Morning Chaps

Now before TTT spills his morning coffee - no I have not bought a 10kW Infini. I have had an enquiry directly to my profile. Not sure how it works but it is there.

Voltronics model "Infini 10kW inverter" has issue.

When solar energy is enough to provide power to load and charge battery thy an inverter is constantly consumes 250 watt from Grid or utility.This problem is exist in all infini model....How can we resolve this problem????

This problem exist when we run inverter in "grid relay connected mode"........

Manie, SuperDIY and others can you help?

 

 

I have an infini 10 KW and I have send the question to a service center. This is around 6 Kw / day and unacceptable.

 

1 hour ago, educorner said:

I have an infini 10 KW and I have send the question to a service center. This is around 6 Kw / day and unacceptable.

 

Is that self consumption or is there a minimum 250W portion of the load that must be supplied from grid?

I would think there is a setting somewhere where you tell it what "zero point" to aim for. Sometimes people deliberately configure that to be a little above zero in order to avoid accidental feedback. I believe 50W is a very common setting, but I have mine (my non-infini one, just to be clear) set to 10W at the moment :-)

I used an Axpert 5kVA for 6 months or so, and the delta was always around 70W. Having upgraded to Infini a month ago, I see Load Watts = Grid Watts, meaning self consumption is 0W. Knowing that is is should be closer to 70W or more. Hopefully this is something that Manie can fix in ICC, but I would not have expected it to be 0W - the Infini is supposed to be based on Axpert to a large degree. 

1 hour ago, Sidewinder said:

the Infini is supposed to be based on Axpert to a large degree. 

The Infini is an  Imeon copy whereas the Axpert has evolved out of Voltronics original UPS range (wonder why it can do grid or batteries but not both). The Infinisolar V series is an Axpert with what Voltronic learnt from building the Imeon thrown on as icing and cherries on top of standard Axpert.

So the V series is like a Tata with a snorkel, winch, and fancy alucab canopy and rooftop tent!

On ‎1‎-‎6‎-‎2017 at 5:43 PM, Chris Hobson said:

Is that self consumption or is there a minimum 250W portion of the load that must be supplied from grid?

don't know, if I switch off the AC input surge, I don't see more of less power consumption on the software. The 6 Kwatt is messured with the official grid counter. I also have, on an other location, the axpert 5000 (other oem, but same device). This one only consumes 1,3 Kwatt in 21 days which I think is very acceptable (the grid should be able to take over when it's cloudy -> which hasn't been the case last month), but 6 Kw/day is unacceptable. If they can't fix it with a firmware update I will put a relay between the input. The software isn't that difficult to do something with the RS232 port. I will inform you when I have more information on this subject.

  

15 hours ago, Mark said:

So the V series is like a Tata with a snorkel, winch, and fancy alucab canopy and rooftop tent!

I've seen Mahindras with all that kit on! Not the Scorpio... the Bolero!

Has anyone tested the Axpert V series?

I mean the Axpert MKS (which I bought 3 years ago) has been such a solid performer. It is still going strong and it is located behind my fridge without much ventilation. Still immediately switches over every time I test it. Never even a hint of a problem.

I did a test again the other day where I ran it for 1hr turning on microwave and kettle, etc.

I don't care how these products came to be, it is either a solid product or it isn't. And IMO you can't fault them for the cost.

When I look at the cost of some other brands I just don't see how the cost is justified. The no load power doesn't go down much. Efficiency doesn't go up much. Then I have to start asking why you are paying 5x as much.

21 hours ago, Gnome said:

you can't fault them for the cost.

Exactly. That's one reason I wish people would stop insisting on doing the comparison with that other brand. The reason you buy the Axpert is because it covers 95% of the needs and costs half the price of anything else on the market. Literally anything else.

I have just finished installing the 10kva infini with the mecer badge but can't get the software that came with the machine to load load on pc.

Sent from my ALE-L21 using Tapatalk

9 hours ago, AC_MAN said:

...  but can't get the software that came with the machine to load load on pc.

It may come in the form of a .rar archive. I think Windows doesn't handle these by default; if so you'll need a third party app like 7-zip or Winzip to unpack it.

It may come in the form of a .rar archive. I think Windows doesn't handle these by default; if so you'll need a third party app like 7-zip or Winzip to unpack it.

Sorted thanks a lot to manie quite helpful.

Sent from my ALE-L21 using Tapatalk

What was the resolution for this issue?

On 2017/04/28 at 8:41 AM, Chris Hobson said:

Morning Chaps

Now before TTT spills his morning coffee - no I have not bought a 10kW Infini. I have had an enquiry directly to my profile. Not sure how it works but it is there.

Voltronics model "Infini 10kW inverter" has issue.

