[RE-wrenches] Sol-Ark phantom loads

[don energysolarnow.com]

Just spent yesterday debugging a Sol-Ark 15 kW inverter phantom load weirdness.
With Work Mode set at Limited Power To Home it seemed to get a bit schizo, pulling around 6kW in from the grid on leg L1 and around 13 kW on the other L2 leg, with 7kW of PV added. No house loads were involved. The monitoring called this a 13 kW load.
I measured something like 50 amps on L2 and neutral; 120 Volts on L1 and 125 Volts on L2 at the house. My Fluke clamp-on amp meter does not say which way AC current is flowing. The utility meter showed it as  power coming in.
At the main meter panel about 150 ft away from the house the voltages were better balanced; probably due to proximity to the utility transformer. Those leg voltages were balanced when the inverter was shut down.
Oddly, this phantom loading decreased with decreasing PV production later in the day.
Working with Sol-Ark tech support we (of course) downloaded new firmware, then changed Work Mode to Limited Power To Load. After a couple of resets this had the effect of allowing the inverter to cover just the loads in the battery-backed subpanel; not those at the house main panel where the CT sensors are located. The phantom 13kW load has not recurred.
Has anyone seen an inverter try to mix import and export on different legs by creating phantom loads?

Don Barch
Energy Solar



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