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Sealed Inverter?

BigEye Puna

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Joined
Oct 14, 2019
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17
Does anyone know of a small/cheap sealed inverter?

My first solar setup was on the coast in the Philippines and I burned through several inverters in a short amount of time because of the corrosive salt air and/or plethora of bugs making homes in the cheap non-sealed inverters. Now I live in Hawaii where it is between 80% to 100% humidity every day and I have a sealed Outback inverter which hasn't given me any problems yet so I think that is the way to go, if possible.

I'm looking to set up a micro power station in macadamia nut orchards on the Big Island and the harsh environment makes me worry that any cheap inverter I use for the application will be a weak link in the chain of equipment. Please keep in mind this is a "micro" power station. I only need about 18 watts continuous for a weather station, camera and internet linkup, so I'm thinking of building a LifPo4 battery bank with 20amp victron charge controller, small BMS, a 100 watt panel and small inverter. Any suggestions for something that can handle the humidity? Right now I have a crappy 12v sealed lead acid setup that needs to be ventilated. Can I get away with having little to no ventilation with a LifePo4 setup and avoid excessive humidity inside the box I plan on putting on a pole? Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance everyone.
 
Good question. I was working with the equipment someone else provided so that is where I started. I know the weather station I have is already powered by a USB cable so now I just need to do a little more research on DC powered camera and Ubiquity Mesh and Antenna.
 
The Ubiquiti Mesh is likely POE 24v. Odds on it could be supplied directly from 24v battery, would need to confirm with Ubi to see if it will tolerate the 29v during absorption charging, but definitely doable from 12v with a boost converter. Buck / boost regulators could take the notional 24v from a 24v battery and regulate it at actual 24v too.
 
So should I use one of these regulators with a battery bank? I can't find much info on voltage requirements for POE...

 
That might do the trick. Can you post a link to your particular model Ubiquiti Mesh unit?
 
Rather than try to waterproof the inverter or hardware, how about using a waterproof container or panel? Ventilation may be an issue, but I'm sure it could be overcome.
Ventilation was my main concern, since I inherited some cheap lead acid 12v batteries. I'm researching the POE option now and I appreciate the advice of waterproofing too. If I have trouble finding a way to provide constant 24v to POE I may consider separate boxes for battery bank and other components. Ventilation in 100% humidity does concern me though. Inverters are not good at all with these environments.
 
Avoiding the inverter will improve watts in to watts out ratio too. When you use an inverter you are losing power in the boost stage of the inverter, the PWM stage and then in the step down actions of the mains power supply for the device. If we take the typical 80% efficiency of a lot of this stuff that means for every watt out of the battery only 0.64 watts makes it to the actual device.
 
Morningstar makes an epoxy encapsulated inverter that would be good for the tropics.
Morningstar 300 Watt 12 VDC Pure Sine Wave Inverter

But if you can get rid of the inverter and go straight DC that would be a better choice.
 
Uniquiti Hoobity Whattie? Holy crap, it is impossible for me to read Will's forum without being deluged with terms and concepts that I never knew existed. What a truly talented and knowledgeable group of curious, sharing and contributing individuals you all are, thank you for making my already immense brain even more so!
 
My ubiquiti nanostation has a 24v Poe injector but still runs fine direct from 12v dc. The input range is something like 10v-30v
So i
That might do the trick. Can you post a link to your particular model Ubiquiti Mesh unit?

The spec sheet says,

"Multiple Power Options The UAP-AC-M is compatible with 802.3af PoE Alternative A and 24V passive PoE. You can power it with the included Gigabit PoE adapter1 or an 802.3af Alternative A compatible switch, such as the UniFi PoE Switch or EdgePoint™ EP-R6."

One of the components is a "Unifi AC Mesh". We have some other Ubiquity stuff too, but I don't have access to that equipment yet. Hard to test it when you don't have it :).

So I'm getting the impression I can just use a DC barrel connector coming from the charge controller and plug that into their POE injector.
 
So I'm getting the impression I can just use a DC barrel connector coming from the charge controller and plug that into their POE injector.
That will probably be ok, but if it were me (coming from 30 years in IT with a strong background in networks...) I'd probably want to stabilize the voltage a bit. Just because....
 
I have a couple of AC Mesh here with me now for tests but run them using the supplied 24v adaptor. I have heard of people having boot problems running them at 12v. If I can find a passive injector in my boxes of junk I'll see if they will start OK. 12v would probably need the unit quite close to the point of power injection to avoid voltage drop. 50 metres of ethernet cable would, IMO, want a higher voltage.
 
Can't find the passive injectors. I know I have some, but where?!
 
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