diy solar

diy solar

EG4 18KPV - What not to do in parallel

sunshine_eggo said:
My products (turbine engine internals - 51K rpm shafts and airframe structural components - like things that keep the main rotor blades from departing the rotorcraft in an unscheduled fashion) go on things that fly. When airplanes/helicopters crash, people tend to die. I have a legal, moral and regulatory obligation to make sure mistakes don't happen... or at least can't be as easy as plugging in the wrong, but seemingly identical cable... :)
Click to expand...
Yea I am definitely not trying to minimze the situation. It's pretty serious.
The best case scenario happened here and @canadianintruder had some equipment fried (which something should be done for this).
If his loved one was touching the wrong thing at the wrong moment, this could be a much different conversation.

I think maybe if we could get a "holy crap, we are going to fix this right now" from Lux or EG4 that would be great. In the video, it's pretty obvious what the problem is. I have the raw footage (taken from two different cameras), but it wasn't all included because I may or may not have used some inappropriate language.

EG4 could send a tech to the field for this one, they are well within driving distance to see it for themselves. I drive over to Sulpher Springs a couple times a year.
 
automatikdonn said:
I have the raw footage (taken from two different cameras), but it wasn't all included because I may or may not have used some inappropriate language.
Click to expand...

:ROFLMAO:

I find there are situations where "inappropriate" language is insufficient to describe the magnitude of the situation.

automatikdonn said:
EG4 could send a tech to the field for this one, they are well within driving distance to see it for themselves. I drive over to Sulpher Springs a couple times a year.
Click to expand...

Agree!
 
I’m sorry but the inverters come included with a standard Ethernet cable for parallel operation. I have never owned a crossover cable or seen one sold. It’s a bit crazy to me that an installer could find one and skip over the cable the inverter comes with to create this issue. Sure, the inverter should catch it, but man, giving you the right cable in the box is kinda making it as easy as possible to be successful. That’s my $.02 from being on the road out of town.
 
HighTechLab said:
I’m sorry but the inverters come included with a standard Ethernet cable for parallel operation. I have never owned a crossover cable or seen one sold. It’s a bit crazy to me that an installer could find one and skip over the cable the inverter comes with to create this issue. Sure, the inverter should catch it, but man, giving you the right cable in the box is kinda making it as easy as possible to be successful. That’s my $.02 from being on the road out of town.
Click to expand...
Just a thought, but it's missed in the manual that using anything other than the shipped cable could result in injury or death... So how would an installer even know?

I think the intent here is limiting exposure for those in the damage path if something was to turn sideways. There could always be people out there that don't frequent this forum or see this thread.

It's just a thought is all
 
My curious George question is if the 18kw does this then does the EG4 6000xp made by LuxPower also do the same in parallel if wrong cable is applied to them? Should ppl with EG4 6000xp be concerned or has this not been examined as a concern? .
 
HighTechLab said:
I’m sorry but the inverters come included with a standard Ethernet cable for parallel operation. I have never owned a crossover cable or seen one sold. It’s a bit crazy to me that an installer could find one and skip over the cable the inverter comes with to create this issue. Sure, the inverter should catch it, but man, giving you the right cable in the box is kinda making it as easy as possible to be successful. That’s my $.02 from being on the road out of town.
Click to expand...
Dude it happened! These have not been out that long. It will happen again. As per my previous post, imagine 3 of them connected up with the twisty cables unknowingly. The cables supplied are too short for a lot of installs. It will happen again if not "fixed". OP was just trouble shooting a very nice install, which followed all procedures in manual and still fried some appliances, DERP!
I'd love to see 4 units in parallel with crossover cables. I have several of them lying around, even after going through a shop rehab and overall organizing. This thread actually reminded me that I mixed all my ethernet cables into the same big bin for later use...
 
D71 said:
My curious George question is if the 18kw does this then does the EG4 6000xp made by LuxPower also do the same in parallel if wrong cable is applied to them? Should ppl with EG4 6000xp be concerned or has this not been examined as a concern? .
Click to expand...
I only have one 6000xp, so I can't test this.

