My Kodak inverter WMIII 5Kw 48v will not charge my battery from generator unless the inverter is switched off, while suppling power Via battery or PV's it shows generator is running but does not supply power to AC or charge battery. Basically I'm running the generator for nothing, tried all different settings given by tech but no change. Any ideas appreciated. 

This is a very common problem and is basically due to the sudden loading of the generator which creates a voltage drop and or frequency change which the inverter sees as a fault and kicks it out. It's good to try and load the generator a bit and then turn on the inverter. A suggestion from Coulomb is to run a 200W (I think it was 200W) resistive load and then to start the inverter. What we do for clients is install a bypass switch so their full load is run off the generator and not through the inverter. The inverter is still connected to the generator feed so it basically only draws what current the ac charge is set to. This improves the stability and stops the sudden loading. Recommended settings for the inverter are to be in appliance mode and not have the ac charge set too high, we tend to set it to 10A but you might be able to get away with more, it depends on your load and your generator.

This post might also be handy:

 

14 hours ago, Shadders said:

This is a very common problem and is basically due to the sudden loading of the generator which creates a voltage drop and or frequency change which the inverter sees as a fault and kicks it out. It's good to try and load the generator a bit and then turn on the inverter. A suggestion from Coulomb is to run a 200W (I think it was 200W) resistive load and then to start the inverter. What we do for clients is install a bypass switch so their full load is run off the generator and not through the inverter. The inverter is still connected to the generator feed so it basically only draws what current the ac charge is set to. This improves the stability and stops the sudden loading. Recommended settings for the inverter are to be in appliance mode and not have the ac charge set too high, we tend to set it to 10A but you might be able to get away with more, it depends on your load and your generator.

Thank you, the generator is a 2.2 KW and I've set the frequency to 50.2 Hz as this is as close to 50 as I could get. Load at night especially is never more than 1 KW, daytime varies between 1.5 and 1.8 KW. The generator is mostly used to charge battery at night or cloudy days and that is when I have to switch the system off in order for battery to charge, also the PV's and generator will not charge at the same time unless system is off so I sit in the stone age for an hour while it charges.  Charge is set at 10A.

If i were to install a bypass how would i do this.

Many many Thanks

Dean

 

Here's an example of how we would typically install. We have changed the surge protector to the other side of the inverter input breaker so it's closer to the inverter which then has less chance of experiencing induced surges from upstream. The other major benefit of having this is that if your inverter ever has a fault you can isolate it and still provide power to the load.

Edited April 8, 20215 yr by Shadders
Added last sentence.

3 hours ago, Dean K said:

the generator is a 2.2 KW and I've set the frequency to 50.2 Hz

From my experience the inverter is more upset by the change in frequency than the actual frequency. One customer was running his generator at 47Hz and the inverter was happy but as soon as a water pump turned on the frequency dropped then returned and in that time the inverter kicked out. As soon as things were stable for a bit it was happy again.

As a last comment I've tried at home to run a VMIII 5kVA off a 2.5kVA generator and really struggled to get the loading correct so that the generator power was stable even by using a bypass switch. It did work but it took time to balance things out.

Thanks for the advice turns out Kodak inverter was faulty, I've changed the system now to a 7.1 kW super cap battery with  a deye inverter 5 kW and it works well and takes generator charge, I've just added a AVR to the generator.

You might find the thread on those so-called "super capacitor" products enlightening.