2simguy
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2simguy reacted to ___ in Neutral/Earth bonding relay Goodwe ES invertersIn my estimation the risk is low. Your neutral becomes a "hot" conductor (one might say), but if touching it causes enough current to flow to exceed 20mA-30mA, the RCD will still trip. With that said, I must still note that this would not be SANS compliant. SANS requires an islanded system to bond T and N.
Both these are not allowed by SANS. Bridging the neutrals would probably be the lesser evil, 1) because Goodwe advises that you do this, and 2) apparently it is allowed in Australia. You won't lose the bond when there is a grid outage, but you might if your main breaker trips (which disconnects the neutral) or if you switch it off for any reason. Probably better than nothing, but not perfect.
In my view this is the only proper way to do it, and ideally one would want the inverter itself to signal this (like the bonding relay box that's turned on by the internal relay in the Axpert). Only, I don't think the Goodwe has any way to signal such a relay.
One potential way is to use a contactor with 2 x N/O and (at least) 1 x N/C contacts. Use the two N/O contacts to switch the grid to the inverter, and the N/C to make a bond on the output. Let the grid pull in the contactor, that is, when there is a grid outage the contactor drops out.
The reason for actually switching the grid connection through the contactor is to mechanically interlock this operation: It would be impossible for the bond to be applied if the grid isn't also disconnected.
Downsides to this scheme:
1. If the voltage is out of range, but high enough to pull in the contactor, the inverter might switch to islanding mode while the bond remains unapplied.
2. NRS097 mandates a 60 second monitoring window after the grid returns. If the voltage/frequency remains stable in this 60 seconds, the inverter will connect back to the grid. The trouble with this: When the grid returns the bonding is removed, but for another 60 seconds the output will remain floating.
Which gets me back to my point that ideally, one would like the inverter itself to signal islanding mode in some manner.