Radian 8048 under the covers.

[onanparts]

Mr. Parts,

That is a damn good job at pulling apart "the Beast". I hope you didn't have any spear screws left over  . I noticed on one of the control boards where there were two set of jumper selectable specs on for voltage and one for frequency. I would not expect that the voltage one (48v or 24V) would be applicable in the case of a 48v inverter but is it selectable in the case of operating frequency?. I would love if that were the case to be able to switch between 50/60Hz like my Apollo inverter. It would mean I would be able to use it down here(Barbados) as a true Hybrid inverter. I don't recall seeing that as an option when I was checking out the Radian last year. Is anyone here able to confirm that the operating frequency is selectable.

Cheers...
Damani

No extra screws left but there are a gazillion of them! As of last Sept a post by an OB tech support guy on their forums stated no 50Hz at that time. 

[Vic]

Hi onanparts,

Thanks for the pics,  interesting.

Have asked on the OB Forum,   weather the Radian battery charger was Power-Factor-Corrected.   Eventually got the reply that "it depends" (or something close to this).  But,  it seemed that there were no specific measures that were taken to PFC the built-in charger.

Do you or anyone else with knowledge of the Radian's charger KNOW absolutely weather or not it IS/IS NOT PFCed ?

Am running the venerable Xantrex SW+ 5548s here,  and at some point one or more of them will fail,  so am just thinking about what one would do at that point.   And,   for me,  PFC charging would be essential.

I like OB very much,  and would not want to rag on them,  BUT,  this data is important in making a good decision.  TIA   Vic

[Westbranch]

Hi Damani, you might want to checkout the efficiency of the Radian before you bite...  it appears to be genset specific IIRC

[boB]

Have asked on the OB Forum,   weather the Radian battery charger was Power-Factor-Corrected.   Eventually got the reply that "it depends" (or something close to this).  But,  it seemed that there were no specific measures that were taken to PFC the built-in charger.

Do you or anyone else with knowledge of the Radian's charger KNOW absolutely weather or not it IS/IS NOT PFCed ?

I doubt very much if the radian is "real" PFC since it is basically an FX ( on steroids.)

The "depends" answer means that the PFC ~can~ be very close to 1.0 depending on
the grid voltage waveform at the moment.  Generators, for instance, can make its (FX) PFC
drop quite a bit and load the generator down too much when charging.

When PFC is low, the current, instead of being sinewave, is more of a flat topped wave form,
which may be better for charging the batteries, but harder on the AC source.

boB

[Vic]

OK,  Thanks boB for the added info and context.

IIRC, the Xantrex SW + inverters claim a PF of 0.95 for the charger.  But,  my little Honda EU 6500isa Inverter generator becomes upset with the way the SW+'s charger requlates the charge voltage.  This regulation scheme yanks the Honda's line voltage out of regulation,  and is dropped by the inverter.   So it is difficult to use this thriftier genset to polish the charge on the bank.
This SW charger behavior is NOT a PF problem,  as I'd assume that poor PF presented to the genset would be worse during Bulk.   The SW chargers cause NO problems when charging using a 25 Kva diesel.

Anyway,  thanks boB,  and hope we will not need any new inverters for some time!  73,  Vic

[onanparts]

Primary use for now will be UPS mode since I'm on the grid. A modest PV setup is in the works mainly to cover the loads that run my business. I'm at a huge 200-300 watts at the moment for the basics. PC, printer and LED lighting. Enough AHr's to also run the oil heat, refrigadeezer and a few other small loads for 8 hours or so before having to kick the genny on would be perfect.

The Radian is overkill at this time but the deal was there so I jumped at it. 

Robin, how much of the GSLC-PV pictured here was from your drawing board? Some? Most? All of it?

[Robin]

Unless something changed after I left OutBack for the second time, there is nothing specific about PF correction in the Radian. The SW was designed by the same electrical engineer as the Radian and the FX.
The FX was a lot better than the Sw for PF. The Radian is just two FX inverters in one box. The fet board is actually the identical fet board. This was because there are FX fet boards all over the world in repaiir centers. The main thing that breaks in an inverter is the fets. By making the Radian use the identical fet board, OutBack just made the Radian tons easier to service anywhere in the world. That is a big deal to all that have to deal with broken inverters. All inverters can fail. OutBack is as good if not better than the others, so using the same fet board, even though it may be hard to get to, is a good thing. Think in terms of the guy in South Africa that may have a broken Radian. He already has a lot of spare parts in country.

[ChrisOlson]

Old thread, I guess.  Got the warning that it's more than 120 days old.  Oh well.....

We looked at and considered a Radian system before we bought our XW6048.  We ended up choosing the XW because of several reasons, and I was not satisfied with the answers to my questions on the Radian, nor its track record - they have had some teething problems.

