Wiring an inverter for backup power,rcd tripping

mark hayes · 23 Jul 2017

a sparky i used to work with years ago he is also going to check this out but he is puzzled its been doing my head in why it wouldnt work and no one as really came up with any ideas from everywhere i have asked,so my house is running now but that tester is saying no earth although there is 2.4 m of rods in the ground with 16mm2 wire coming into my garage

flameport · 23 Jul 2017

The pictures show the installation to be rather a shambles.

If there is no documentation to indicate how it is wired, then the only sensible option is to have someone examine the whole installation, create the appropriate documentation and amend the wiring or whatever else as appropriate.

Randomly disconnecting and connecting things to get something which appears to work is not safe, and could result in the equipment being damaged. There is also the possibility of parts being energised when they should not be, creating danger to persons both inside and outside of the installation area.

mark hayes · 23 Jul 2017

flameport said:
The pictures show the installation to be rather a shambles.

If there is no documentation to indicate how it is wired, then the only sensible option is to have someone examine the whole installation, create the appropriate documentation and amend the wiring or whatever else as appropriate.

Randomly disconnecting and connecting things to get something which appears to work is not safe, and could result in the equipment being damaged. There is also the possibility of parts being energised when they should not be, creating danger to persons both inside and outside of the installation area.

of course you are correct it is a shambles because the wires are on show for a reason i needed to that know the wires are not getting warm in any way that inverter will produce 7000 watt surge so all wiring is based on that even down to the 120mm2 battery cable the 6mm solid copper battery joining bars rated at 850 amp so thanks for the reply and yes everything is back to normal and i have sort of found the problem myself but i would like to thank all the guys who tried to help me
THIS STORY CONTINUES

EFLImpudence · 23 Jul 2017

I would, at least, reconnect the earth.

If this causes it to trip the RCD then you have a fault which should be rectified.
If it doesnt cause a trip then the other wiring must be wrong somewhere.

mark hayes · 23 Jul 2017

EFLImpudence said:
I would, at least, reconnect the earth.

If this causes it to trip the RCD then you have a fault which should be rectified.
If it doesnt cause a trip then the other wiring must be wrong somewhere.

cheers pal its weird if i turn the consumer off in the garage off its coming up as no earth but turn it back on and i have an earth strange as only the L & N are only disconnected BUT i think DEADSHORT is onto something quote..Have you tried switching off the supply to the garage it must be supplied from the house CU? I would use the switch on the garage CU to ensure no neutral path exists from the house

thanks guys

deadshort · 23 Jul 2017

Why have you disconnected the earth on the inverter ? I would reconnect that. Have you checked the earth on the sockets in the house ?

DS

mark hayes · 23 Jul 2017

right here goes i connected the mains back into the inverter if i turn off the cu off in the garage i lose the earth although earth is connected in the cu and in the transfer switch so i switched over to invert and the house electric is present but although running through my house cu i dont have an earth .does it make sense

Adam_151 · 23 Jul 2017

Sounds like the inverter does not have a N-E bond present (if its a switched alterative to the grid supply then I can't see why it can't have such a bond on the output) but is somehow seeing the suppliers N-E bond through the charger for the battery bank, (unless the double pole isolator is operated) which it shouldn't do, as one would expect the charger to be electrically separated.

You need somone on site to pick through whats been done, theres something odd about how the battery charger is wired I'm sure

mark hayes · 23 Jul 2017

Adam_151 said:
Sounds like the inverter does not have a N-E bond present (if its a switched alterative to the grid supply then I can't see why it can't have such a bond on the output) but is somehow seeing the suppliers N-E bond through the charger for the battery bank, (unless the double pole isolator is operated) which it shouldn't do, as one would expect the charger to be electrically separated.

You need somone on site to pick through whats been done, theres something odd about how the battery charger is wired I'm sure

i found this before sounds familiar

mark hayes · 23 Jul 2017

Adam_151 said:
Sounds like the inverter does not have a N-E bond present (if its a switched alterative to the grid supply then I can't see why it can't have such a bond on the output) but is somehow seeing the suppliers N-E bond through the charger for the battery bank, (unless the double pole isolator is operated) which it shouldn't do, as one would expect the charger to be electrically separated.

