Long story short, I had a system installed that consists of 28 280 watt Itek energy panels with a Solectria 7600tl inverter. 3 strings of 10, 10, and 8. Since day 1 after install, all lighting tied to dimmers flicker badly when dimmed with inverter "on" (not in night mode or manually shut off). Some affected circuits are incandescent, some are LED, some are a mix. I have 2 different types of dimmers (GE, Lutron), both are affected. Flicker is by far the worst when solar output is low, 0-200 watts. It gets increasingly better as solar output increases, and is barely noticeable at output above 5KW. My house was built in 2007 and had no issues prior to the solar; the dimmers and lighting has been there for years.
I can watch the lights flicker and have someone else turn the inverter off and BAM, lights are perfect. I can shut every circuit off in the house aside from one lighting circuit and the solar but there is no improvement (pretty much eliminates external issues). The installers have been out a few times trying to figure out the issue. They adjusted settings, added some ferrites thinking it was interference, but that did not help. Apparently they have another house with a similar issue and replaced the inverter without any improvement, so they hesitate to replace mine. And in case anyone is wondering, they are a very legit installer in this area.
I am (usually) a smart guy, but I cannot figure this out. I google this problem and find almost no information. I searched on this forum but found very little having to do with large systems and flicker. The weirdest part is that just the inverter being on, not even outputting power (because the solar output is too low) causes the flicker. I can't figure out what the inverter would be doing that could cause flicker by just being powered on. Any ideas would be so very appreciated. I am out of them!
I can watch the lights flicker and have someone else turn the inverter off and BAM, lights are perfect. I can shut every circuit off in the house aside from one lighting circuit and the solar but there is no improvement (pretty much eliminates external issues). The installers have been out a few times trying to figure out the issue. They adjusted settings, added some ferrites thinking it was interference, but that did not help. Apparently they have another house with a similar issue and replaced the inverter without any improvement, so they hesitate to replace mine. And in case anyone is wondering, they are a very legit installer in this area.
I am (usually) a smart guy, but I cannot figure this out. I google this problem and find almost no information. I searched on this forum but found very little having to do with large systems and flicker. The weirdest part is that just the inverter being on, not even outputting power (because the solar output is too low) causes the flicker. I can't figure out what the inverter would be doing that could cause flicker by just being powered on. Any ideas would be so very appreciated. I am out of them!
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