[RE-wrenches] DR2424 inverters charging poorly: three units in two days!

[R Ray Walters]

Backwoods sells the buck boost transformers for a reasonable price.
I have to add belatedly that as bomb proof as the venerable DRs were, they indeed never charged well from cruddy generators. I had one once that made 0.5 amps at 12 volts DC.
The culprit as you already pointed out: Peak voltage was under 130 vac with the genie loaded. A Fluke 87/89 can be set to capture peak, and is very handy for diagnosing these DR/ genie ailments.
I've had a couple of systems add grid later, and amazingly the DR will crank close to rated charging output when fed good pure sinewave.
It was designed as backup power for ongrid in the Dominican Republic (DR), not genie power. 

R. Walters
ray at solarray.com
Solar Engineer




On Aug 19, 2010, at 7:29 PM, Allan Sindelar wrote:

> Sure, Jay, but what does one of those puppies cost (I have never used one)? If the main reason for using a DR instead of a sine-wave inverter is lower cost, adding a transformer to improve charge rate kind of negates any argument for using one of these, doesn't it? 
> Allan
> 
> On 8/19/2010 8:45 PM, jay peltz wrote:
>> HI All,
>> 
>> If the voltage from the generators is low ( probably) then a old trick is to use a buck/boost transformer to bump it up the voltage.
>> This trick has the advantage that it doesn't have the hz be too high.
>> 
>> yours,
>> 
>> jay
>> 
>> peltz power
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