[RE-wrenches] Outback Programming Ghost

Foxfire Energy Dan at Foxfire-Energy.com
Thu Nov 10 18:45:47 PST 2016


Kind of sounds like the ever elusive yellow spotted random button pusher.. Or, one of my customers kids (he says), pulled all the CAT5 cables off the hub and didn't put them back in the right order (master and slave got transposed). or it might've been that pesky Russian cyber espionage unit.. trying to hack into the electoral voting system.. again.

Dan Brown 
Foxfire Energy Corp.
(802)-483-2564
www.Foxfire-Energy.com

> On Nov 10, 2016, at 2:34 PM, William Miller <william at millersolar.com> wrote:
> 
> Colleagues:
> 
> I maintain an off-grid, 8 stack FX Outback system with 3 charge controllers.  The system has been on line for about 6 years.  It got upgraded about 7 months ago with 2 Mate3s.
> 
> About a week ago the system shutdown, leaving the customer without power.  A maintenance worker started a generator and power was restored.  I did not hear about the situation for several days.
> 
> A maintenance supervisor was dispatched yesterday to work with me over the telephone to see if we could restart the system.  The system would only run if the inverter output breakers were all off.  
> 
> I examined the system via Optics.  I was very surprised to see that the system programming was absolutely scrambled.  This was so much so that even the stacking settings were wrong.  For example, inverter 2 was set as a Master, which we all know will crash any system.  Other settings were also found with very random values.
> 
> This system was running prior to last Friday, so the stacking at least must have been right prior to the outage.  I am completely mystified as to how this could have happened.  
> 
> I am in conversation with Outback who is taking this seriously.  I have not heard back from them yet but I am curious if anyone else has experienced this or anything similar.  I'd like to broaden my knowledge on this situation to enhance my understanding and to share any findings with the group.
> 
> Thank you in advance for any input.
> 
> William Miller
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