[RE-wrenches] SMA Secure Power Supply

Wed Sep 4 07:36:52 PDT 2013

Morning Wrenches,

To your statement about the rotary switches, The rotary switches are for changing the language or setting the inverter to off-grid mode for use with Sunny Island off-grid systems.

In 99.9% of normal residential installations, there is no need to touch the rotary dials. Even on a 208 grid, as the unit is auto sensing.

The Neutral is always needed in any TL unit.

It is always a good idea when installing a new product to read the manual.

Anything else, please contact me offline.

SMA America, LLC
Steve Jefferson
Supervisor, Service Line
6020 West Oaks Blvd, Suite 300
Rocklin, CA 95765 - 3714
U.S.A.
Tel:  +1 916 625 0870
Fax: +1 916 624-2445
Service Line +1 877 697 6283 (Toll Free)
Email: steve.jefferson at sma-america.com
www.SMA-America.com<http://www.sma-america.com/>

This email and any attachments thereto may contain SMA America, LLC confidential, privileged and private material for the sole use of the intended recipient. Any review, copying, or distribution of this email (or any attachments thereto) by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender immediately and permanently delete the original and any copies of this email and any attachments thereto. Thank you.

[cid:image003.png at 01CE517D.21006940]<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQWzPuyqhzo&feature=youtu.be>

From: re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Young
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2013 8:19 AM
To: 'RE-wrenches'
Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] SMA Secure Power Supply

For the well pump, you could get a small auto transformer to give you 240V out of the 120V output. I have no idea how the ne TL-22's will handle the pump though.

We've installed one 3kw unit thus far and are impressed. We've only powered small items thus far, dewalt battery chargers, box fans, laptop chargers, no issues there. We plan to experiment a little, trying to power a newer model refrigerator off an extension cord. Also possibly a shop vac, to see if the motor surge trips the SPS into some sort of fault condition. Will follow-up on those if/when we decide to go there.

As for installation feedback, the units are easy to mount and the wiring is straight forward when you read the manual first. The AC output comes off the inverter angled slightly towards the wall, so you either need to use flex, or bend your pvc/emt/grc to bring the conduit run back in line with the mounting wall. The SPS is not a part of the inverter package, you must go buy whatever components you want for setting up the SPS. We used a double gang box, with a simple 15A light switch and duplex outlet, so it's no big deal to walk into any supply house and get what you need on the fly if you forgot to put it on the truck. It may be harder to get everything if you need to mount the SPS outdoors, making sure everything is rated for the purpose.

The DC connection between the DC disconnect and the inverter is only a 3 wire cable, which in counter intuitive at first for a system with 2 separate DC MPPT circuits. But they bring the negatives of both circuits together before going to the inverter (this is what I surmised after examining the PCB inside the DC disconnect).

One thing that some installers may miss, especially if they don't read the manual is that by default all the rotary dials that set the country, language, grid-tie requirements, and communications ID# are set to 0-0-0. In the US we need to change these to the appropriate settings based on your preferences. The manual states that the setting are locked in after 10 operating hours, and an SMA code must be entered to change the setting after that. The manual indicates that these settings may already be the "default" for the inverter, requiring no changes, but when calling SMA tech support for our first install they made it sound like we needed to use the rotary dials to confirm the correct language, grid settings, etc...

Other things to note:

-          The new TL-22's require a neutral in all cases, unlike their transformer based cousins. This makes them incompatible with 240V 3ph high leg delta grid installations. (you can install them only on the 2 legs that are used for split phase 240/120v making an imbalanced installation, which may not matter depending on the size of service vs the array).

-          The inverters include DC surge suppression in the DC Disconnect that is easily serviceable. This is a nice feature during a tightly budgeted install. But we typically will install the midnight solar arrestors as well, so we have a visual indication that the system is protected.

-          They are ridiculously quiet. (The spec sheet indicates this with around 25db sound levels) When standing 2ft in front of the  inverter it cannot be heard (at least by me) during operation (grid-tie and SPS modes). If fact I could hear the mechanical kWh meter we installed to track it's production ratcheting away clearly, but nothing from the inverter. The inverter will make several "clicks" during the first 30 sec of startup when the grid is turned on. I suspect this is the AFCI and other safety features doing self checks before connecting to the grid. I have not been around the inverter at dawn to see if these clicking noises happen every morning when the array hits the startup voltage though.

-          If you turn the SPS on when the grid is up, it will not activate and the inverter will continue to grid-tie. If you want to use the SPS outlet, then you need turn the AC breaker off before hand, simulating an outage.

That what I have after a 1 week runtime. If anything else of note appears, I'll try to post it here on the wrench list.

Daniel Young,
NABCEP Certified PV Installation ProfessionalTM: Cert #031508-90
NABCEP Certified Solar Heating InstallerTM: Cert #SH031409-13

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20130904/81d9a86c/attachment-0004.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 26205 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20130904/81d9a86c/attachment-0007.png>