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It took almost 2 years, Official Loads Tester™ finally got an overload.

Zwy

Emperor Of Solar
Joined
Jan 3, 2021
Messages
7,774
Location
Timbuktu, IA
It will be 2 years next month since the house system was fired up. I had warned her many times over the last 2 years about running the dryer, washing machine and microwave all at once. This noon I went in for dinner and soon after the well pump kicked in for the washing machine and just like that, the lights went out. :ROFLMAO:

I see the towels are hanging on the clothesline now. I've considered getting a heat pump dryer but after reports of the LG having the door latch fail, I thought I'd wait awhile. I was looking at the layout of the cables on the bottom of the LV6548's and it might not take much to swap in a pair of SRNE ASP's like I have in the shop.

New work trailer is getting a 48V inverter and one of the LV6548's would be enough for those service calls when I need mobile power. If I do swap in the SRNE's, I can add more array down by the house with higher voltage strings.

Do you think she would be willing to help get it all done this time? :unsure:
 
Might be time to buy a propane powered dryer.
Heat pump. We can generate enough power for the electric dryer, the problem is someone comes home for lunch at noon and decides they need to run 10 things at once instead of spreading the loads out thru the day. I can walk down to the house and turn the dryer on later, not that hard. Heat pump dryer would allow for running more things while the dryer runs.

Or install bigger inverters. :)
 
We haven't been able to find a combination of things to overload even two of our 6000XPs, much less all three, in normal use. So, my hat is off to the official solar tester! . I'll need to ask the boss to try harder, and I might need to break out the welder. The induction range is always a big contributor to the load when in use, and the dishwasher does its fair share. But with a heat pump dryer, Grundfos well pump, heat pump water heater, and Mitsubishi mini splits, we have trouble hitting even 7000 watts at any given time. With all that running, the garage mini split could get us up near 9K during its first hour if ramping up from a cold start on a cold day, but I honestly can't think of a way to hit even 12K without pulling out various kitchen countertop devices, all at once. I feel like we're energy underachievers!
 
Well pump LRA is what will end up tripping inverters if many loads are running. That is what caused our overload. I measured inrush one time and it was 54A per leg for a few milliseconds. With 8Kw of loads running (dryer=6.5Kw alone), then have the well pump start, it hit overload. Just the right combination, washing machine might have been starting too. I only have grid input turned on when battery bank is under 20%.
 
My dryer, oven and water heater are on the same breaker. Two weeks ago it finally tripped for the first time when they were all on at the same time. Not much reason to change anything. I could automatically disable one when all three are on. Doesn't seem worth it.
 
This is the reason why I want to find a second Radian to pair with my first. I don't think I'd ever trip a pair of those up no matter what I did. Odds are, I won't find one with a reasonable price. I'm not paying $5k for one of the few left out there when I paid almost half that for the first. At that point I might as well get a less expensive HF inverter, put the non-heavy grunt loads on that, and use the Radian for the grunt stuff (well pump, AC/heat pump, welder, whatever else has a large surge requirement - I'm thinking future as I don't have a property with a well pump or anything yet).
 
Would not be an issue with a Grundfos pump.
I'm fully expecting that whatever property we get with a well will not have one of those pumps. And I'd rather not pull the pump if I don't have to.
 
I'm fully expecting that whatever property we get with a well will not have one of those pumps. And I'd rather not pull the pump if I don't have to.
That's exactly what I did is pull the existing pump because it had a ridiculous surge on it.. it is well worth it. I can run it even on a little solar generator now if I need to.
 
I got a heat pump washer/drier combo back in November and it is nice not having to think about the system when thinking about drying clothes. Now the only real laundry guideline is 'preferably during sunlight hours unless its a laundry emergency'.

Oh and don't overload the washer/drier! Because if you overload it it will fail to spin cycle effectively but then try to 'sensor dry' for hours and hours until i notice and stop it. So it does become a power hog if you overload it because it's not smart enough to abort the drying if the spin cycle doesn't complete properly. Oh well.. stopped overloading it and its back to fine.
 
A co-worker's generator has trouble starting his well pump so he picked up one of these soft start modules. I was curious if it would work but he hasn't tested it yet.

Well pump control box has a start capacitor for the 3rd leg. That should be checked first if equipped with one. A hard/soft start would need a relay to cut the capacitor from the circuit once running. This video is one of the best I've seen explaining hard/soft start.

 

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