Hi, I have a Gen 3 5kW inverter. All working fine. I had an electrician install an earth rod and a manual 125A throw switch which takes my CU off grid mains and switches to the EPS/Battery. A month ago the DNO was replacing the local transformer so I thought it was a great time to charge the battery night before and in the morning throw the EPS transfer switch. I checked the house wasnt drawing more than 500W, threw the switch and all went dark. It seemed like the inverter was rebooting as eventually all came back ok on EPS. However what I did see was the mains feed from the grid breaker to the inverter had tripped. I guess this is why it all went dark for 5 minutes. The breaker is Hager ADC932R C32. I asked the electrician why this might of happened but he asked me to just contact Givenergy who have ignored me. Any ideas why the breaker tripped? Electrician said I should turn off the CU then throw the transfer switch but thats not easy having to run around the house to do this. Originally I asked for a rotary switch but they put a transfer switch in if that makes any difference? Any ideas? Thanks
I wonder if your problem is that you didn’t cut the AC supply to the inverter before you swapped the transfer switch? That way it is simulating what would happen when a grid failure occurs?
Hi, Would you need to shut that breaker off from inverter to grid before switching my CU across to the EPS? I thought things would all run ‘normal’ as all I am doing is switching CU from direct mains to EPS. All earths are combined too as in DNO earth and my earth rod. Thanks Matt
My guess is that you would, by turning off the inverter to grid breaker to simulate a grid failure, you stop supplying power to the inverter, and the inverter goes into EPS mode.
Then you flip the transfer switch.
Its worth a try to see if this works without incident, its only a hypothesis from my perspective.
My own EPS is wired differently, mine is permanently in EPS mode. My house fusebox is directly connected to the EPS output of my inverter so is running through the inverter EPS all the time. I have a transfer switch but it is set to EPS mode all the time, and I only switch the transfer switch off inverter EPS to grid feed to the fusebox if I want to power down and work on the inverter.
I can safely do this without any risk to overloading my EPS output terminals because my house is effectively split in two, all the high load equipment like the cooker, washing machine, kitchen, electric showers are all on a fusebox in the extension, whereas the original house fusebox only runs the ring mains and lights in the original (unextended) part of the house. These are always low load.
In effect I have a high-load and a low-load fusebox with the latter running off the EPS output
Hi, yup all understood. I’m pretty sure even if I flick the switch to shift my CU to EPS (providing it’s not drawing a crazy load) the breaker between the grid and inverter shouldn’t trip? That’s the bit I’m confused/concerned about.