[RE-wrenches] Sol-Ark phantom loads

[pgiroux at mindspring.com]

Don

 

  We recently went through a few issues with a 15. Call me to discuss.

 

Thx

Peter Giroux

American Solar

678 525 0468

 

From: RE-wrenches <re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org> On Behalf Of
don energysolarnow.com via RE-wrenches
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2023 5:17 PM
To: re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org
Cc: don energysolarnow.com <don at energysolarnow.com>
Subject: [RE-wrenches] Sol-Ark phantom loads

 

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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