guess who bought a power jack inverter

[toxsickcity]

i have solved my shutting down issue,

I got from ebay a $5 thermo probe sensor and relay board and have set it at 57 degree C and shut off at 10 degree difference (lower)

I added a fan to blow onto the terroid as that is whats getting hot not the fets

i wired that to my switch on the rear which forces the fans on!

so now the switch turns on the fans at my set temperature

i've seen the default cooling solution comes on, but at low speed and it doesnt provide enough cooling for the terroid. so adding a fan and my sensor works better

[oztules]

Seen a recent example of this yesterday.

A fellow bought a little 5kw 24v unit, and it o/heats if left on low power running only a fridge. .
Will go in the next few days and mount the thing vertically to get some air flow without the fan.... their algorithm is down right stupid..


...............oztules

[can man]

Hello to all, I am new to this interesting thread, I have read it from beguining more than one year ago, to the end some days ago. As you can see, English is not my language, I learned a bit in school about 50 years ago. I live in Guatemala, (Central America).
I have installed a solar system in my holiday place, where there is no electricity and is located in the jungle to 7 hours from the city where I live.

The system consist of 2Kw solar panels, two 40A MPPT controllers, 15840Wh @ 24 Volts Gel batteries , and the PJ inverter.  My loads are only a fridge, 3 electric fans, some light bulbs... and a electric shower pulling about 1900W for short periods of 5 minutes or less, three or four times a day.

I have 3 PJ inverters, two 6000w and one 8000w, 24VDC/110VAC.  I only use one at a time and have the others as backup.  This inverters can carry the loads without any problem. The three inverters are fitted with the miracoluos Oztules E ferrite core with 9 turns of flat 20 square mm. enameled wire, and the idle current is only 0,4 to 0,5 amps            ( wondeful).

Temperature here is 24C to 32C all year arround but the real feel is much more due to the high air humidity can easily reach 95% in some parts of the year.

As it is a very distant place, I can only go one 5 or 6 times a year, so when I get back to town, left turned off the inverter. the problem is that when I come again, sometimes the inverter does not want to start... and it is time to put to work the backup inverter, then I pull the inverter and let in the sun two or three hours to make it get warm and after that the inverter comes to life again, this has happened more than 4 times in last year. But the last time the inverter was burned in the middle of the night with only two LED bulbs lit, 10 wats each.

Anyone has an idea of what to do?.
I have sprayed the control and main boards with WD40 (water displacement fluid similar to CRC) but it seems no to be helpful

Any help will be very grateful 

   ----------- Eduardo

[solarnewbee]

Oz

Any ideas on heftier Fets to push more power thru the toroids or more toroids for higher watts?

I'm sure the caps and resistors would have to change. Obsessing over this idea OCD Is rampant!

I have the PJ shown below


Before I haul everything to the Philippines I want my experimentation done and spare parts on hand

Regards To All!

[dan]

I have just received the 15kw 110/220v split-phase power jack. I have many questions . I am currently reading this thread and others trying to find everything. Will ask if I don't find the answers.

so far, it seems the #1 thing I should do is grab a 65mm E core to add to this. (or maybe 2 since this is split phase? i'm not sure)

this one has 3 toroids in it. all the wiring seemed secure. am about to power it up as is.

here are some pictures:

[Offgriddin]

Just wanted to say thanks to you Oztules and OTW for your knowledge in this thread. Based on your info I added a second torroid to our 8000W PJ. The only bit I got stuck on was how to measure the AC voltages coming out of the second torroid to make sure it was in phase with the other. In the end I attached the AC outputs of the two torroids, started the PJ, heard the distinctive buzz of out of phase, shutdown immediately, reversed the output wires of the second torroid, powered up to 240v output.

