daryl
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> Battery bank is in great shape, is brand new HUP set.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> R. Walters
>> ray at solarray.com
>> Solar Engineer
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Mar 31, 2010, at 6:19 AM, tump at hughes.net wrote:
>> 
>>> Ask the customer to ck the cells for bubbling during the charging period
>>> to make sure the cells all are good OR Isolate the battery banks to make
>>> sure there isn't a dead cell the OBs are trying to charge. BB1 one day,
>>> BB2 the next & so on.
>>> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: R Ray Walters <ray at solarray.com>
>>> Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:42:58
>>> To: RE-wrenches<re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org>
>>> Subject: [RE-wrenches] Outback Grid Problems
>>> 
>>> We currently have a Grid Tie system with a pair of Outback inverters
>>> that are regularly dropping out of sell mode, and letting the arrays
>>> spend all day charging the battery bank.
>>> It seems to do this several times a week, and the customer is losing
>>> substantial production, and gassing the batteries too much.
>>> It will reset itself the next day, or the customer resets it by turning
>>> off the inverters manually.
>>> The system is 24 v, with an old array of 1800 watts running through 2
>>> FM60s, and a new array of 2800 watts running through another pair of
>>> FM60s.
>>> The battery bank is HUP about 4100 Ah @ 24 v (3 strings of 1375 Ah each)
>>> Big battery, I know, but the customer is an electrical engineer, who
>>> wanted maximum storage capacity.
>>> 
>>> Outback tech support has not resolved the issue, and this has turned
>>> into several service calls, and customer frustration.
>>> We've tried running the controllers through the HUB, and also
>>> independently, and that doesn't make a difference.
>>> I have numerous Outback GT installs dating back to 2003, and have never
>>> had a problem like this.
>>> Any help or advice would as always be greatly appreciated.
>>> 
>>> Thank you in advance fellow Wrenches,
>>> 
>>> R. Walters
>>> ray at solarray.com
>>> Solar Engineer
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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