[RE-wrenches] Outback Programming Ghost

[Chris Worcester]

Hi William, 

We have had a very similar experience with the Mate3, prior to their new programming guidelines that are now being shipped with the Mate3, when all we had was the 180 page manual. What went wrong if my memory serves here is we did go through the menu programming our needs for the system, then went into the Wizard to do a save. Not a good idea as this dumped all our programming, including the stacking setting, allowing the slave to parallel the Master, oops. Not good with the client looking on as the house goes dark and red lights are flashing. Luckily the back fed Master shut down without smoke coming out. The rest of the menu was scrambled too.

Always going to Save Config now, as the final word and programming in the latest revision too.

Don’t know if this helps, hope so.

 

Chris Worcester

Solar Wind Works

NABCEP Certified PV Installer

Office 530-582-4503

Cell 530-448-9692

Fax 530-582-4603

www.solarwindworks.com

chris at solarwindworks.com

 

From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of William Miller
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2016 8:26 PM
To: RE-wrenches
Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Outback Programming Ghost

 

Ray:

 

I have no reason to believe anyone has been meddling. No one knows the password. It does look like some serious glitch. 

 

William


On Nov 10, 2016, at 6:25 PM, Ray Walters <ray at solarray.com> wrote:

It almost sounds like someone got in there and tried to reprogram stuff themselves.  Have you installed the proper anti-Gremlin devices?



R.Ray Walters
CTO, Solarray, Inc
Nabcep Certified PV Installer, 
Licensed Master Electrician
Solar Design Engineer
303 505-8760

On 11/10/2016 12:34 PM, William Miller 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






_______________________________________________
List sponsored by Redwood Alliance
 
List Address: RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org
 
Change listserver email address & settings:
http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org
 
List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html
 
List rules & etiquette:
www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm
 
Check out or update participant bios:
www.members.re-wrenches.org
 

 

_______________________________________________
List sponsored by Redwood Alliance

List Address: RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org

Change listserver email address & settings:
http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org

List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html

List rules & etiquette:
www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm

Check out or update participant bios:
www.members.re-wrenches.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20161111/cbc75121/attachment-0003.html>