New toys, upgrades

[ksouers]

The big brown truck stopped by  a couple days ago and dropped off some goodies. Of course, everyone knows what this is so I won't spend any more time on it. It will replace my Blue Sky MPPT controller, which will go back to its assigned duties on the sailboat.



I also got the Samlex 600 watt PSW inverter.



I have a 1000 watt MSW inverter but have a couple of things that won't run, or don't run well, unless it has a sine wave. My primary reason for the Samlex was the advertised low current draw at idle, as it will spend a good portion of its life there. The MSW inverter pulls 1.14 amps at idle and on my small bank that's a lot. It doesn't take many cloudy days to pull the bank down to 50%. Yeah, bigger panels and more batteries are in the near future. That's what the Classic is in preparation for.

So far the inverter has worked as advertised. All the smoke stayed in when I hooked it up and I measured idle draw at 0.41 amps. Almost 1/3 what I was using before. That's good enough for me. The garage door opener and band saw motor don't groan as much with the PSW, so that's good too. Time will tell how it holds up long term.

One thing that does bug me, and you can see it in the picture. The colors on the DC terminals are kinda funked up. The white one is negative and the red one is positive. What's up with that?


Kevin

[tomw]

Gotta love Christmas in March!

Been lusting after one of those Classics but no budget for it these days.

Good luck with it.

I have to say that cable looks a bit small for 600 watts @ 12 volts (50 amps).

Just saying..

Maybe that white terminal is because here on AC house circuits white is usually neutral and usually bonded to ground at the entrance?

At leasst the positive terminal is not a "creative" color.

Tom

[ksouers]

I have to say that cable looks a bit small for 600 watts @ 12 volts (50 amps).

Tom

Thanks Tom.

I was wondering if someone was going to catch that
Yeah, it 's a little wimpy, #12. It's what I had on hand just to get the thing hooked up and make sure it works. Heading up to Home Despot later to get supplies for a proper install.

Kevin

[Rover]

Hi,

Let us know how the samlex works out for you, I'm still interested in samlex even after research on the SST model. Is this a PST?

Rover

[ksouers]

Hi Rover,
Yes, it's a PST-60S, this one:
http://www.solar-electric.com/sa600wa12vos.html

I haven't put much of a load on it yet, partially because of the wire, but mostly because I don't have a single big load.
I'll have to turn everything on at once   I'll do that after I get the wire installed.

If it craps out you guys will be the first to know...


Kevin

[Rover]

Cool... .I'm still evaluating purchasing a PST model (1500 to 2000W).

Especially after being steered that way by Samlex aftrer my inquiry on the SST model line

I hope it goes well. The price differential is rather large between samlex and the nearest competitor at that wattage.

Rover

ps.. I noticed the small wire too (ok after Tom pointed it out), but understand... sometimes you just got to test something with what is at hand. Glas you are running out for bigger wire.

 

[ksouers]

Ok Tom, larger wire installed and got it mounted on the power board.

I assume you need evidence



HD was packed, didn't even pull into the parking lot. Stopped at Auto Zone instead and picked up some lugged battery cables, #4 wire.

Now for the full power test. Turned on all the lights, 400 watts (10 x 40 watt florescent tubes), the band saw (360 watts) and hit the button to close the garage. The door closer balked but nothing else did. The lights didn't flicker and the band saw didn't skip a beat nor did the inverter squeal. 760 watts for about 2 minutes. Don't know if it would have shut down later or not, didn't wait around for it. I didn't have the kill-a-watt on it so I don't know if that watt rating is completely accurate. The closer is rated at 1/2 HP, had to turn off all the lights to close the door. At least that will keep me from accidentally leaving the lights on

I tried the lathe but it groaned, turned a little, then the inverter squealed and shut down. After a reset I tried the air compressor by itself. It ran but much too slow to do anything. I know the lathe draws 300 watts when running, have no idea what the starting requirement is. I put the compressor on the kill-a-watt and it draws 750 watts (sheesh, and I said I didn't have any big loads  ) . The documentation for the inverter claims 1000 watts of surge but only good for 2 seconds (crap that's short!)

I would hazard a guess and say that it would not live long at 750 watts. Overall I'm quite happy with it for now. It completely lives up to it's advertising, so far.

Low idle draw
Slightly under rated
Could use a little more butt in the surge department


Kevin

[Rover]

Cool.

I know HD wire stock pretty well, you would have never found the cables needed.... the only carry thhn to about 8 gauge, then you would be stuck with solid close to it AC wire. Going to automotive was a good chance of fortune.

thanks for the update

Rover

[ksouers]

Thanks for the info about HD's wire inventory. I thought I had seen heavy gauge THHN wire on a rotating rack during previous visits. I will have to check closer next time I'm in there.


Last night at dinner, after posting results of some testing, my mind kept going back over the results. Something kept poking at me. Yes, some of the testing wasn’t very complete or could have been planned a bit better.

So, a bit more follow up was necessary to put my mind at ease. The label on the band saw claimed 3 amps @ 120 volts for 360 watts but I never verify that. So, it was time to put it on the kill-a-watt. It turns out that I was testing at slow speed (normal since I only use it for cutting metal), so it was only pulling ~130 watts. I turned up the speed and it didn’t even get to 300 watts.

The next bright idea was to put the kill-a-watt on the line out of the inverter going over to the breaker box and measure everything. It turns out all the lights plus the saw pulled about 680 watts, not the 760 previously thought. The lights alone did pull a little more than 400 watts, but not enough to make up the difference.

As another test I hooked up my big knee mill. This has a 1 HP 3-phase motor driven by a VFD. It ran perfectly, the kill-a-watt said it was only drawing 100 watts. Just goes to show that 3-phase motors are much more efficient than single phase. It’ll be interesting to see how it does when I start attacking some metal with it.  So, another piece of equipment is now off grid. This is one piece I was worried about, I didn’t want to chance blowing up the VFD running on an MSW inverter.

I’m not going to try running everything all at once again. I’m reasonably certain the inverter can handle up to about 750 watts continuous but I’m sure it will cut the life expectancy considerably short.

My apologies for the earlier errors.


Kevin

[dang]

Use the kill-a-watt to read power factor and temper those 760:680 Watt figures?

[ksouers]

Use the kill-a-watt to read power factor and temper those 760:680 Watt figures?

I don't understand. Can you elaborate, please?

[ghurd]

I am going to pretend I didn't read all of this and mention...

The WHITE wire is in the BLACK terminal!   
G-

[ksouers]

Thanks G.
Leave it to you to put everything back into perspective   


Kevin

[RP]

the kill-a-watt said it was only drawing 100 watts

Bear in mind this will go up dramatically if you start actually cutting metal with it.  The nameplate ratings on all of your tools are for "under load" conditions.

[ksouers]

Just a brief update...

The Samlex inverter has been in service for about a month now. I've only run about 5 KWh through it, mostly some networking equipment but also intermittent motor and lighting loads.
I used the big mill pretty heavily last week making some racks for the solar panels that arrived, that put some load on it whittling out a few fittings of aluminum.

Moved a couple small NAS boxes to the RE this morning, about 5 TB across 6 drives. Only about 50 watts additional load though.

So far so good, the Samlex hasn't skipped a beat yet.


Kevin