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

[Kevin Pegg]

Our firm has installed many Sunny Island hybrid gen cycle charge systems. In my experience they are hands down the most reliable inverter system out there for this application. Many sites that have been working perfectly with 100% uptime over several years. Most sites we visit once a year to check and there are no issues at all. 
 
There are many small tricks on the install side to get to reliability like that. While the menus with the 8 characters and all manner of acronyms can be daunting, once it's configured there's generally no changes needed. Tying in the webbox option makes it a lot friendlier to program and monitor. 
 
My direct experience does not match with the last paragraph comments. The only problematic installs we have worked on were installed by others and not installed well. 
 
Kevin Pegg 
EA Energy Alternatives Ltd. 
37471 Hwy 16 E 
Telkwa, BC  V0J 2X2 
250-846-9888 
Http://www.EnergyAlternatives.ca <http://www.energyalternatives.ca/>  

-----Original Message-----
From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org]On Behalf Of William Miller
Sent: September 17, 2014 10:23 PM
To: RE-wrenches
Subject: [RE-wrenches] Sunny Island sending power to the generator??



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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