[RE-wrenches] AC coupling and Outback inverters

David Katz dkatz at aeesolar.com
Thu Oct 4 23:10:35 PDT 2012


Hi Kirk,
All of the Outback inverters will work AC coupled (GT and FX) as will any bi-directional H-bridge type inverter.  I have used old Trace SW's, SunnyIsland, Apollo TSW, Magnum AE and now I am using an Outback Radian to do exactly what you are talking about.  I have 6 kW of grid tie inverter and an additional 4kw of modules running through a Xantrex 600 volt charge controller to the batteries that the Radian runs on. It all works flawless as long as you have a provision for protecting the batteries when the gid is down and the grid-tie PV system is making more power than the loads are using.
If the customer has SMA inverters, I would recommend using a SunnyIsland because the battery control when the grid goes down is so elegant.  Everything else is a bit of a kludge.

David Katz
CTO & Founder
AEE Solar Inc
P: 707 825-1200
F: 707 825-1202
dkatz at aeesolar.com
www.aeesolar.com


From: re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Kirk Herander
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2012 2:11 PM
To: RE-wrenches
Subject: [RE-wrenches] AC coupling and Outback inverters

I have AC-coupled an Outback quad-stack with multiple SunnyBoy 6000US inverters and it's been running fine for 4 years. I used the off-grid version of Outbacks.
Now I have an application where a customer wants to add battery backup to an existing SunnyBoy 5000US system. And expand his array by a couple KW. So I'm thinking of using a GT Outback w/ batteries to handle the critical loads and feed the extra 2kw of PV (charging the batteries through an MX60) to the grid. And I'd like to AC-couple the SunnyBoy so the original 5 kw array can also charge the batteries, BUT I remember, at least I think so, that the GT inverter cannot be AC-coupled, only the off-grid version. Is this correct? Thanks.

Kirk Herander
VT Solar, LLC
dba Vermont Solar Engineering
NABCEPTM Certified installer Charter Member
NYSERDA-eligible Installer
VT RE Incentive Program Partner
802.863.1202

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