February 14Feb 14 Good day. Hope every one is well today.I'm asking for a friend.About 2 weeks ago power went off due to vandalism. (from Witbank all along the old road to Middelburg)Power was off for about 2 days and it was very overcast. My friends battery switched off due to low voltage. (SHOTO SDA10-48100l5) On a Mecer 5kva inverter, 2x 600w bifacial panels in series. (Ground mount)When grid power was restored, The inverter was off and the bypass to grid was on. All appliances worked fine.The bypass was switched to inverter and the system was powered on.About 10 seconds after the inverter was started, it went BANG!!! and all was off. Before this the system was working fine for 2 years.It was disconnected from grid and the testing started.Panels was good, battery went into fault mode, inverter dead.The values tested on the grid is as follows;L+N=240vN+E=170vL+E=360vMy friend bought a new inverter and battery. We tested it off-grid (NO ESKOM) and it is perfect.I tested the output on the inverter and it works fine. (connected a load to the output), but with NO ESKOM)A solar installer was called in and he told us that he would not connect the inverter to grid. He said there is something wrong on the transformer and eskom should come out. Something to do with the earth-neutral bond on the transformer.It's a farm house with it's own transformer.The solar installer told us we can connect the inverter without the earth and make sure the inverter, battery and panels are connected to an earth spike and not to the house wiring.The house is being rented from the owner of the farm.What to do next?
February 15Feb 15 On 2026/02/14 at 9:33 AM, Warlok said:What to do next?Run the inverter off-grid and disconnected from the grid-earth until the grid neutral to grid earth voltage is basically zero.
February 22Feb 22 Author On 2026/02/15 at 11:17 AM, frivan said:Run the inverter off-grid and disconnected from the grid-earth until the grid neutral to grid earth voltage is basically zero.Thank you. We did that and it's been working for a while now.
February 22Feb 22 6 hours ago, Warlok said:Thank you. We did that and it's been working for a while now.Glad I could help. Just check that the neutral to earth bond is downstream from the inverter and that your earth leakage units still work.
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