Author Topic: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.  (Read 20798 times)

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Offline welshman

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Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« on: November 11, 2016, 04:19:30 am »
Hi, i have been reading this forum for a few days and there is some excellent information on here.

i just wanted to ask a few questions about my pj 15000 230/48v.

just got it out of the box and all i have done so far is inspect inside the unit for quality and possible faults and connected the supplied mains power lead to the unit and powered on. however nothing happens on the unit. is this normal?


a bit of background to the setup of the situation.

completely off grid (power utility want £30k to install, not happening)

22kva diesel single phase generator 80amp output.

2kw wind turbine, with 2kw controller /charger feeding into the batteries.

2 x 1200w 48v water heating elements on relays connected to voltage sensors that will divert the load of the wind turbine charge away from the batteries when full.

16 x 130 ah sealed lead acid batteries. 4 banks of 48v. giving 520ah.

voltage detector on supply from generator, when supply fails, via relay the inverter is switched off and back on immediately. what kind of delays would be needed here?

there is a voltage detector on battery bank, when voltage falls below threshold for several seconds the generator is remotely started and stopped again when the voltage is above a threshold for several seconds.

and my plan is to add more wind turbines as time goes on reducing the run time of the generator.

i want to do a few modifications to the powerjack

firstly i intend to rehouse the unit into a wall mount cabinet seperating the mosfet board/heatsink/control board to the toroids and have permanently on, 48v fans keeping both sides of the unit cool. hopefully this will give it all a better run time and keep things extra cool to give it a long life.

secondly i want to fit RCD 'fuses' to the high voltage input and output of the inverter does that mean i need to tie the earth to the neutral?

what about the earthing of the generator? it has a metal rod in the ground near it and is earthed to it. should i connect the battery bank negative to the same earth and neutral line of the output of the inverter?

can we modify the software of the inverter to take care of the on off blowing fet's problem when grid power fails?

what fet's would be a better replacement for the originals to help prevent problems? i was intending to buy plenty of spare parts now before something fails.

thanks in advance, i will post some picture of the internals of the powerjack.

Offline welshman

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2016, 05:41:38 am »
Some photo's

Offline welshman

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #2 on: November 11, 2016, 05:45:24 am »
Some more photo's

Offline welshman

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #3 on: November 11, 2016, 07:02:57 am »
The mosfets on the boards are HY3810's and there are 24 of them in banks of 6.

what would be a replacement equivalent or better to these?

Offline welshman

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #4 on: November 12, 2016, 04:53:24 pm »
Hi, i have been reading this forum for a few days and there is some excellent information on here.

i just wanted to ask a few questions about my pj 15000 230/48v.

just got it out of the box and all i have done so far is inspect inside the unit for quality and possible faults and connected the supplied mains power lead to the unit and powered on. however nothing happens on the unit. is this normal?


a bit of background to the setup of the situation.

completely off grid (power utility want £30k to install, not happening)

22kva diesel single phase generator 80amp output.

2kw wind turbine, with 2kw controller /charger feeding into the batteries.

2 x 1200w 48v water heating elements on relays connected to voltage sensors that will divert the load of the wind turbine charge away from the batteries when full.

16 x 130 ah sealed lead acid batteries. 4 banks of 48v. giving 520ah.

voltage detector on supply from generator, when supply fails, via relay the inverter is switched off and back on immediately. what kind of delays would be needed here?

there is a voltage detector on battery bank, when voltage falls below threshold for several seconds the generator is remotely started and stopped again when the voltage is above a threshold for several seconds.

and my plan is to add more wind turbines as time goes on reducing the run time of the generator.

i want to do a few modifications to the powerjack

firstly i intend to rehouse the unit into a wall mount cabinet seperating the mosfet board/heatsink/control board to the toroids and have permanently on, 48v fans keeping both sides of the unit cool. hopefully this will give it all a better run time and keep things extra cool to give it a long life.

secondly i want to fit RCD 'fuses' to the high voltage input and output of the inverter does that mean i need to tie the earth to the neutral?

what about the earthing of the generator? it has a metal rod in the ground near it and is earthed to it. should i connect the battery bank negative to the same earth and neutral line of the output of the inverter?


can we modify the software of the inverter to take care of the on off blowing fet's problem when grid power fails?

what fet's would be a better replacement for the originals to help prevent problems? i was intending to buy plenty of spare parts now before something fails.

thanks in advance, i will post some picture of the internals of the powerjack.