Due to the cases being too small for a second torroid, I emptied out one case of all but the torroid and the cooling fan, ported holes into the top of the case for the torroid wires, stacked the working 8000ww PJ on top with holes ported into the bottom. Lastly ported a hole between the two cases for the cooling fan wires and connected the fans in parallel. So essentially have one PJ case as a windtunnel with a torroid in it, connected to a working PJ inverter stacked on top.

Now happily runs up to 3kw all day if need be. Only issue is attaching the second torroid is causing the overvoltage shutdown issue again, despite having already rectified it with the 1meg resistor in parallel. So just got some 5.6v zeners to change out the 1meg resistor, hopefully that fixes it.

Only other thing is I have unsuccessfully tried to run the PJ as a battery charger when batts got very low the other day. Couldn't for the life of me get it to work. Need to do some more reading there.

Anyway thanks again gents, and just wanted to add my experience for what it's worth to what is the most informative PJ thread on the entire www.

[davidwillis]

I am trying to us a 15kw power jack to power up my grid tie inverter (6.6kw).    It syncs up, and starts running, but then gives an external event, and it shuts down.  I am connected to a large battery bank, which is only half charged, so it is not overcharging.   I have had it running up to 20 minutes, but usually it only runs for one or two minutes. 

Also before the grid tie inverter shuts off, the lights flicker, like the grid tie inverter is testing against anti-islanding?   

The grid tie inverter is a Delta Solivia 6.6 kw, and the output did get up to 6kw for a while.  I am hoping someone has some suggestions on how to keep the grid tie inverter running...?

Thanks

[oztules]

I'm guessing your probably way under transformered.

Suspect over current sense is shutting you down on high power, and temp on the lower powers.

Your 20 min run will have been at lower power than full bore.

At 6kw they may give you only 12 seconds or so unless modified.... with those trannies... don't modify.


The powerjack will o/heat quickly with sustained high power... it does not have the transformer to do it for long. thats it's major weakness. Also if the 3 turn filter is not there ... it will exacerbate the problems faster.

You may be best to lower your expectations, or build a big transformer to go with it as a few of us have done.


6kw hour after hour.... the transfromer will be BIG.


...............oztules

[davidwillis]

Thanks, but I am not sure that is the issue I am seeing now.  Not that it is not an issue.

The reason I think it is something else is because when first starting out, it ran for about 30 seconds (at only 1200 watts with 800 being used to run the home).  This happened several times, then when it made the long run, the sun came out in the middle of it, and it went up to 6kw, at which time the fans turned on, but it kept going for 5 or 10 minutes at the full 6kw of output from the grid tie inverter.  It actually did not turn off until more clouds came out, and the output went down to about 2000 watts.

I could easily disconnect have the solar array to max out at 3kw, but like I said it was cloudy, and only putting out about 1200 watts when it kept shutting down.  It was the grid tie inverter that was shutting down, not the power jack.  What do you think the maximum the powerjack 15000 can handle? 

Thanks

[davidwillis]

Doing some more testing today, and the grid tie inverter goes into failure mode before it even starts putting out any power.   It does go into normal mode at times, but not always, and so far today no more than 10 seconds up to 1000 watts.

Do you think the power jack is not producing clean enough power for the grid tie inverter?   The interesting thing is that the lights flicker just before it goes into failure mode, so the grid tie inverter must be doing something when this happens.  The lights don't flicker when the grid tie inverter is not turned on.

I will do some more testing.

[oztules]

I misunderstood, I thought the pj was turning of not the grid tie..
My history with this is that the pj has way superior hz and power than the grid here. . The output filters on your grid tie should clean that up even further.

The flickering lights makes me wonder about connections, or the grid tie itself... I suspect the grid tie.

back off the panel number and try with 1 or 2 kw of power first....it sounds like it is not syncing nicely.

In that application, the pj will handle 10kw bursts and maybe 4kw constant. Transformer is the limiting factor here.