If I had a couple spares around I would put it on a bench and give it a go - alas I don't have gear to support this testing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: D71
BuffaloTrace said:
Dude it happened! These have not been out that long. It will happen again. As per my previous post, imagine 3 of them connected up with the twisty cables unknowingly. The cables supplied are too short for a lot of installs. It will happen again if not "fixed". OP was just trouble shooting a very nice install, which followed all procedures in manual and still fried some appliances, DERP!
I'd love to see 4 units in parallel with crossover cables. I have several of them lying around, even after going through a shop rehab and overall organizing. This thread actually reminded me that I mixed all my ethernet cables into the same big bin for later use...
Click to expand...
My biggest concern here isn't exactly just explicitly cross over cables - what happens if a pin goes bad in a standard cable? This absolutely happens and I see it all the time. Idk if these failure modes are tested. Does someone out there have the spare gear to test with?

(This is 100% pure speculation)
 
BuffaloTrace said:
Dude it happened! These have not been out that long. It will happen again. As per my previous post, imagine 3 of them connected up with the twisty cables unknowingly. The cables supplied are too short for a lot of installs. It will happen again if not "fixed". OP was just trouble shooting a very nice install, which followed all procedures in manual and still fried some appliances, DERP!
I'd love to see 4 units in parallel with crossover cables. I have several of them lying around, even after going through a shop rehab and overall organizing. This thread actually reminded me that I mixed all my ethernet cables into the same big bin for later use...
Click to expand...
Also I would like to point out I did NOT oversee this install, I was called down when the issue happened to get to the bottom of it.
 
automatikdonn said:
I only have one 6000xp, so I can't test this.

If I had a couple spares around I would put it on a bench and give it a go - alas I don't have gear to support this testing.
Click to expand...
Just a guess but if Luxpower made eg4 18kw and eg4 6000xp my guess is it needs to be checked for same over sight.

In aviation a safety of flight like high profile recall would be performed. An attempt to contact all owners would be done to warn and aircraft might be grounded - no flights until repair TB had been accomplished…. to resolve.

I was sent a new Air Fryer…because of recall. The old one had to have the cord cut off and pictureS sent to get replacement.

I would think these units can be resolved with software - firmware. Again would be interesting to venture bet if 18kw and 6000xp behave in likewise manner. It is EG4 responsibility to check them and issue warning.

If I paid someone to install a system and stuff got destroyed by over voltage would be upset. If did it myself and installed a component not matched as exact replacement then would issue myself as partial blame.

IMG_6632.jpeg

IMG_6633.jpeg


EG4 18kw manual

IMG_6635.jpeg
 
automatikdonn said:
The system was professionally installed and all wiring was correct.
Click to expand...
No, The system was professionally installed and wired incorrectly. The professional installer incorrectly wired the parallel data connection between the inverters. He did not check compatibility between the factory supplied cable and the one he used.

Something about never underestimate the ability of a fool, but that being said, long term, EG4 needs to figure out how to alarm and fail on a bad parallel condition if possible. This would also now deserve a !! entry in the manual around this communication cable, as causing an overvoltage is decidedly sub-optimal result. A shame we can't make everything perfect on the first pass.
 
Last edited:
AntronX said:
A bit premature there Mr. Eggo? It’s not their fault that a bug slipped through.
Click to expand...
It is absolutely impossible to test every possible scenario that some installer might inflict on your equipment. My thinking is that the signaling on the parallel cable was doing exactly what most of us thought was happening on the AC side of the wiring. To an earlier point a black cross-over cable is really odd to start with, usually red or orange, but I'm not sure I would have though to test with a cross-over cable of all things. I know I am not using the factory cable in my setup I needed ~ 10ft of cable to feet it thru the cable management.

