[RE-wrenches] Sunny Island sending power to the generator??

William Miller william at millersolar.com
Wed Sep 17 22:22:37 PDT 2014


Colleagues:

 

I was invited to troubleshoot a Sunny Island system.  What I found is a
Sunny Island mini-grid system behaving oddly.  The generator, when started
with the SI, would run for a few minutes and then shut down.  Further
investigation revealed that the SIs were indicating that the inverters were
sending lots of power back to the generator, even with the Sunny Boy turned
off.  

 

I don't know if this was actually the case, nor can I grasp how this could
happen.  The system was programmed as a PV/Gen only system.  Fortunately I
reached an off-grid tech at SMA and we were able to resolve the issue.  I am
not sure what we did but I suspect that simply rebooting the Sunny Islands
was the cure.

 

I post this in case any of you experience this problem and could benefit
from my experience.  Also, I want to understand this better.  Could it be
true that the inverters could send power to the generator?  I know the
circuitry is there to sell to AC2, which is how this system would work as a
true grid-interactive system, but how did it get triggered?  Was it
battery-selling to the generator?  I welcome any comments.

 

What I am starting to think is that the Sunny Island system, like any
feature rich system, is complicated and has the potential to be less
reliable than simpler systems.  On the plus side I could also think of these
systems as job security for the knowledgeable technician.

 

Sincerely,

 

William

 

 

Gradient Cap_mini
Lic 773985
millersolar.com <http://www.millersolar.com/> 
805-438-5600

 

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