welders and grid tie inverters

[rgormley]

i will be getting a fronius IG30 grid tie and 2kw of panels installed.

so the Question: if i was to use my AC arc welder (30 year old very crude, "peeless" brand Will the fronius grid tie invert become unhappy??  as in the horible "noise" that this welder must produce when striking a arc?

or will the fact that the inverter is tied to the grid acts like a big supressor

Or am i worried about nothing at all??

[Flux]

As long as your grid is stiff enough to deal with the welder without serious volt drop and you don't connect to the cable linking the inverter to the grid I don't see any issue. If you are in a remote location with  a very weak grid feed the welder may trip the inverter off but in that case you wouldn't be doing any useful welding anyway.

Flux

[Electron Skipper]

Welders do create voltage spikes and some degree of noise, but most grid tie inverters would incorporate transient supression so yours should be fine.  Assuming you are attaching your welder to the national AC grid, and not your charging buss, you should have little other problem.

The AC national grid will absorb a lot of noise and a lot of spikes with little problem when they are short duration, such as someone welding.  The whole grid will act as an inductor, and any noise you create on the line typically would get filtered out by the pole pig between you and the utility or you and your neighbors.

[Clifford]

Somewhere all the wires get tied together... And, I find it amazing that the power companies don't seem to have to use the same gauge of wire that the code requires for mastheads.

But, your grid-attached system should allow you to pull adequate power from the grid.

How thick of steel are you welding?  Amp draw?

I've welded from batteries using my cheap Chinese Modified Sine Inverter Plus Indian Transformer.

It seems to do just fine, although I get a bit of a voltage drop at the batteries, and I seem to max out a little higher than 100 amps.