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Panel Earthing

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More info on earthing systems :-)

https://electricalnotes.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/type-of-earthing-systems-in-electrical-distribution/

I think the preference for TN-S is that a broken neutral doesn't cause everything in the house to start floating at Line Voltage. If you were to bond things a second time, you would still have that characteristic (a backup earth wire), I can't seem to find a definitive source to say why S would be preferred over C-S. I can only think that ground loops would obviously be a problem with the latter that the former won't have. If you were to add your own earth terminal (a PME setup, Protective Multiple Earth), well... point is, I really don't know why one might be preferable over the other. Big subject matter. Needs more study.

I still wonder about grounding the inverter itself to the council-provided ground. With the Multiplus, while it is in bypass, it connects the output earth to the input earth, so it is like the inverter isn't there. When in inverter mode, the supply earth is disconnected and the bonding relay connects earth to the case of the inverter (which in my case is tied to the supply earth). This should be perfectly fine as long as there isn't a cable break in the earth connection.

In theory -- and this is what I have to find out -- I'd think that the inverter case needs to be earthed to it's own spike (with the bonding relay tying neutral to earth as well). Then the locally generated supply is correctly earthed to a local earth. I may be wrong, need to talk to an engineer of sorts :-)

 

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  • We all know that in SA there are two types of electricity supply. Single phase and Three phase. What most people don't know is that when it comes to how the "earth" is supplied there are also differen

  • Jaco I would suggest doing both. Have a wire running from the panels directly to an earth spike then have a separate wire connecting the earth spike to the AC earth in your DB as well. Nope, I

  • Second comment on earthing of the negative. Some things to understand. 1. On some inverters, usually the cheaper MSW ones, there might not be complete isolation between battery and grid. Remember

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Also, on the topic of the Infini being "non-insulated". I think what they talk about there is NOT the earthing of the frame, but the earthing of (traditionally) the negative side of the output.

It gets rather technical but there are ways to push voltages up without using a traditional isolating transformer. You still use an inductor, but you essentially use one winding as both primary and secondary, making a boost converter (the other example of such a setup is the autotransformer). With that topology, there is a direct "electron" path from the panels to the output AC. Because of the inverting stage at the end of that pipeline, it essentially means that half the time there is a direct path from the negative of your batteries/PV to the Neutral side of the AC output, and the other half of the time there is a direct path from the positive of the batteries/PV to neutral.

Now if you earth both the negative on the battery/PV AND your output neutral... well then one side of that equation's going to work a little harder than the other side :-P

In addition, as I mentioned before, many MPPTs have their current shunt/hall sensor in the negative line. If you earth both the PV and the battery negative, your MPPT cannot work properly.

I wonder if it is really true that the Infini has a non-isolated boost stage. As far as I know the Axpert has an isolated boost stage (high frequency transformer), and we all know the Victrons still use the old-fashioned toroidal transformer :-)

12 minutes ago, plonkster said:

and we all know the Victrons still use the old-fashioned toroidal transformer :-)

I assume the "we" you speak of is the 5 or so Victron clan members :P and then I exclude TTT as for his enthusiasm will count for an extra 5.. 

Just now, PaulF007 said:

I assume the "we" you speak of is the 5 or so Victron clan members :P and then I exclude TTT as for his enthusiasm will count for an extra 5.. 

No, there are several members of "we" who know this about the blue inverter and thinks it is a bad thing :-)

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