But what confuses me is that if it is really two FX inverters, why did the dealer tell us that the modules are independent 4 kVA 120/240 split-phase units?  He said the inverter will operate in full split phase mode with one module inoperative, just at half power.

That don't really sound like a FX inverter in that module to me.
--
Chris

[onanparts]

Old thread, I guess.  Got the warning that it's more than 120 days old.  Oh well.....

We looked at and considered a Radian system before we bought our XW6048.  We ended up choosing the XW because of several reasons, and I was not satisfied with the answers to my questions on the Radian, nor its track record - they have had some teething problems.

But what confuses me is that if it is really two FX inverters, why did the dealer tell us that the modules are independent 4 kVA 120/240 split-phase units?  He said the inverter will operate in full split phase mode with one module inoperative, just at half power.

That don't really sound like a FX inverter in that module to me.
--
Chris

Any "teething" problems have long since been addressed via firmware updates. I'm not aware of any major or minor design changes to the Radian since it's release. The one shown here in this thread has been online since last December primarily in UPS backup mode. At least once a week I disconnect from the grid and run off the battery until it's down to about 50-60% SOC for testing and exercise purposes.

With my specific "critical" loads it gets around 8-12 hours run time before hitting that 50-60% SOC. Close to 200 hours so far with no problems at all.
Please see post/reply #3 in this thread from Robin Gudgel, the founder of Outback. He has confirmed that the "FET" board in the Radian is identical to the ones used in the FX/VFX inverters. Pics of it posted here back that up. Beyond the FET boards is where the differences begin, but the heart and soul of a Radian is based on the FX/VFX inverters.

As to the split phase question: The following is taken from an Outback/Sunwize.com webinar and hits the nail on the head.

Q: I would like to know the architecture of the unit. I am assuming it is two outbacks
but then you said it can run on one only inverter and output 240. Does it have an auto
transformer?

A: The Radian inverter has two identical 4kW 240V split-phase power modules, as well
as an AC and control board stack. Each power module is a dumb device, designed to
process power. At low power levels, the inverter operates on one module and as loads
increase the second module is brought online. Since each power module is full 240V
split-phase output, an auto transformer is not required nor desired.

If one of the modules were to fail you would still have 120/240 at 4KW available. I looked around at all the other available inverters and with future plans to be 100% off grid the choice was easy to go with the Radian. 

[ChrisOlson]

If one of the modules were to fail you would still have 120/240 at 4KW available. I looked around at all the other available inverters and with future plans to be 100% off grid the choice was easy to go with the Radian. 

Thanks - that's what the dealer told us.

Outback has never seen fit to integrate more than an aux port for off-grid generators.  No three-wire gen support (the most common off-grid) without buying a third-party dongle.  Since generators (both primary and backup) are an integral part of an off-grid power system, when Outback sees fit to build a decent AGS that integrates with the rest of the system, then I'll consider one again.  Otherwise they're only good for grid-tie.

Another area where the dealer could not answer my questions to my satisfaction was in the area of using the generator for peak load support with a Radian.  The common theme seemed to be "with the Radian you won't need it".  I tried to explain that we use it as tool to manage power consumption from the RE sources for heavy loads, and prevent ever having to use the generator for battery charging, but that didn't register.  They just kept repeating "Oh, the Radian has big surge capacity so it won't be a problem'.  These people have obviously never lived off-grid so they don't have clue.  And my questions as to how it handles Load and Gen Support as compared the SW/SW Plus that we've used for years went unanswered.

We "toured" a running Radian system that was being used off-grid, but it was not set up properly and they had a 12 kW generator on it, plus had had a module failure and a control board failure in it and had shut down on them twice in less than a year.  I was not impressed after being used to running SW's 24/7 for 9 years without ever being shut down and never losing power once.

Nice looking system.  But not proven enough for me.  If there's a problem when you're off-grid the fuel bill in the generator will balance the Federal Budget in one shot if you're without the inverter for any length of time, so I tend to choose stuff with a proven track record.
--
Chris

[dbcollen]

Really, 9 years without ever losing power once?

I seem to remember a few years ago you were telling all of us on Fieldlines to buy the chinese MSW inverters that you were using because they were so great, and you could swap them out in 15 minutes in the dark with one hand tied behind your back when they failed.

[ChrisOlson]

Really, 9 years without ever losing power once?

The first SW that I bought used ran from 10/18/2001 to 3/6/2011 without ever being shut down, only 30 miles from here.  I bought it, then a month later bought two SW Plus 4024's brand new in the box, and traded the SW.

