Normally, I have good things to say about Xantrex and their GT and XW class inverters. I personally replaced four GT units a while ago as they dealt with their "capacitor" problem.
This post is about the XW product. We installed a XW6048 with two charge controllers, a 4,200 W-dc PV array and a 550 A-hr, 48 Volt AGM battery bank. Things went fairly smoothly in the install, but we encountered a "sawtooth" in the AC output in sell mode. Over a period of approximately 30-45 seconds the inverter charger would ramp up in output power (say to 2,800 W-AC), then snap down to zero and start over again. Although it is hard to follow what is happening in real time, it would appear that the ramp up is slower than the ramp down. I spent four trips to the customer's home to try to resolve the issue with the help of Xantrex tech support. I even went to the trouble of making appointments with tech support, before going to the customer's home. With the help of tech support, we mucked around with the grid support voltage, float voltage, maximum sell current, two-stage vs three-stage charging, and checked a host of operating modes/settings. I spoke with every tech support person with knowledge of the XW system, and I double-checked my connections (torque). The last thing that tech support recommended was upgrading the firmware. I finally convinced Xantrex to open a trouble ticket and I escalated the issue to their Product manager Ericka Yedid. Since the system was manufactured in Aug 2007, Xantrex has recommended upgrading the firmware, and has promised to supply a dongle, files and an up-to-date XW configuration tool that can be used with a laptop to accomplish this end. This is our first XW install and we are not experts on grid-tied battery backup systems although we have installed four now. Does anyone have experience trouble shooting these units? Anyone seen the sawtoothing I described? What is the quality of post sales tech support for this product? - Peter Peter T. Parrish, California Solar Engineering, Inc. 820 Cynthia Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90065 Ph 323-258-8883, Mobile 323-839-6108, Fax 323-258-8885 CA Lic. 854779, NABCEP Cert. 031806-26 [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: [email protected] Options & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