Offline Pete

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #5 on: November 12, 2016, 07:30:42 pm »
Hello Welshman, a few points.
Looking at your photos it appears that the inverter Earth goes to the case of the inverter from the earth connections. To get RCD circuit breakers to work you will have to connect the Neutral to the Earth. I can't see any point in connecting the input of the inverter to an RCD as they are designed to protect people from electric shock not machines. Putting an RCD on the output is really all you need to do. Usually the Neutral and Earth are connected together at the switchboard ( in Australia) . Depending on what sort of switchboard you are using there may already be an RCD there to protect the power and lighting circuits of you house.
You say that you have plugged the AC ( high voltage) inputs into the inverter and nothing happens, I would think that the inverter will need to be connected to the batteries first before it will power up.
The AC input is there to power the inverter as a battery charger or alternately to act as a change over to switch from the mains or generator through to the house supply.

Offline welshman

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #6 on: November 14, 2016, 04:08:11 pm »
Hello Welshman, a few points.
Looking at your photos it appears that the inverter Earth goes to the case of the inverter from the earth connections. To get RCD circuit breakers to work you will have to connect the Neutral to the Earth. I can't see any point in connecting the input of the inverter to an RCD as they are designed to protect people from electric shock not machines. Putting an RCD on the output is really all you need to do. Usually the Neutral and Earth are connected together at the switchboard ( in Australia) . Depending on what sort of switchboard you are using there may already be an RCD there to protect the power and lighting circuits of you house.
You say that you have plugged the AC ( high voltage) inputs into the inverter and nothing happens, I would think that the inverter will need to be connected to the batteries first before it will power up.
The AC input is there to power the inverter as a battery charger or alternately to act as a change over to switch from the mains or generator through to the house supply.

thanks for the input pete. i have decided to leave the earth and neutral seperate and fit an RCBO to the output. They compare the difference between positive and neutral and they detect leak to earth, so i reckon these would provide better detection/protection.


Offline Pete

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #7 on: November 15, 2016, 01:36:37 am »
Hi again Welshman, I would try the RCBO out by using an RCD tester or just use a test lamp connected from the Active to the Earth connection.
If you put a 240 volt lamp between the Active and Earth and the RCBO does not trip then you will have to connect the Neutral to the Earth.
What an RCD or an RCBO does is to measure leakage current, It measures the current in the Active line and the Neutral line. They must be equal as the Neutral is the return circuit. If there is any difference it means that current is going to earth somewhere, hopefully not through you. And the breaker trips.
Here our Neutrals are always earthed, that way there is only one live conductor to worry about and if one house in the street has an earth fault it does not cause a voltage rise on all the houses after it.
Kind of complicated but we call it a MEN, (multiple Earthed Neutral system).
So try it out first,
From my tests I have always had to connect the Neutral to the Earth to get them to work.
Cheerio
Pete

Offline welshman

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #8 on: November 15, 2016, 04:38:32 am »
Hi again Welshman, I would try the RCBO out by using an RCD tester or just use a test lamp connected from the Active to the Earth connection.
If you put a 240 volt lamp between the Active and Earth and the RCBO does not trip then you will have to connect the Neutral to the Earth.
What an RCD or an RCBO does is to measure leakage current, It measures the current in the Active line and the Neutral line. They must be equal as the Neutral is the return circuit. If there is any difference it means that current is going to earth somewhere, hopefully not through you. And the breaker trips.
Here our Neutrals are always earthed, that way there is only one live conductor to worry about and if one house in the street has an earth fault it does not cause a voltage rise on all the houses after it.
Kind of complicated but we call it a MEN, (multiple Earthed Neutral system).
So try it out first,
From my tests I have always had to connect the Neutral to the Earth to get them to work.
Cheerio
Pete

thanks again pete, i did a bit more "educating" on the matter, taking consensus from various places . from what i understand if we bond the earth to the netural, then if there is a short between positive ac and ground then the battery terminals will become energised with the output ac voltage and an RCD type device in this situation MUST always be fitted if you dont want to die by touching your battery terminals(or whatever else the ac is doing to the batteries).

