Hi gents, can anybody in Jhb area  fix one Axpert 4KVA during the lockdown?

thanks in advance 

Edited April 23, 20206 yr by ibiza

I repaired one of these recently.

Please provide a description of the fault and how old it is..

Hi Richard,

unit is about 5 years old. it smells on burning and the display is dead but the fans are running 

7 hours ago, ibiza said:

5 years old

Not bad for an axie... perhaps more cost-effective to get something new. Along with fixing whatever blew, I bet a whole bunch of stuff will have to be replaced pro-actively, eg... all those capacitors on the DC bus are probably cooked good by now.

thanks for your input @plonkster. there are two paralleled inverters in the system which makes even more expensive to swap  them with  new ones. 

10 hours ago, plonkster said:

Not bad for an axie... perhaps more cost-effective to get something new. Along with fixing whatever blew, I bet a whole bunch of stuff will have to be replaced pro-actively, eg... all those capacitors on the DC bus are probably cooked good by now.

I have heard about 5 and 10 year 'battery life' from the suppliers (which still doesn't rest comfortably in my kop)

But is there a 'design life' for inverters?? (Now there's a good marketing opportunity for the vendors!) 

2 hours ago, Richard Mackay said:

I have heard about 5 and 10 year 'battery life' from the suppliers (which still doesn't rest comfortably in my kop)

What I know about these units is what little I saw of them, and what the Ausies wrote up on them as well as a few youtube rants (see EasilyBoredEngineer vs JustinCase for example, hugely entertaining spat). The early units had capacitors rated for 2000 hours (at the peak temperature), which means that hard working units can fail in as little as 6 months (assuming they spend 12 hours a day at the warmer temperatures). I actually don't think the Axpert units have a 5 year design life (that would imply that on a bell curve, there is a sharp round peak around the 5 years mark), if you get 5 years out of it you should consider yourself lucky.

2 hours ago, Richard Mackay said:

But is there a 'design life' for inverters?? (Now there's a good marketing opportunity for the vendors!) 

Of course there is. Few inverters have a design life much past 10 years. The industry standard is pretty much to cheapen it until the finance department starts complaining about too many warranty returns.... and then turn it a quarter turn back*. That is to say, the design life will be slightly longer than the factory warranty the slap on it... well... usually. There's also the other approach (used for Sinoteq TVs), make it cheap enough that you can supply two TV's for the price of one and slap a 5 year warranty on it... your profit is in the ones that make it... 🙂

Fronius is one of the few that allows you to extend the factory warranty up to 20 years (obviously at a cost), but it comes with a 7 year warranty out of the box (as long as you register, 2 years if you don't). That's why I can rather confidently say an Axpert is nowhere near 5 years... there is no way it's built on the level of a Fronius.

As for Victron units, I'm not sure what the design life is, but the warranty is 5 years, and anecdotally I know of 12 year old units still out and kicking, often in things like Fire Engines and Ambulances.

* Based on the mechanics joke, tighten the nut until it strips, then a quarter turn back.

Edited April 24, 20206 yr by plonkster

6 hours ago, plonkster said:

Of course there is. Few inverters have a design life much past 10 years. The industry standard is pretty much to cheapen it until the finance department starts complaining about too many warranty returns.... and then turn it a quarter turn back*. That is to say, the design life will be slightly longer than the factory warranty the slap on it... well... usually. 

Yes I agree that 'design life' doesn't count for much. Better to see what warranty the vendor provides! But holding them to this can also be difficult. With gizmos that are sold by the big stores their model appears to be a 1 year warranty. No questions are asked, the customer is simply credited and they recycle the returned item. (we trust!) 

With more expensive items (e.g. appliances) they can't afford this disposal model so there will be a repair procedure during the warranty period.

Electronic power devices (VSDs, inverters, chargers etc.) work hard and the components are stressed during operation. Not only that, these devices are cutting edge technology with new designs and components. Being an electronics tech I watched this huge development in electronic components. When I started out in the 80's high voltage was hectic for any electronics. Today we take mains voltage, rectify it and smooth it (>300V) and then use a DC-DC converter to chop that voltage up and produce another voltage. This would have been impossible back then. Now we throw these devices away because they are 'obsolete'.