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General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: eastpoint turbine on November 26, 2014, 11:04:05 PM

Title: Unstable inverter power
Post by: eastpoint turbine on November 26, 2014, 11:04:05 PM
  HI to all   I notice my lights in the house would go dim for about 10 /15 seconds and then come back bright. When it happened again i got out my volt meter and checked the voltage  which read 98/99 volts ac, then came back up to 150 ac  after a few seconds.  I then went to the main panel  and measured across the two "hot" terminals  and the voltage was 259 volts   
This is a MAGNUM  MS-PAE PURE SINE WAVE  INVERTER/CHARGER just under 2 years old . Is it on the way out ?    I tried a reset per the manual  same thing happened.
Title: Re: Unstable inverter power
Post by: mike90045 on November 27, 2014, 02:33:19 AM
Look for a loose connection in the DC & AC sides in the power shed.   I'd had flickering lights for about a month, and was suspicious of the 80' cable over the creek, when one day I was in the power shed watering batteries, and I heard zzzttt   zzzztttt  ztzt.  Tracked it down to the main panel meter socket, which had no meter, but some jumpers installed by the "electrician"  they had been arcing (the bars were steel) and heated the copper grippers to the point they were loosing tension and were not connect well, which lead to arcing and heating........ 
Title: Re: Unstable inverter power
Post by: eastpoint turbine on November 27, 2014, 07:22:51 AM
   R     All connections are snug &tight, batt voltage good.  Here is what i did, turn off the input DC breaker waited 10 min,turn back on held the power switch untill light flashed (searched mode)  turned breaker off. Repeated the process after 20/25 min  held pwr  sw for 15 sec   rlse  until led blinked,waited 1 min  hit pwr sw inverter came on ,turned on main panel breaker and the AC voltage was 125 and steady  but to me still high  between (l1 to grd 125v)  between l1 & l2  259 volts ac
  Jason
Title: Re: Unstable inverter power
Post by: boB on November 28, 2014, 02:56:11 AM

Not sure why the lights would dim except for either a bad connection or a bad inverter... bad inverter feedback actually.

Also, the drifting voltage kind of sounds like your meter was looking between two non-synchronized AC waveforms
like maybe the grid on one lead and the inverter output on the other lead.

Do you have more than one PAE inverter, stacked ?  What kind of meter are you using ?
Hopefully a decent one at least.

boB
Title: Re: Unstable inverter power
Post by: Halfcrazy on November 28, 2014, 08:09:46 AM
I will point out that the Magnum does have some odd regulation. I gave up and took mine out as it drove me nuts living with it.

Ryan
Title: Re: Unstable inverter power
Post by: eastpoint turbine on November 30, 2014, 02:36:21 PM
<I will point out that the Magnum does have some odd regulation. I gave up and took mine out as it drove me nuts living with it.>  Halfcrazy  i hope i don't have to "give up" on mine so soon
boB   only one inverter and th emeters used to check were (craftman digital multimeter & southwire clamp meter  both show the same
Today sunday as post this the inverter seems stable 122 vac on both legs  i did a reset three times and that seems to have cleared it (hopefully)
ps  of all the inverters i've hade before MAGNUM proved to be the best
Jason