Classic 1 Installer 0

Started by nigel, August 07, 2012, 08:44:09 AM

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nigel

I thought I would share this experience with everyone, although it is at my expense. But I will add no body is perfect !
The only people who never make a mistake never do anything anyway.

I had a new small 12v install with 450 watts of PV and was fitting a Classic 150 using the clients old 12v  Inverter charger Everything else was new.

On completing of the system everything connected as soon as I fired up the array the Classic would start charging but then went to arc fault.

The Inverter charger behave OK when inverting and charging. I checked all my connections again and again and everything checked out. I disable the arc fault setting in the classic and hey presto everything proformed as it should . Done sorted OK.

About 4 weeks later I got a call from my client saying  that the Classic was dead . He was local so I was up the following day. A test of the system found that the classic was not getting its Battery feed. Positive side was OK but the negative side was open. Back system checking through the negative side found the culprit a connection that I assumed was a good  bond it was not and failed. Attaching a new bond cable direct from the negative lead cured the problem . System restored arc fault turned back on system Ok.

So the lesson to be learned is if the Arc Fault from the classic appears (default factory value) Before you reduce sensitivity or disable it,
please check everything on both polarity's.  The Classic was bang on the money !!

Im still saving up for my Flir Thermal Imaging Camera to assist in signing off system installs. Which would have detected this . 

But as I said Classic 1 Installer 0.

Nigel




Halfcrazy

Nigel
Glad to here the Classic was correct. We have had a pretty good sized handful of these pop up. Even one case where the Classic started throwing AF's out of the blue and 2 days into it the customers Inverter went south.

Ryan
Changing the way wind turbines operate one smoke filled box at a time

niel

ryan,
were you talking of my experience with the arc fault?

we were in contact with each other at the time just playing with af settings and it was popping off on low sensitivity settings (13-14 if i remember rightly). i can't remember the exact setting we were up to when the inverter faulted. the settings on af had not changed for the replacement inverter as it was still popping at settings like that so i question if it was detecting a failure in progress on the inverter. i have shut off the af to stop any false triggers and i believe i may have mentioned that in one of my correspondences with you some time back.

the replacement inverter received by warranty is still operating and i am living with the noisy fan in it.