Inverter system in aqua phonics greenhouse in haiti

Re: Inverter system in aqua phonics greenhouse in haiti

48 Volts is my preference. That pretty much assures the batteries aren't pulled under 50% SOC.
The absolute lowest you can go is 42, which pretty much assures the batteries will be toast.

BTW, that battery bank is about 1830 Amp hours @ 48 Volts. It wants like 12kW of array to charge it. Eighteen 235 Watt panels is 4230 Watts. Way under the minimum. Do you get about 67 Amps out of it? You need like 180.

Re: Inverter system in aqua phonics greenhouse in haiti

Couple of possibilities with that:
1). The Outbacks are programmed with too high a number for AC Amps in, causing their chargers to overload the gen instantly.
2). The AC IN wiring is Voltage mismatched for the gen (pretty complicated stuff in that respect depending on exactly how the inverters are stacked and if there's an autotransformer involved either for 240 VAC output purposes or for load balancing).

What are the gen specs? That's the first thing to look at.

Re: Inverter system in aqua phonics greenhouse in haiti

castilloj wrote: »

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also does the inverter automatically switches 220v to 110v?

No. You can not feed 240 VAC into an Outback's 120 VAC IN. If it's wired right, though, two OB's will accept 240 as it splits one leg to each. There's some pretty complex wiring diagrams for OB on their web site showing the many (perhaps too many) possible configurations.

Re: Inverter system in aqua phonics greenhouse in haiti

When did the power from the generator become 3 phase? I thought you said it was 1 phase (i.e. 240 VAC).

If it is 3 phase the only thing you can do is as Outback suggested; tap 120 and use only one inverter for charging, shutting down the slave unit. This also means you lose output power (either half the Voltage if it was configured for 240 VAC out or half the Watts if 120 VAC).

I still don't know if you have a transformer on the inverter output or not. There's just too many possible configurations, and since your gen breaker keeps tripping we can't discount the ones that would be totally wrong.

Re: Inverter system in aqua phonics greenhouse in haiti

If a wire started burning it was carrying too much current, which usually means it is too small for the job. Switching to a generator that has more power will definitely not help that.

Once again we come back to the issue of making sure the inverters are not programmed to accept more current than the generator can supply, and that both the wiring and breaker are sized to accommodate that current.

So with the small gen the AC Amps in should be limited to 15 per inverter. That gen's 240 VAC single phase is capable of feeding both inverters, but how is dependent on which way the inverters are set up. The wire here has to be at least 14 AWG, and 12 is better. Either there will be a double 240 VAC breaker or two single 115 VAC breakers, again depending on the inverter set-up.

This is where it gets complicated.

One method that might be used:
Inverters parallel for 120 VAC output @ 2X the rated Watts. In this case the AC IN and AC OUT are parallel with hot tied to hot and neutral tied to neutral. The gen input Voltage is limited to 120, but at 2X the normal rating because it feeds two inverters not just one. Both inverters can contribute to charging the batteries if programmed to do so. Output becomes more complex because of the presence of the autotransformer. This should be wired to provide 240 VAC backed by the dual inverters.

Another method:
Two inverters series stacked to provide 240 VAC at 1X the Wattage rating. This would have the neutral AC lines connected but the hot lines separate, each hot fed from one of the 240 VAC lines from the generator. Where this gets troublesome is that an autotransformer may be used on the output to provide current sharing between the two 'legs' of the 240 VAC, enabling either 120 Volt 'side' to take up to nearly the full capacity of both inverters. This is the version where the transformer must be bypassed when generator power is supplied otherwise it will try to 'balance' that.

At this point the only thing I can do is refer you to the mass of wiring diagrams provided by Outback:
http://www.outbackpower.com/resources/documents/wiring_diagrams/

Some of them will apply. You need to determine which most closely resembles your system. I can't do that for you and at this point I think I'm only adding to the confusion.

Re: Inverter system in aqua phonics greenhouse in haiti

castilloj wrote: »

No problem, i appreciate all the info. One last question- would getting a 3rd inverter help?

Help what?

With 3 inverters you could have 3 phase output from them, but if you don't need 3 phase to run the loads there's no gain save making it easier to connect a 3 phase generator. Not really the point here.

Or you could wire them up for 3X the current @ 120 VAC, but again if it's not needed why do it?

It would only make things more complicated and confusing in my estimation.