I do not mean to intimate this should not be addressed. They should be able to have a firmware patch for this based on a couple of data points that shuts it down. I know a loss of comms just shuts things down, and there is an obvious analog component to the comm, obviously around the sync signal, but there is only so much you can do to. Hopefully there will not be a recall or anything, that would be annoying.
 
ricardocello said:
Did you mock-up what the manual should say with the straight-through

That page with the straight through picture is not what’s in the manual available online.

Or did they just update it, and it has not propagated yet?
Link please.
Click to expand...
I think they updated it. My guess they never checked if 6000xp had same type potential fail. It is not changed but bet would do same same. Chop chop. Do a refresh

 
Nobodybusiness said:
This is the first example I have seen of the 18KPV in parallel.

I wonder if this has been an issue in other parallel operations with this unit?

If they used a straight through cable they might not know it’s an issue.
Click to expand...

Since it works exactly as advertised correctly cabled. I can vouch that I was not aware of this particular issue. Not sure what the issue is when there isn't one.
 
ricardocello said:
Did you mock-up what the manual should say with the straight-through

That page with the straight through picture is not what’s in the manual available online.

Or did they just update it, and it has not propagated yet?
Link please.
Click to expand...
If they did update it, I would say that is absolutely a good thing. Positive action by them to correct this issue!

Here is an older version of that manual (which obviously are subject to updates - no shade)

Loading…

sunwatts.com
 
Last edited:
Cmiller said:
I'll see what I can do. the one that I tested out on was just a single unit, but I can maybe test it at an install where I can easily isolate the inverters from the loads panels.

And yes, I'll probably just have to make a crossover cable for testing.

No doubt there is an insane amount of backend stuff happening in these AIO units (regardless of brand) and it would be a challenge to make them!
Click to expand...
Make sure it's an ethernet crossover 1-2 <> 3-5 and 5-4 <> 7-8 as shown in the photo. I would also be curious to see this, I'd not be surprised to see similar behaviors, my guess is all the hardware that does all this sync stuff is pretty similar.
 
HighTechLab said:
I’m sorry but the inverters come included with a standard Ethernet cable for parallel operation. I have never owned a crossover cable or seen one sold.
Click to expand...

You're not old enough.

HighTechLab said:
It’s a bit crazy to me that an installer could find one and skip over the cable the inverter comes with to create this issue. Sure, the inverter should catch it, but man, giving you the right cable in the box is kinda making it as easy as possible to be successful. That’s my $.02 from being on the road out of town.
Click to expand...

You know how I feel about you! The bolded part is what's critical and renders the rest of your post irrelevant.

This shouldn't happen. Period. If there's a warning or a physical obstruction of some sort, I'll shift the blame to the installer.
 
automatikdonn said:
If they did update it, I would say that is absolutely a good thing. Positive action by them to correct this issue!

Here is an older version of that manual (which obviously are subject to updates - no shade)

Loading…

sunwatts.com
Click to expand...

It was updated fresh today. That's not the manual I looked at last night.

Good for them.
 
ksmithaz1 said:
Something about never underestimate the ability of a fool, but that being said, long term, EG4 needs to figure out how to alarm and fail on a bad parallel condition if possible. This would also now deserve a !! entry in the manual around this communication cable, as causing an overvoltage is decidedly sub-optimal result. A shame we can't make everything perfect on the first pass.
Click to expand...

So, so true. On top of parallel connection issue alarm, there should some sort of logic that fixes/catches how the hell 400VAC is at the input terminals.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

J
EG4 6000XP/18Kpv Custom RS485 Dongle Connector
2
Replies
36
Views
2K
wpns
W
I
EG4 18kPV : Parallel 2 panels into series to combat shade
Replies
6
Views
283
y0bailey
Y
RJW
Question: serializing parallel panels
Replies
7
Views
341
RJW
RJW
A
What cable for BMS update on EG4-LL V2?
Replies
0
Views
82
AndreasPassat
A
W
EG4 24v LifePower4 batteries with 18K inverter
Replies
0
Views
278
Warden
W

diy solar

diy solar
Back
Top