[RE-wrenches] Long transmission line inductance and LED light flicker

[boB at midnitesolar.com]

You might want to try one of those lights up where the inverter is and 
see if it flickers up there when a load at the other
end is turned on...    Use walkie-talkies maybe ?

Are you sure it's not just surge regulation voltage response time of the 
inverter itself ?

boB



On 2/2/2014 4:01 PM, Chris Mason wrote:
> You should rent or borrow a power quality analyzer to look at the 
> phase angles and harmonic distortion throughout the day. A scope will 
> also help to allow you to look at the waveform of the inverter 
> produced electricity. You need to properly identify the cause of the 
> problem before you invest in any equipment.
>
> Resistive loads will not change phase angles. Only capacitive or 
> inductive loads can do that. However, LEDs work fine in commercial 
> installations where 0.8 power factors are common so I doubt that is 
> your problem.
> It is more likely that badly formed waveforms cause switching issues 
> for the LED's driver electronics. Filtering may help.
>
> Line to Line capacitors are probably not going to help, but Line to 
> Earth capacitors could act as a high pass filter to shunt noise to ground.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 4:39 PM, Troy Harvey <taharvey at heliocentric.org 
> <mailto:taharvey at heliocentric.org>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     We've got a PV system that has long lines from the inverters to
>     the house (1000 ft or so). While the wires are properly sized
>     (2x350MCMs), it inherently has a lot of inductance due to the
>     line-length. What We are noticing is that dimmable LED lights
>     flicker anytime a new load turned on, even if that load is purely
>     resistive and the overall current draw is small (20 amps or so).
>     What I "think" is happening is the LED dimmer circuits get their
>     cue from phase delays, and that the inductance of the line length
>     causes some phase jitter everytime a load is applied - thus
>     causing flicker.
>
>     Has anyone dealt with this issue successfully (other than
>     switching to incandescent lights)? Would a static capacitor bank
>     at the house do the trick, or do we need some type of active PFC?
>     And if static did you have any issues with constant power draw
>     from the capacitors?
>
>
>
>     Troy Harvey
>     ---------------------
>     Heliocentric
>
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     List sponsored by Home Power magazine
>
>     List Address: RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org
>     <mailto:RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org>
>
>     Change email address & 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
>     <http://www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm>
>
>     Check out participant bios:
>     www.members.re-wrenches.org <http://www.members.re-wrenches.org>
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Chris Mason
> President, Comet Systems Ltd
> www.cometenergysystems.com <http://www.cometenergysystems.com>
> Cell: 264.235.5670
> Skype: netconcepts
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20140202/222e59ea/attachment-0004.html>