When solar energy is enough to provide power to load and charge battery thy an inverter is constantly consumes 250 watt from Grid or utility.This problem is exist in all infini model....How can we resolve this problem????

This problem exist when we run inverter in "grid relay connected mode"........

Manie, SuperDIY and others can you help?

 

 

Look here: 

 

Can you summarize if the issue is 250Watts being consumed by the inverter itself - all the time? If so, thats a lot of energy. Do other inverters have the same consumption?

The infini is a hybrid, so it can blend power from the grid and from the battery. The inverter itself needs some power to run, so even when there are no loads, that power has to come from somewhere. This is where it gets interesting.

Some customers want you to take that power from the grid and leave the batteries alone (presumably because they are for backup). Others want you to leave the grid alone and use the batteries. Whichever side you choose, the other side complains.

A Victron Quattro needs 35W for a 3KVA unit and 55W for a 10KVA unit, but in a three phase setup you'd have three of them, so that puts you around 165W. This is not the lowest in the business, but pretty respectable.

Outback says 35W for an 8kva unit. Looking over at some American makes a Studer comes in around 30W, a 3kva Xantrex around 35W, a Mastervolt 3kva unit comes in at a respectable 16W (about half of the equivalent Multiplus at 35W). Times three in all cases, not perfectly apples for apples but a good guideline.

MLT (another South African brand) says 140W for their big 3-phase units.

From this I conclude that about the best you can do by throwing money at the problem would be around 100W. It definitely puts the Infini on the high side... but compared to some other low-tech stuff like the "Power Star" inverters mostly from China (again not apples for apples, those are low-frequency single-phase units)... 250W for a 3-phase is excellent :-)

Also, 2.65 A x 50 V = 133 W, a lot lower than 250W. Presuming that the 2.65 A is on the battery side. If the idle current is on the grid connection, it's likely highly capacitive, i.e. It might be 250 VA, but perhaps half that in real power (W).

Edited June 11, 20188 yr by Coulomb
Sent too early.

27 minutes ago, Coulomb said:

Also, 2.65 A x 50 V = 133 W, a lot lower than 250W. Presuming that the 2.65 A is on the battery side.

I guess this is two different complainants - @Chris Hobson complainant has parasitic grid consumption of 250W, @SilverNodashi complainant has parasitic battery drain of 2.65A.

Hi all,

I have a client that needs a hybrid system.  We do not do these often, have only done a few small ones but his is a little bigger and we need in the region of 30kW PV, 5kW per phase (3phase) backup with 20kWh Lithium storage.

My preference is SMA, but as is usually the case it gets too expensive when building up a three phase hybrid system.  So here I am considering Infini again, but I do not know them.  I have lots of hours with the little Axperts and they work well for what you pay for but I would appreciate opinions on the reliability of the 10kW Infinis.

Much appreciated!

Hi Hannes7212,

I have Infini Plus 5KW (it's a single phase but quite similar to the 3 phase 10KW unit) Here's what I learned:

• There are 3 or so fans built-in, constantly running. When under load, they speed-up and down and are pretty noisy. A separate shed is a must.
• Have the SNMP WebPro Card installed, which is great for managing thing via web browser, without a need to install SolarPower app. For a shame, that SNMP WebPro Card failed after 2 months and refused to communicate with the inverter. Inverter itself was still running okay. Now, the card crashes once a week or two. I have to buy a new one.
• My Infini draws 2.5A from 48V battery bank during the night, just for selfconsumption. Built-in display and SolarPower App is reporting zero amps, but the BMS and AmpMeter revealed that there's this constant draw. I would imagine that 10KW unit will draw similar current or slighly more maybe. BTW, you have to subtract this amps whenever unit is reporting charging and add them when there's discharge in progress.
• Parallel card is built-in, but parallel cables (comm and current sharing) were not included in the package. If you're going to parallel, just check this before the order.

Summary: Inverter itself is good and realiable, but the peripherals are crap. Don't trust amps it's reporting. Software is the same SolarPower/Pro like the one for Axpert, so it's not the best of breed, but it works at least.

 

Hi Yoda,

Thank you for taking the time to respond.  That self consumption is quite high yes - I have observed this as well.  We are planning on integrating it with the Lithium battery's data logger to do the online reporting so I will sidestep the WebPro card!

Thanks again and regards,

Hannes

4 hours ago, Youda said:

My Infini draws 2.5A from 48V battery bank during the night, just for selfconsumption

That's somewhat of a problem with large parallel systems. It all adds up. Even a PV-inverter (Fronius, SMA) has some self-consumption and will often draw quite a bit of power early morning and later afternoon when it's still trying to do something but there isn't really much sun yet/left.

I've noticed the same thing with the help of ICC. See attached screenshot of the battery discharge power (Watts), the inverter load and the power being imported from the utility.