so if we bond one of ac outputs (the one the inverter treats as neutral) to earth and inturn make that into a neutral, the inverter no longer has two live/hot/positive wires as it has as standard and such halving the chances of touching a live wire. but in doing so we must fit an rcd to shutdown the inverter output because if the live wire gets shorted to earth it will delivery the ac current back down to the battery terminals.

one thing i am not certain about is, since im going to make on of the wires a neutral by bonding it to earth on the inverter output, should i also bond earth to neutral in the generator too if it is not aready done? im assuming it must be as there are rcd's in the generator itself. the generator is a new hyundai dhy22ksem.

everything will have a common earth rod as to not induce differentials between earth points.

 




Offline frackers

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #9 on: November 15, 2016, 04:59:49 am »
Note that the bonding of Neutral to Earth must be on the inverter transformer side of the RCB. That way any leakage bypasses the RCB which causes the unbalance and hence trips it out.

Not sure where this idea of mains on battery terminals comes from. There is no mains connection to the battery,  there is a great lump of transformer in the way that isolates the mains from the DC side. That's the whole point of having a transformer!! Shorting live mains to earth in fact will connect it to neutral due to the bonding which just shorts out the output of the transformer - no effect (apart from the current draw) on the DC side.
Robin Down Under (or are you Up Over!)

Offline welshman

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #10 on: November 15, 2016, 05:05:04 am »
this is the simplest circuit i could come up with to detect when the mains power, in this case a generator, is switched off or fails so the inverter can be powered down immediately for the delay of C1 to prevent mutiple phases in the toroids going down to the fets and killing them.

i also put in a relay for fault detection as some people has considered that, but it would depend on what the inverter does as even a flash of the fault light would reset it. a simple cap and resistor in line would allow it to wait for more than a flash.

Offline welshman

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #11 on: November 15, 2016, 05:06:24 am »
Note that the bonding of Neutral to Earth must be on the inverter transformer side of the RCB. That way any leakage bypasses the RCB which causes the unbalance and hence trips it out.

Not sure where this idea of mains on battery terminals comes from. There is no mains connection to the battery,  there is a great lump of transformer in the way that isolates the mains from the DC side. That's the whole point of having a transformer!! Shorting live mains to earth in fact will connect it to neutral due to the bonding which just shorts out the output of the transformer - no effect (apart from the current draw) on the DC side.

because the case of the inverter is earth and bonded to the neutral, if the positive touches the earth it will send down ac via the dc negative which is also earth by casing.

edit - thanks for the input on where to place the earth neutral bond. after checking the gen wiring out better, ill know if there is also a bond of it's earth to neutral. im assuming it does since it uses rcd's. what would having bond the both side of the link do? - while in bypass mode it will have a earth to neg bond in the generator then an rcd then to the inverter input via the control board then via the output of the inverter then tied negative to earth again into an rcbo then feeding the consumer unit.

Offline welshman

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #12 on: November 15, 2016, 05:32:33 am »
in the case of the pj control board the earth neutral tie point would be here? between yellow and black?

edit - OR should i disconnect the earth (yellow) from the control board and connect it onto the negative terminal (black) then connect the other end of the earth wire to the ground via rod? why would that earth point on the control board be there and is there resistance free continuinty between dc negative and earth (yellow) terminal ? ill test.

Offline welshman

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #13 on: November 15, 2016, 12:54:25 pm »
checked the generator (single phase) wiring, it has earth and neutral bonded at the alternator. next going to check the earth on control board and dc negative to see if there is continuity, if so i plan to disconnect the earth from the inverter mainboard and tie the earth to the black inverter ac output and make that neutral.

Offline Pete

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Re: Just bought a powerjack 15000, modding.
« Reply #14 on: November 15, 2016, 02:55:50 pm »
Hi Welshman, the easiest way to tie the Earth to the Neutral is at your switchboard on the house. There is usually a neutral bar and an earth bar, a short wire is run between the two. RCD's or RCBO's are usually mounted on the switchboard for ease of use.
If you want to do it at the inverter, just leave all the inverter internal connections as they are, and connect the neutral to the earth at the output terminal block. Just a short loop of wire will do.
I always connect the case of the inverter to earth as well. A wire directly from the case to the earth terminal on the switchboard or to the earth rod.
cheerio
Pete