.........oztules

[solarnewbee]

OZ

I read mention of cooling fan problems and I'm wondering if the power consumption of having cooling fans on constant is too much. newer PJ's have a switch to turn them on to stay on but that may consume too much battery if your off grid.

my idea is to set up a small watt panel, mppt and battery capable of running the fans completely thru the night, factoring in for your longest night, independant of your main system. you could just cool the hell out of any inverter. in my case i have 12 hours night all year long and have moved the equipment into an air conditioned space but I run the cooling fans constantly.

btw an ebay seller in the US has loads of pj parts including toroids. if anyone needs the search i can find it.

Regards All!

Newbee

[davidwillis]

I misunderstood, I thought the pj was turning of not the grid tie..
My history with this is that the pj has way superior hz and power than the grid here. . The output filters on your grid tie should clean that up even further.

The flickering lights makes me wonder about connections, or the grid tie itself... I suspect the grid tie.

back off the panel number and try with 1 or 2 kw of power first....it sounds like it is not syncing nicely.

In that application, the pj will handle 10kw bursts and maybe 4kw constant. Transformer is the limiting factor here.

.........oztules

Yes, it feels like a syncing problem.  Also it does not fully shut off, just gives a fault, and then says syncing instead of normal operation.  So for some reason it is not staying in sync.....

I ran a test today where I just plugged the powerjack inverter directly into the AC line of the grid tie inverter with no load at all, or anything else connected, and it made it even worse.  In 20 minutes it only synced once for about 3 seconds, then faulted.  watching the Voltage, and frequency as displayed on the grid tie inverter, it never fluctuated, but stayed perfect at 230V and 59.9-60.0 HZ. 

I have looked up the error codes in the inverter History, but the manual does not even say what they mean, so I will need to contact the manufacturer to get some idea as to why it is giving the fault.

Next I will try it with less panels connected.  It will be more work going less than 3kw, because there are two 3kw strings connected to the inverter.  But I have a feeling it is some anti-islanding safty feature that is getting triggered for some reason.

[oztules]

Solarnewbee,

Don't bother yourself too much, as for all the noise the fan makes, it only uses 2-3 watts, so thats not going to bother any battery bank in the slightest... thats .2 amps@ 12v or .05 amps @48v....... sort of makes it pointless complications

Some folks here would like the site that sells pj parts I expect.

David,

to have the lights flash, it would seem like a direct short during sync.... suggest another grid tie to test, as it sounds like it is inconsistent..... even a possible noisy internal hv fuse in the inverter may do it... beyond that I can't really help.

I have had over 100 amps coming back from the grid ties ( 48v system) without issue, and three connected to it at the same time without issue.. it should  not bother the PJ. at all other than heat.



...oztules

[lighthunter]

@ davidwillis.
What you are dealing with can be frustrating. I spent a lot of time trying to
troubleshoot a symptom a lot like yours. There are probably many possible causes for this problem
and the error codes, if you can find documentation, dont always point to exact problem.
Mine would run any length of time and go offline at random. It works perfectly now. Never shuts down. Grid tie runs just as good tied to PJ as utility grid.

The things i changed involved matching the PJ voltage output in center of grid tie voltage max min parameters and giving pj the battery power it needed to regulate it. The pj battery input now runs tight 25.4vdc min to 28.0vdc max. If i load battery bank to pull voltage lower than 25vdc then my grid tie will still go offline.  I am guessing but this might be caused by pj wave distortion since i altered voltage feedback to drive primary harder to target 239VAC instead of 224VAC where it was designed. This left less headroom for low battery voltage which in my case was solved by higher battery voltage in LFP batteries. This could also have been solved by adding turns to secondaries of toroids.  I didnt have luxury of adjusting gti parameters. (it was US gti emerson spv)
I only have single gti/6000lf pj setup and during normal day if gti is putting out more than loads you can see a flicker every second. This is anti island stuff and pj has to fill in. When loads are greater than solar you dont notice flicker. In short Battery bank voltage and stability along with output voltage matching made the difference.

Good luck with that!
Lighthunter