Inverter Power Surge?

[OffGridHawaiian]

Aloha, Has anyone experienced a inverter power surge? Recently had 3 arc fault breakers burn out and a ceiling fan remote sending unit inside fan fail. Also lost around 10 LED lights and a outdoor motion detector. Running two Schneider Contex SW 6848's with 24 Stacks of Aquion Ahi S10's. Came home to a smoke filled kitchen and system shutdown with AC OVERLOAD fault. Interesting thing, almost positive there was no AC OVERLOAD. Had a few people at the house and they heard popping noises then system turned off. I restarted system since we were 97% SOC and 50.51V. About 20 seconds later saw inverter get up to 5600W then lights started flickering and popping noise then that burnt smell and then system shut down. Decided to switch to Utility power since we still have not hooked up a generator. Not Grid tied or doing Net Metering, just have ability to switch to PV Power or Utility Power. Haven't needed to switch Utility Power for about 1 year. Now everything running smoothly. Installer came to check things out and believes its the 2nd inverter not splitting the load. Really puzzled on this one, even installer is scratching his head???

Will be switching out S10's to S30's in two weeks

[SunEagle]

Hopefully someone will get your system straightened out for you.

On another topic I read an article about Aquion getting together with SolarAfrica to build off grid systems in Africa.

Here is the link to the article.

[jflorey2]

Aloha, Has anyone experienced a inverter power surge? Recently had 3 arc fault breakers burn out and a ceiling fan remote sending unit inside fan fail. Also lost around 10 LED lights and a outdoor motion detector. Running two Schneider Contex SW 6848's with 24 Stacks of Aquion Ahi S10's. . . . Really puzzled on this one, even installer is scratching his head?

My off-the-cuff guess* would be loss of sync between the two 6848's. Once that happens, they will tend to drift apart in frequency and start to "fight" each other after some time. One clue is the very high powers you saw before it shut down; that's what I would expect when an inverter is trying to drive into another inverter that's not in sync.

(* - worth what you paid for it)

[SunEagle]

My off-the-cuff guess* would be loss of sync between the two 6848's. Once that happens, they will tend to drift apart in frequency and start to "fight" each other after some time. One clue is the very high powers you saw before it shut down; that's what I would expect when an inverter is trying to drive into another inverter that's not in sync.

(* - worth what you paid for it)

What about a surge from a lightning strike?. That can be very damaging to just about any electrical circuitry.

[jflorey2]

What about a surge from a lightning strike?. That can be very damaging to just about any electrical circuitry.

If there had been a storm nearby, and the system had been damaged by a nearby strike, I wouldn't expect to see it run for 20 seconds then shut down, nor would I expect it to recover later. But I guess it's possible that there was some degradation of an inverter switch or something that only manifests itself when the component gets hot or something.

[Mike90250]

Normally, inverters don't do that. So, either some sort of external surge fried a lot of stuff, or one or both inverters failed. Should have a 5 yr warranty on them.

[SunEagle]

Normally, inverters don't do that. So, either some sort of external surge fried a lot of stuff, or one or both inverters failed. Should have a 5 yr warranty on them.

That is what I was thinking. A surge from a lightning strike or power line transient. If he was grid connected I would point the finger that way but the OP has an isolation transfer switch.

Although there might be a path through a common ground wire.