Author Topic: y Philippines Retirement Solar Off Grid System  (Read 14205 times)

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Offline rossw

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Re: y Philippines Retirement Solar Off Grid System
« Reply #105 on: January 01, 2022, 02:01:14 pm »
Yeah Ross but your life is probably boring, the rest of us have drama and disaster sacrifices for entertainment! HA!

I have so much to do that "boring" is good. You remember those days during school holidays when you'd say "I'm bored, what can I dooooo?"
I haven't uttered that for over 40 years!

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We live in a different world today

Indeed we do, and not all for the better sadly.


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Maybe the turning point was when i was in high school chemistry
...
nobody got hurt but some valuable lessons.

Absolutely. More excitement than I want for now although I will admit to having experienced more than enough of those "exciting" moments over the years. Mostly nobody too badly hurt (most of the time me!). As you say, lessons to learn everywhere, if you look :)

Offline solarnewbee

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Re: y Philippines Retirement Solar Off Grid System
« Reply #106 on: January 12, 2022, 04:09:23 am »
Firstly I didn’t know what I was doing 5 years ago when I found this forum and Oz, who everyone looks up as “THE guy”, starts a thread about guess who bought a powerjack. I had just bought a powerjack after someone had mentioned LF pure sine wave was the way to go felt relieved someone who appeared intelligent blessed the inverter. That inverter running on an ATS switch (double disconnect motorized lockout type) worked for 3 years straight with little trouble barring cleaning dust out for airflow.

I finally retire and find I have a modem that’s important to my son-in-law’s call center and try a SSR ATS not know that would totally screw up the new 15kw 48v upgrade PJ. That PJ worked flawlessly for about a year til I screwed it up not because it is a “cheap” solution. Some of us are on low budgets. Especially when we sink an ass of money into lfp’s and solar panels.

That cheap Sunyima inverter worked a champ on the 15kw coil until it got tied to the grid. Again my mistake not a cheap inverter. Whenever an inverter blow up on my setup the house just switches to grid not affecting any sensitive gear. Surge protected takes a permanent hit tho.

I’m back to the old style ATS and my “cheap” PJ inverter but all is well. If I had spent 1000’s on an inverter I would have blown that up too. There are solid state ATS out there but industrial Scale and mostly 3 phase. I should have done a YouTube video. It would have been a first and maybe someone out there make one work correctly.

Yess Ross you ruffled my feathers but so what this forum 95% dead anyway. I’m thankful at least to those who pay attention to me and genuinely try to help like Pete nonya LH doc sometimes others.

Happy new year to all make this greater than last.
SN

Any day above ground is a day for potential mishaps

Offline rossw

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Re: y Philippines Retirement Solar Off Grid System
« Reply #107 on: January 12, 2022, 05:21:20 am »
Yess Ross you ruffled my feathers

I'm sorry, that was never my intention. I'm not even sure what I said to have had that effect.
Anyhow, onwards and upwards. Collect those photons, pump those electrons, be happy.

Offline Pete

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Re: y Philippines Retirement Solar Off Grid System
« Reply #108 on: January 12, 2022, 02:52:22 pm »
Hi Solar, I had a thought, rather than run one giant inverter, it may be better to split the loads and run a couple or more smaller inverters.
It seems that once we have just one big inverter and it blows up then things get complicated.
If you were to say use one inverter for lighting, and two for power, ( split the power outlets in the house over two or more circuits) then redundancy allows for quick swaps when needed.
I am having a good run so far with the 8010 based aliexpress boards. I have three now. One with a rewound powerjack transformer form an 8kw powerjack and two with transformers from an 8kw powerjack that had two transformers.
So far they are working well, nice clean sinewaves and no failures.
Setting them up requires a variable power supply to set low voltage cutouts , high voltage cutouts and overload but that is not too hard.
Then just following Ozs stuff on getting rid of the chip off the 8010 board. After that all seems good.
I hope that your retirement goes well and that the system you have set up runs for many trouble free years.
Oh , I don't have grid power so there are no problems with changeover here.
Glad you got yours sorted
Pete

Offline solarnewbee

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Re: y Philippines Retirement Solar Off Grid System
« Reply #109 on: May 28, 2022, 05:28:50 am »
Howdy Pete,

I finally got around to repairing my AliExpress special, inverter. Changed the egs board and all the resistors and diodes. Also replaced the small caps and tip41/42 transistors that blew. I tried powering up with a variable power supply but no joy. It goes into cc mode and pulls the voltage down to 2 volts from 48. There is a mosfet  on the end near the egs marked 12v on the board irf640n. Another maybe diode mur860g on the board u860g on the device.

