if the inverter cannot be tied to ground, you shouldn't be using it.
Most of your post is correct except the above. The AIMS inverter Gavin bought has an internal neutral/ground bond. From the owner's manual:
Neutral and Ground are bonded inside the inverter to comply with the National Electrical Code (NEC) requirement that any AC source must have a Neutral to Ground connection
The inverter has an external ground lug that must be connected to a driven ground rod. These inverters do not have a "hot" neutral so the service panel connected to the inverter must NOT have a neutral/ground bond per NEC. The panel has to have a separate ground bus installed in it with the panel bonded to the ground bus and only the Live or "hot" has to have circuit protection via breaker or fuse - the neutral does not and connects to the neutral bus like any other common grid or genset installation.
I'm not familiar with that switchgear, but to comply with Code the switchgear has to switch BOTH the neutral and hot from grid to genset (or inverter) power. There can be absolutely no connection to grid power via a shared ground rod with the grid service entrance, or sharing the neutral.
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Chris
"These inverters do not have a "hot" neutral so the service panel connected to the inverter must NOT have a neutral/ground bond per NEC"
this is the dammed problem*... the inverter cannot be connected to ground (because the battery negative already is) (there's how many threads on this?)
in the case of an isolated inverter output, i should be able to float the 120vac 3000 volts above ground... (or whatever the optical isolator/transformer is tested to.. typically 4kv...). In which case, it doesn't care about what its connected to, and only one breaker is needed. Once the breaker trips, the leakage current is limited to micro amps.
I stand by my original statement, if you cannot connect the output to "ground", (which should be connected to "neutral" for a long list of reasons) then you shouldn't use it..
i don't care about theoretical ground loop problems... if code requires two breakers whatever... what's another 5$
*a grammar nazi would argue that you can in fact connect the neutral to ground, based on what you said.