[RE-wrenches] Arc fault questions.

[Aladdin Solar]

By off-grid inverters do you happen to mean square wave and/or modified sine wave inverters? If so, I have been struggling with a similar issue. I have tried to get both/either Cutler-Hammer AFCI and GFCI devices to work with a Magnum MM1212 AE (modified sine wave) with no luck. All GFCI and AFCI are thoroughly tested against pure sine wave sources by the manufacturer but they generally do not test against the modified sine waveform. The Magnum installation guide lists only three specific GFCI devices that their tests show work with this inverter (Cutler-Hammer is not among them so I'll have to change out my box to accept the specific Leviton or Hubbell device that passed). Schneider/Xantrex also has a document that shows many GFCIs fail to work properly with Xantrex modified sine wave inverters--and a few of them do. http://www.xantrex.com/web/id/1193/DocServe.aspx  Looks like it may also be true that a specific GFCI device may work with one model or manufacturer but not another. I'm not an electronics expert but I imagine the AFCI devices are just as problematic since they are probably all built to pure sine wave specs.

If you were strictly talking about pure sine wave battery based inverters, sorry -- I didn't mean to hijack the topic (but I'd still appreciate any insights)!

Charlie Pickard
Aladdin Solar

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: tump at hughes.net 
  To: RE-wrenches 
  Sent: Monday, May 31, 2010 6:32 AM
  Subject: [RE-wrenches] Arc fault questions.


  Can & will someone explain, why off grid inverters will cause nuisance tripping of the AF receptacle. 
  Does anyone have "real" field information as to how this might be reduced or eliminated? How about  which AF receptacles are less likely to trip? 
  TIA tump
  Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
  _______________________________________________
  List sponsored by Home Power magazine

  List Address: RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org

  Options & settings:
  http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org

  List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org

  List rules & etiquette:
  www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm

  Check out participant bios:
  www.members.re-wrenches.org



  __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 5159 (20100531) __________

  The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

  http://www.eset.com


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20100601/3aaf4bed/attachment-0003.html>