HELP! - My neighbour has no power and I'm scratching my head to solve her problem. [SOLVED]

[SlyPhi]

My neighbour lives off grid like we do. She has had no end of trouble with her "state of the art" Selectronic SP Pro off grid setup, but yesterday her 7KVA diesel generator refused to start so I took up my 8KVA petrol generator to swap it out. Pretty simple really, unplug the broken generator and plug in the good one.

Only problem is the RCD on the genset throws immediately. Both generators have only 15Amp outlets and I know for a fact that my generator is working fine because I was charging my own batteries with it 2 days ago at 50Amps to the battery.

My question is, does anyone know why the Selectronic SP Pro would be drawing such a high current as soon as it powers up and is there anyone who can advise on how to adjust the current it attempts to draw from the generator? The settings are completely obfuscated behind a wireless access point that is seemingly inaccessible, not least because power is needed to drive the wifi.

The main switchboard to the house is completely off so there's nothing leaving the inverter other than (I assume) power it is sending to charge the battery (5KW lithium).

Selectronic is completely useless as they only bother to answer their phones Monday to Friday.

We're in Southern Tasmania, it's raining hard and there's unlikely to be any sun to speak of for most of the week. I'd really like to help her out.

Please respond if you know:-

- Anything about Selectronic SP Pro inverters.
- A selectronic technician who would be willing to talk to us.
- anything or anyone else that might help.

Thanks.

 

[matluma]

There are 2 questions here.
One is that the RCD is tripping, the second is how to adjust the power draw from a remote source.

The RCD issue is due to the MEN link in the generators. The Original genset would have had the MEN link removed and your genset still has them linked as a safety.
In a permanent setup, the MEN link us removed on the generator and the MEN is linked in the main supply board of the building. (There can only be one.)

The power draw is absolutely adjustable on the Selectronic inverters.
You need to log in to the Selectronic inverter via Serial and adjust the input power limit using the software from the Selectronic website. SP-Link

 

[SlyPhi]

The RCD issue is due to the MEN link in the generators.

This is absolutely correct. I actually found a third generator that had no MEN and this didn't trip in the same way. This genset was tiny so it really struggled and would keep tripping it's RCD, but at least we could get some power into the battery eventually - enough to wake the system up anyway.

how to adjust the power draw from a remote source.

This was the problem I couldn't solve. Once there was enough power in the battery to run the inverter I was stopped by the password set in the firmware. She later was able to contact someone who knew this password and we then went in and set the power draw to a level suitable for the tiny generator.

The problem is partially solved for now. Thanks.