Does the transformer have to be attached for it to fire up? I remember you saying there was a way to do it with a resistor or something but I can’t find it. Pics below. 4 views since none of these boards are ever completely the same.

Cheerio!
SN

Any day above ground is a day for potential mishaps

Offline Pete

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Re: y Philippines Retirement Solar Off Grid System
« Reply #110 on: May 28, 2022, 05:48:04 pm »
HI Solar, I used Oz's ideas when repairing my inverter boards.
It requires that  you take out the big capacitors in the centre of the heatsinks. This reduces the inrush current and prevents the caps from supplying power to the mosfets and blowing more up
Then use a resistor in the supply line to limit the current (in case there is a shorted mosfet).
It will need a transformer connected as there is a feedback loop there that needs to see a return.
Good luck
Pete

Offline Pete

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Re: y Philippines Retirement Solar Off Grid System
« Reply #111 on: May 29, 2022, 03:55:09 am »
Hi Solar from memory, I started with a 20 watt 10 ohm resistor in series with the power supply to my board, then after I checked the current drain and gate drives of the mosfets I reduced it to 10 ohm then to 5 ohm.
When the board still ran with that I connected the supply directly to the board.
As I said the big capacitors need to be removed or they store enough power to blow mosfets if there is still a problem.
Usually when mosfets blow they take out their driver transistors and sometimes resistors too.
Make sure that they are all getting a clean gate drive when you fire it up.
If it all runs good then replace the caps
pete

Offline solarnewbee

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Re: y Philippines Retirement Solar Off Grid System
« Reply #112 on: June 03, 2022, 01:28:52 am »
Found that a IRF640 fet was shorted. Removed it and the current went to zero. Have new ones on order. Extras in case something goes wrong again. The diode mur680g seemed ok. I have a feeling it will come to life when a fresh fet  is installed. Some people power up using an incandescent light bulb to charge the caps slowly. Hard to find in a country that outlawed incandescent bulb sales and now florescent bulbs too.

On another subject I am replacing 1 bank of lfp’s with 4. 200ah VRLA batteries. The lfp’s are running on 15 pieces and appear to be giving out about 2/3 ah they used to. I replaced a cell and the new cell immediately went bad and bloated. I bought 4 new and so 1 out of 4 was bad and I installed another. That one goes bad. I call the factory. They tell me that since my internal resistance of the old batteries is so far apart from the new battery that this is what happens. Stop and don’t put anymore. It’s like changing tires on a dual tire truck if you don’t change both tires the new one will fail early. Surprisingly the bank charges up to 57.8 volts then settles to 54.3 ish most days. Unknown to me the breaker to the good bank had tripped and wasn’t being charged. I was getting 9 hours out of the bad bank. These are 200ah batts. Just weird stuff.

Question, I am short on space, can I stack these VRLA batts 2 together?
SN

Any day above ground is a day for potential mishaps

Offline Pete

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Re: y Philippines Retirement Solar Off Grid System
« Reply #113 on: June 03, 2022, 03:12:21 am »
Hi Solar not sure what you mean by " can I stack the VRLA batteries  2 together, if you mean parallel two banks then sure.
It is not the greatest practice but from what I read up to 4 banks is not too bad to parallel.
I have had heaps of parallel banks of Flooded batteries in the past, no real problems.
As long as a cell doesn't short out then all is good. And as long as the battery banks are similar age and capacity.
Hope it all goes good with the repairs when the parts turn up.
Pete

Offline solarnewbee

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Re: y Philippines Retirement Solar Off Grid System
« Reply #114 on: June 04, 2022, 02:28:40 am »
I meant to say put one battery on top of the other. They are sealed so no checking levels.

On the other subject, I have a short across the battery connections on this inverter board. Thought it might be the caps or the mosfet over by the egs board but not so. I reckon I was sold at least 1 bad hy4008. Jumped the gun and didn’t get out the tester before putting them in. I am officially trashing this board because I would have to desolder every single fet. No thanks.

Thanks for your help tho. Adios!
SN

Any day above ground is a day for potential mishaps