Best non-grid tied inverter

[renewablehome]

Been looking over inverters for a small remote solar array-4 panels and was wondering what-by experience and use-is the best inverter folks have run into that is 1500-2000W?

This is for a non-grid tied application.

[dbcollen]

Personally I am quite fond of Outback products, in the off chance you have a problem you call them and talk to an engineer, not someone sitting in front of a computer in India. Outback is all I install and my system is:

 3kw solar (60 FS-50 panels) 1.5kw home built hydro (2 nozzle 254 ft head PMA 120 gpm) 16 Rolls Surrette s530 batteries 1060ah @ 100 hr. 2 vfx 3648 inverters on a ps2 system, 3 MX60 charge controllers (2 for solar, 1 for hydro) 4kw Kohler 1800 rpm generator that I run on kerosene. I have a 93 foot tower up already for the Hugh piggott 10 footer I haven't quite finished yet.

Dustin.

Mad River Wind and Hydro.

[Shadow]

Wow, thats quite a system you got going! Whats your daily power consumption consist of? And how well does this system keep up? Just in the process of hooking mine up. I have the Outback VFX 3648, but was told the MX60 didnt work for wind, so I went with the Tristar TS60 instead.

[Volvo farmer]

I bought Outback as well. Recently found out that two of the companies founders are gone and are starting new enterprises. Robin started Midnite Solar and Bobby is over at Magnum inverters. I'm currently having a little battery charging problem using my generator with my Outback. Apparently, with the Magnum, this would not happen because their battery charger is PF corrected.

Anyway, I looked at some specs, and it appears the Magnum MS is slightly less efficient (~3%), and has higher no-load current than Outback FX. There's always Xantrex too, lots of folks using these for years without problems, though probably built in China now.

I'd look at Outback, Magnum, and Xantrex. Those are currently the leaders in the industry.

[DanB]

Perhaphs Bob will get in here with comments.

Our neighbor Tim has a Magnum sine wave inverter and he's had some interesting issues which he could only attribute to the inverter.

A couple of devices had issues during surges (like if a power tool was turned on and off even though he was not pushing the capacity of the inverter)

He had a large printer that would always crash

His starband satellite modems were failing (went through two in very short order)

When he switched back to his old Trace U series there were no more problems.  I'm not sure if he ever found anything more out and I don't care to say anything bad about the Magnum - just to share that experience.  Tim is quite certain that the magnum inverter was causing these problems.

[boB]

>>Perhaphs Bob will get in here with comments.

>>Our neighbor Tim has a Magnum sine wave inverter and he's had some interesting >>issues which he could only attribute to the inverter.

Hi GUys and Gals...

There were some MS4024s that got out with a few problems unfortunately.

Those problems have been fixed up though.  Maybe your neighbor, Tim got one of those ??

I'd have Tim call Magnum and talk to either Tim (our Tim, one of the Ms4024 engineers), and/or Tony Boatwright.  Tony was the Trace/Xantrex customer service guy for many years.  Also, in customer service and engineering is Dave Allegre (Alligator as he is sometimes called) who also worked at Trace/Xantrex and did the software for the SW2 among other things.

Or, Tim could call me, but I'm not as up on the issues with the MS as I was before I started working on the project I'm on right now.  

The idle power of the Magnum is now lower than it was too. The efficiency is not that big of a deal really, cuz people don't normally run the inverters where the efficiency is at its peak anyway.   Of course, some do, especially for surges.

The PFC charger does (normally anyway) work better than a non-PFC charger like in the FX.  And sometimes it just doesn't matter.  Sometimes the Non-PFC chargers are completely unusable.  I talked with one guy at sol-west in Oregon, in particular, that changed out his customers FX inverters for Xantrex SW2s because of the charger power factor waveform issue.  He was going to try the Magnum inverter/charger but I don't know if he had done that yet.  These chargers (usually) have to be very good because Magnum makes OEM inverters for the RV and mobile/marine markets that use generators that can be very picky.

Happy Christmas !!

boB

boB

[nailed]

I have had 4 different types of inverters; all have been on off grid systems.  Currently I'm using 4 outback inverters.  The nice thing is that once I had all the wires run and everything mounted I picked up the phone and I was talked through all of the settings.  The best part is threw true wave.  I have had problems with this in the past.

They have a forum for help and the support is the best.  If something fails like a board they will send one out with a DVD (I think) and you can pop it in within an hour or two.  

(I'm talking form what I have read.)  The one bad part of the outback line is the grid tie setup.  Apparently with other companies using a larger system it is a bit simpler.  

[dbcollen]

Shadow,

I use about 10-15kw per day, not even close to what I produce currently. I run 2 fridges and a deep freeze and am building a house, so many power tools. also building a new shop for the business. When the new shop is finished I will be running a Haas 25 hp 5 axis cnc milling machine. I will grid tie the excess power and do yearly net metering to offset the huge cost of electricity for the shop.

with a new turbine at the primary hydro site I can produce 3+ kw and I have 2 other sites close by that will produce 2 and 2.5 kw respectively all winter, hence the yearly and not monthly net metering. PG&E doesn't pay for excess production, only zero the bill.

Dustin

Mad River Wind and Hydro.