You need somone on site to pick through whats been done, theres something odd about how the battery charger is wired I'm sure

thank you for your time mate

ericmark · 24 Jul 2017

In the past I have had generators where the earth connection is not bonded to either supply line, be it an IT arrangement or bonded to some mid point between the line 1 and line 2. In essence it does not have a neutral but line 1 and line 2.

The problem is should anyone try bonding a line to earth to produce a neutral where the is also a bond to some other point it can produce a dead short, as a result one needs to do some very careful testing before you bond any line to earth.

As already stated you should have been left some paperwork showing what has been done, without that some one will need to very carefully follow the wiring and test to find out what is in place, it may be the neutral is bonded to earth at the wrong point, or a double pole switch has a welded contact or even wrong type of RCD. However it is not something which can really be sorted on a forum, you need some one there on site to sort it.

ban-all-sheds · 24 Jul 2017

mark hayes said:
i have had a full off grid set up installed long story but anyhow to put it shortly from my inverter is a new consumer next to it in my garage with 10mm2 cable going into my house into a 100amp manual transfer switch fitted after a 100 main switch so it makes it safe. If we have a power cut its just turn main switch off and then turn transfer from position 1 to 3 where the inverter is wired into and goes into my other new schneider consumer which was installed last year BUT the inverter trips everytime and if i set the rcd again it trips the one in the garage.the inverter is wired into the original garage consumer as the inverter as a 90amp charger built in but its turned off at the breaker and is only turned on when not inverting also the inverter as 2.4m of copper grounding rods.The sparky who wired the inverter had to go work in saudi so i cant call him back,also note if i wire a socket directly from the inverter it powers my washer,dryer,kettle no problem at all but i like the idea of using my house consumer
PLEASE HELP

mark hayes said:
the charger is fed via a SP breaker 30amp but as the inverter as got pass through BUT if the power goes it will go straight to battery's,which is no good for the person trying to fix the problem on the street so i only ever turn on to charge my batterys BUT i turn off the invert fuction as it will go into tragic circle
and this is how the inverter get its earth as well as the rods

mark hayes said:
all it states is 30 amp in and 30amp out but use 10mm2 to a mini consumer and 10mm2 to your loads and thats about it

mark hayes said:
a sparky i used to work with years ago he is also going to check this out but he is puzzled its been doing my head in why it wouldnt work and no one as really came up with any ideas from everywhere i have asked,so my house is running now but that tester is saying no earth although there is 2.4 m of rods in the ground with 16mm2 wire coming into my garage

mark hayes said:
right here goes i connected the mains back into the inverter if i turn off the cu off in the garage i lose the earth although earth is connected in the cu and in the transfer switch so i switched over to invert and the house electric is present but although running through my house cu i dont have an earth .does it make sense

Mark - please try printing out some of your stream-of-consciousness stuff and have someone who has never seen it before read it back to you exactly as you have written it. See how easy it is to make sense of it.

mark hayes · 24 Jul 2017

the inverter is N-E bonded when ac is present. i bit the bullet and rang xantrex this morning and this is what they say you cannot run the inverter on the same circuit it must have a separate c.u which you connect the loads you wish to run up to 30 amps and when you apply power to this circuit it will bypass from my house circuit running the items as before until the grid goes down which without a blink the loads will operate from the inverter side and thus not sending power back down the line to hurt someone .they also say that if i want to save electric i can switch the power off to the inverter in turn this will run my loads using batteries and my 4kw of solar .job done. i tried this just now and earth is present all the time
again thanks for all the messages and i appreciate your time

ban-all-sheds · 24 Jul 2017

Mark - if you were speaking to someone you would not say that the way you have written it. You would have pauses etc.

mark hayes · 24 Jul 2017

ban-all-sheds said:
Mark - if you were speaking to someone you would not say that the way you have written it. You would have pauses etc.

sorry im off to saudi myself today i wrote it in layman terms ,funny though how nobody seems to know this problem but then how many people in the uk are off grid,and on grid with my sunny boy im glad i have it sorted before i go

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Wiring an inverter for backup power,rcd tripping

mark hayes

flameport

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EFLImpudence

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deadshort

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Adam_151

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