I was woken at 0300 hrs last Saturday to the sound of my Fisher and Paykel washing machine's electronic distress signal, it bleeps when powered up and under fault conditions.
Ok so Allan gets up and finds power is going on briefly then tripping,I switched off the main AC board and headed over to power centre, to find the inverter is tripping on overload, bugger.
Switched off inverter then changed over battery banks(I did say it was 3AM) powered up again to the same fault, double bugger.
At first light I opened up my Solar Energy Australia (SEA) inverter, only imediatly aparant fault was the 10000uf/40v capacitors.
Ho Hum, just starting my winter fruit season, it's Saturday morning, weighed up the alternatives and headed for Perth (capital of my state) 2 hour drive to purchase a new unit.
Only one business was open on Saturday, business is so good others don't need to. Placed my hand deeep into my pocket for a new 3Kw Latronics sine wave inverter, these are Australian made quality units.
Pleased to say power was back on by around 4PM and even better the fridge showed no signs of defrosting after 13 hours of not running, this was very fortunate as the grog was still cold.
I have ordered 4 new capacitors for the SEA inverter, this is where I suspect the fault lies based on the apperance of the one on the right of the pic it looks to have overheated to me, and the fact that full 240 volts (asumption) was briefly attained each time the inverter rebooted. Worth a punt anyway, even if it has to go to inverter hospital after 5 years service it's probally time to change these electros anyway.
And if I can fix it I will come up smelling somewhat better than I did last Satuday with my hand deeep in my pocket being told it's not a good time for the inverter to fail, not quite sure when would be a good time actually.
Oh yea and I have a new wiz bang camera so pic quality should only be limited by operator competance.
Who was it that said I have free power?
allan down under