May 25, 20224 yr why does the earth on a electrical installation became live when solar inverter takes over from utility
May 25, 20224 yr NO NO , earth must never be above any potential other than , well , earth . If its not the conductor is not earthed !!!! Is it 'live' with respect to neatral ? A Neatral may become live due some fault modes , when it is floating and it has continuity via loads , but an earth , again , no. Edited May 25, 20224 yr by BritishRacingGreen
May 25, 20224 yr 1 hour ago, Muller said: why does the earth on a electrical installation became live when solar inverter takes over from utility Because the installation is not done correctly and also not compliant.
May 25, 20224 yr You didn't say what model your inverter is. Most inverters should make a connection between AC-out neutral and earth when they are in battery mode, and NOT make this connection when in bypass mode. In bypass mode, it assumes that the AC-in neutral is bonded to earth already, and there should only every be ONE connection from neutral to earth at each premises. I would check the connection to earth (as in the earth stake) of the inverter from the main distribution board. It sounds like that connection is bad. So when the inverter loses earthing of AC-out neutral from AC-in, there is no earthing at all, so all the metalwork has the potential (so to speak) to be live. The small capacitors from AC-out L and AC-out N form a voltage divider, so you can get roughly half the inverter's output voltage between the earth terminal and AC-out L and AC-out N. Some leakage somewhere is causing that earth terminal to become live with respect to real earth (the earth stake, and humans). These capacitors are sized such that the current through them is small enough to generally not be lethal. Despite that, this is a serious situation that needs to be rectified immediately.
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