[RE-wrenches] Rapid Shutdown for Off-grid systems

[Kirpal]

Hi William.
We have had good luck with the AP Smart Rapid shutdown system.  It is
similar to the Tigo in that it sends a "heartbeat" signal to the units up
behind each solar panel over the power wires. I haven't tried the Tigos yet
but would be open to it if the opportunity presented itself.  The thing we
like about the AP Smart shutdown units is they can be attached to the solar
panels before the panels are brought up to the roof.  Makes for a quick and
tidy installation.  We found the Fire Raptor units with their incredible
amount of extra wiring and cables to be a real pain in the ass to install.
It typically takes longer to install the Fire Raptor units and manage the
wiring than it does to install the solar panels themselves. The fire
raptors are more expensive and require a seperate control wire to be run
upto the roof.  We haven't had any failures on either the fire raptor or
the AP Smart units with probably a dozen installs of each style installed
to date.  Brad Bassett at AEE has some great easy to use wiring diagrams
for both systems with Outback or Sol Ark.  All the above systems have some
requirement for either 12V or 24V power to power the signal generator.  We
typically use some version of din rail mounted 48-24v or12V power supply
and power it from the batteries so that if the inverter were to fail or the
grid the solar can still stay on..  At this stage we have settled on any of
the rapid shutdown systems except Fire Raptor.  - if you do use the Fire
Raptor - calculate a  bunch of extra time into the install for wire
management.
Hope that gives you some food for thought.
Cheers,

Sunny Regards,
Kirpal Khalsa
Oregon LRT#25
Oregon Solarworks LLC
www.oregonsolarworks.com
541-299-0402



>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches_lists.re-wrenches.org/attachments/20220131/f20961c7/attachment.htm>