The inverter we had before that - a Schumacher MSW - ran here from June 2002 to October 2009 without ever a single problem other than low voltage shutdown a few times when we ran out of power.  I bought the first AIMS MSW inverter, a 12V model, and ran it in tandem with the Schumacher.  I still have that AIMS inverter, although it is now in our fifth wheel RV.  I only had problems with the 24V AIMS inverter in the first two weeks we owned it, and AIMS replaced it.  That's when I bought the SW4024.

So, yes, I know well the difference between inverters that just run, and ones that have problems.

And I never said MSW is the greatest thing just because you can swap them out behind your back, or whatever.  I said MSW is fine for many folks for off-grid use, and the Trace DR-series inverters proved that many times over the years.  Our needs changed with time so we changed equipment when we had the money to change it.  I hope that's not a problem.

As a side note - the Radian system we looked at was being used off-grid but they also had grid power there.  They had a 12 kW generator hooked up to the Radian.  But they had never hooked up the grid power to it.  Instead they had a generator transfer switch they used to switch from grid power to off-grid power when they wanted to.  They had 16 golf cart batteries (225 ah I believe) and were using a 12 kW generator to charge that little battery bank when they wanted to be off-grid (along with some solar panels on the roof).

The dealer had recommended it as a way to look over a running system, the people that owned it said it was OK to come see it, and the dealer had installed it.  But I wasn't really all that impressed with it.

On the same trip, on the way home, we stopped at a place the Schneider dealer had recommended to see a running XW system.  We were pretty impressed with it.  It was a grid-tie/sell back net-metered system with 6 kW solar, a small battery bank, two XW-MPPT60 controllers on the solar, and a 6 kW EcoGen.  It had been installed and running for three years.

After seeing both systems we chose the XW because it had the features we wanted, the XW's have been around since late 2006 and are proven units, and we could buy it from a dealer that did a much cleaner and more well thought-out installation than what we saw with the Radian.

IF the Radian had an integrated system for three-wire generators where all the programming for generator starting parameters (including logging, crank time, preheat, spindown, etc.) could be done from the Mate3, I would've more strongly considered one, despite what we saw with the one we looked at.  But my wife is half the buying power here and first impression is sometimes the one that sways the decision.  And her first impression of the XW installation was instant "this is the one we're getting".

Although we do have a Outback product - a PSX-240 on the distribution panel for split-phase leg balancing   


--
Chris

[Halfcrazy]

Chris
I have to agree Outback missed a good opportunity to fix some things and did not. The XW really is the Off Grid king at this moment as far as basic function and feature set. Gen support is a big deal for most of us off grid and the XW does that nicely.

Ryan

[ChrisOlson]

Ryan, I wanted to see a Radian being used with generator support.  The dealer misunderstood generator support to mean a 12 kW Generac being using to charge batteries on low voltage auto-start.  He didn't understand it even when I explained it to him.  I wanted to see how Outback implemented that function in the GS8048.

The Trace/Xantrex/Schneider inverters have always had that and it's a known feature that works.  So it was sort of like "known" vs "unknown" and I wanted to see it demonstrated.  I guess the GVFX-series inverters can do it but they are notoriously picky about what generators it will work with using the Grid Support function in them.

The downside to the XW is that they're pretty loud at 6-7 kW load.  That's not an issue for us because our inverter is in a separate utility room.  The Radian we looked at could not be demonstrated at any serious load because the 16 golf cart batteries that were on it dropped below 46 volts immediately if he turned on his heat pump.  He had to use the generator to run that.  But it was not exactly what I'd call quiet either.  There was a definite XW-like "buzz" from the modules in it with just a 4 kW load on it, plus fan noise.

So it was a disappointing demonstration because I didn't feel it was set up right and I wanted to see one put thru its paces to see what it's got.
--
Chris

[Halfcrazy]

Well I think SMA and Schneider are the only 2 doing what I would call TRUE generator support. I understand Magnum is working on it. Outback has it in there military grade inverter but never implemented it in the FX or Radian either AFAIK. I think they are both close to the same noise wise although the XW can get some funky harmonic resonation going on but hey don't put the inverter in the bedroom right?

Bottom line is if I had to go drop coin for a new off grid inverter today I would really have to scratch my head. If I totally forgot where they where built IE china, India etc and based it solely on function and features I think Xantrex Win's as the name says.

I am not a fan of the Magnum simply because of the slow regulation. It is a great product for the money and is USA made but I cant get past the slow regulation and my lights almost going out every time the fridge starts.

In fairness I have not yet tried the SMA Sunny Island and will report back in a month or so after I get some seat time on the Sunny Island. I am a little nervous as it appears to be smarter than me. It does everything of SOC so if it thinks the batteries are at say 95%SOC it will not allow the generator to charge no matter what the battery voltage is, or so I am told. I also understand a lot of this stuff can be defeated and it works very well so I am excited to see anyways.

Ryan