Magnum inverter and magnum vitality providing renewable power

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12/26/14 - 1:48:06 AM - Duke My suggestion is to go 48V now if pssioble but this would involve an upgrade of the inverter at the same time. BTW just use DC-DC converters if you really need straight 12V DC. I happen to like Victron brand because I had good results on a military project where they hammered my design for a whole year before accepting it and ordered 124 more systems. I also like the fact they use a switch mode design that is lighter in weight, power factor corrected, and is very flexible by being able to select either 60Hz or 50Hz so for European or Asian bound customers the same box will work in either situation. And lastly, adding more inverters is as simple as plugging in a synchronizing cable and designating one inverter as the master and the others as slaves. You can parallel five 3kw inverters and even develop 3 phase power if your battery bank can handle the load current.Outback comes a close second and being based in Arlington WA is closer to home should repairs be needed. This is what my wife's uncle uses in his off-grid installation. Outback can be had in a NEC code compliant package complete with a backer board with DC and AC breakers for branch circuits. Unfortunately being EI iron core laminations the transformer does not lend itself to frequency changes. You have to pick one or the other and order accordingly.For driving heavy loads like deep well pumps, heat pumps or even air conditioning I prefer to spec a 230V inverter and use a step down transformer for the relatively light 120V loads.Outback learned a lesson from the old TRACE design where you end up with unbalanced neutral currents. Not so with a straight two wire 230V output. And you can make it NEC code compliant. While down in FL last December to wire up a system I found a 4 kVA step down transformer to drop the 230v down to 115V that only cost $109 and ran fairly cool and completely silent. The 6 Kw inverter system can surge to over 12 kw but the 120V AC circuits only consume about 3 kw maximum including an all electric galley with counter top cooking appliances.For deep well applications using a Franklin 230V pump, (or similar) add a soft start module tominimize the start surge. Last fall I was quoted $179 Cdn for such a module. Sure eases the start surge and thus the size of inverter needed.BTW it was so cold in Florida that month we ran 4kw of electric heating from the inverter to keep warm. Not a recommended practice for off-grid but useful in a pinch. We recharged the battery bank by using the 15 amp yard outlets to drive the chargers ( similar to your genverter idea) whereas before he found he could not run all the heaters with out popping the breakers. The secret being the heaters cycled and the battery bank buffered the surges and the 15 amp cords maintained a steady power delivery to the chargers that were fine tuned to avoid tripping the breakers. In case you wondered the bank was a 900 amp hour 24 V Sonnenschein bank built up from 2V cells. Much more efficient than a bunch of Surette,Trojans or Concorde 6 volt batteries wired series parallel. Submit your comments and they will be posted here. Make this comment Public or Private to the Author only: Name: Email: *Your email will NOT be posted. This is for administrative purposes only. Comments: *Your Comments WILL be posted to the AUTHOR ONLY if you select PRIVATE and to this PUBLIC PAGE if you select PUBLIC, so write accordingly.   Please enter the code in the image: