I believe these problems are mainly due to the high frequency switching
content of the typical sinewave inverter
these days.
I (and other manufacturers I'm sure) would be very interested to know
which appliances are susceptible to
this noise so that we can try to reduce these incompatibilities. I'm
sure we can't take care of 100% of
the incompatibilities but we can try to get closer.
For instance, what kind of coffee maker was that, Jeremy ?
boB
On 4/16/2013 11:36 AM, Bruce Erickson wrote:
I'm having a similar issue with a GRID-TIE inverter just now. SMA 5000US which,
when it wakes up every morning, removes the date and time from the programming
in the customers' Monitor brand kerosene heater. They have to re-enter it
daily, which is annoying enough, but when they go out of town, they have to
leave the inverter off to avoid coming home to a cold house.
So far SMA has had us move the breaker as far as possible from the heater
breaker, to no avail. They had no other suggestions. I used a Panamax plug-in
power conditioner with 50 dB of EMI filtering on the heater outlet, which has
reduced the frequency of the problem to once a day, when it wakes up, from a
few times a day. Trying a different heater is out of the question due to cost,
so I'm stumped as how to avoid an unhappy customer, unless the answer is
experimenting with more robust power conditioners.
Bruce Erickson
Mendocino Solar Service
PO Box 1252
Mendocino, CA 95460
707-937-1701
707-937-1741 fax
[email protected]
On Apr 16, 2013, at 11:12 AM, Dave Palumbo wrote:
Jeremy,
<< What to look for? >>
Unfortunately, probably a different coffee maker.
I've gone through this with several different appliances over the years on
sine wave inverter output. Washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers it
could be anything with electronics. Specific manufacturers typically cannot
be avoided in order to solve this issue. Year to year manufacturers may
change the design of their appliances, so blanket statements on what works
and what doesn't are unreliable. All appliances (excepting a few) are
designed to operate on utility power, not inverter power. Inverter power
(excepting Exeltech and possibly others) typically has more distortion than
utility power. Some appliances cannot tolerate the simulated inverter sine
wave power. I always council my inverter customers that I cannot guarantee
that all appliances with work flawlessly and that some may not work at all.
I advise off-grid clients to buy appliances where there is a liberal return
policy.
David Palumbo
Independent Power LLC
462 Solar Way Drive
Hyde Park, VT 05655
www.independentpowerllc.com
Vermont Solar Partner
25 Years Experience, (802) 888-7194
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of All Solar
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 12:47 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [RE-wrenches] Outback wave form
Have a client with a new coffee maker that will not run from their new dual
outback setup. Has anyone heard of this lately. We have had no problems with
appliances and sine wave inverters. What to look for?
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