justoneguy71
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2022
- Messages
- 2
I have a Krieger 2000W 12v pure sine wave inverter. It is grounded with a ground wire to a ground rod just outside. I recently went to turn the inverter on (I usually turn it off at night to save standby usage) and it was DOA - no lights, no sound, etc. I called customer support and after some troubleshooting questions, was told that the problem was almost certainly caused because I am using surge protectors that have ground protection plugged into the inverter (GFCI was specifically mentioned or anything with ground protection) and that I should only be using the most basic power strips without reset buttons and allow the inverter to do all of the protecting since DC is different than AC and there won't be the same types of issues that surge protectors are designed to protect against. The CS rep went on to explain that Something in that protection can feed back into the inverter and burn out the components in the inverter.
I am learning as best I can, but my knowledge of electricity isn't nearly enough to understand how a surge protector could interfere/destroy the inverter. With that said, I do use some grid power if the batteries get low and (used to) move the plug of the surge protector from the inverter outlet to the grid outlet. If I switch to using a power strip with no surge protection per the manufacturers suggestion, it seems I now would have to unplug each individual component from the new power strip plugged into the inverter and re-plug them all into a surge protector plugged into the outlet. There are 6 items plugged in in total, not a huge amount of effort, but still 6X the effort of just moving the single surge protector from inverter to grid outlet. Those 6 things that are plugged in are way below the capacity of even the most basic of surge protectors, so there's no overloading in play.
So, first question would be could someone give some background or a link to where I could learn more about how a surge protector can interfere/destroy an inverter and second question, is there a better/more efficient method of having my 6 items plugged in and be able to switch between the inverter and grid and having them protected from AC surges with a surge protector when on AC, but not having surge protection when running on solar.
I do want to give a big thumbs up to the Krieger support, they very easily provided for me to return the inverter (at their cost) and shipped out a new one very quickly.
As background:
600W solar panels, feeding a 40amp Renogy Rover MPPT controller. 3 100AH 12v Chins Lifepo4 batteries wired in parallel with a shunt installed for battery %.
I am learning as best I can, but my knowledge of electricity isn't nearly enough to understand how a surge protector could interfere/destroy the inverter. With that said, I do use some grid power if the batteries get low and (used to) move the plug of the surge protector from the inverter outlet to the grid outlet. If I switch to using a power strip with no surge protection per the manufacturers suggestion, it seems I now would have to unplug each individual component from the new power strip plugged into the inverter and re-plug them all into a surge protector plugged into the outlet. There are 6 items plugged in in total, not a huge amount of effort, but still 6X the effort of just moving the single surge protector from inverter to grid outlet. Those 6 things that are plugged in are way below the capacity of even the most basic of surge protectors, so there's no overloading in play.
So, first question would be could someone give some background or a link to where I could learn more about how a surge protector can interfere/destroy an inverter and second question, is there a better/more efficient method of having my 6 items plugged in and be able to switch between the inverter and grid and having them protected from AC surges with a surge protector when on AC, but not having surge protection when running on solar.
I do want to give a big thumbs up to the Krieger support, they very easily provided for me to return the inverter (at their cost) and shipped out a new one very quickly.
As background:
600W solar panels, feeding a 40amp Renogy Rover MPPT controller. 3 100AH 12v Chins Lifepo4 batteries wired in parallel with a shunt installed for battery %.
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