CT coil in solar setup affecting other electronics ?

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Digilus

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This might be off topic - but it is related to solar - and solar install . Mods feel free to punt this into the forum of your choice if it is wrong.

Setup: Solar - Sunsynk Inverter - CT coil installed somewhere, so that extra solar power now back-feeds to the geyser / oven / stove. Because of the CT coil - inverter can sense how much load there is and provide it to those 3 - but they are not explicitly on the inverter (no eskom, no power for those).

The hob / stove top is a Defy glass top with those touch sensitive controls to turn plates on and bump up temperatures etc.

Problem: Since installing Solar - the control board for the stove gets really hot when the stove is not even in use. Not the plates, the actual board / area where the buttons are. Have already replaced the control board (entire thing) once - but give it 30 to 60 minutes and it starts to heat up again. Weirdly, stove has the same sort of touch buttons and those don't heat up at all (the stove ones are far LESS sensitive though - so might be different parts).

Tested switching entire house back over to Eskom (diverting the inverter entirely) - and the problem goes away.

Not being an engineer - wondering if anyone has bright ideas how to solve - or is it just some weird interference - and - I need to ditch stove for gas equivalent (to stop stove people pointing at solar people and visa versa) ?
 
Last edited:
I
Digilus said:
This might be off topic - but it is related to solar - and solar install . Mods feel free to punt this into the forum of your choice if it is wrong.

Setup: Solar - Sunsynk Inverter - CT coil installed somewhere, so that extra solar power now back-feeds to the geyser / oven / stove. Because of the CT coil - inverter can sense how much load there is and provide it to those 3 - but they are not explicitly on the inverter (no eskom, no power for those).

The hob / stove top is a Defy glass top with those touch sensitive controls to turn plates on and bump up temperatures etc.

Problem: Since installing Solar - the control board for the stove gets really hot when the stove is not even in use. Not the plates, the actual board / area where the buttons are. Have already replaced the control board (entire thing) once - but give it 30 to 60 minutes and it starts to heat up again. Weirdly, stove has the same sort of touch buttons and those don't heat up at all (the stove ones are far LESS sensitive though - so might be different parts).

Tested switching entire house back over to Eskom (diverting the inverter entirely) - and the problem goes away.

Not being an engineer - wondering if anyone has bright ideas how to solve - or is it just some weird interference - and - I need to ditch stove for gas equivalent (to stop stove people pointing at solar people and visa versa) ?
Click to expand...
Have heard from somebody in the solar game that the way/freq switch rate the sunsynk does to generate the pure sine wave can cause interference with some sensitive devices

The CT coil doesn't do anything funny ie the power flowing through the wire the coil surrounds just causes it to generate power how much power it generates is what the sunsynk uses to determine how much power is being pulled from grid

So the problem has nothing to do with the coil but the inverter imo

Edit have seen on other forums that some say firmware update made their problems less

So would check that firmware is latest
 
Digilus said:
This might be off topic - but it is related to solar - and solar install . Mods feel free to punt this into the forum of your choice if it is wrong.

Setup: Solar - Sunsynk Inverter - CT coil installed somewhere, so that extra solar power now back-feeds to the geyser / oven / stove. Because of the CT coil - inverter can sense how much load there is and provide it to those 3 - but they are not explicitly on the inverter (no eskom, no power for those).

The hob / stove top is a Defy glass top with those touch sensitive controls to turn plates on and bump up temperatures etc.

Problem: Since installing Solar - the control board for the stove gets really hot when the stove is not even in use. Not the plates, the actual board / area where the buttons are. Have already replaced the control board (entire thing) once - but give it 30 to 60 minutes and it starts to heat up again. Weirdly, stove has the same sort of touch buttons and those don't heat up at all (the stove ones are far LESS sensitive though - so might be different parts).

Tested switching entire house back over to Eskom (diverting the inverter entirely) - and the problem goes away.

Not being an engineer - wondering if anyone has bright ideas how to solve - or is it just some weird interference - and - I need to ditch stove for gas equivalent (to stop stove people pointing at solar people and visa versa) ?
Click to expand...
Can you switch your power source straight from muni/eskom, i.e. bypass the inverter and see if you have the same issue?
 
Digilus said:
This might be off topic - but it is related to solar - and solar install . Mods feel free to punt this into the forum of your choice if it is wrong.

Setup: Solar - Sunsynk Inverter - CT coil installed somewhere, so that extra solar power now back-feeds to the geyser / oven / stove. Because of the CT coil - inverter can sense how much load there is and provide it to those 3 - but they are not explicitly on the inverter (no eskom, no power for those).

The hob / stove top is a Defy glass top with those touch sensitive controls to turn plates on and bump up temperatures etc.

Problem: Since installing Solar - the control board for the stove gets really hot when the stove is not even in use. Not the plates, the actual board / area where the buttons are. Have already replaced the control board (entire thing) once - but give it 30 to 60 minutes and it starts to heat up again. Weirdly, stove has the same sort of touch buttons and those don't heat up at all (the stove ones are far LESS sensitive though - so might be different parts).

Tested switching entire house back over to Eskom (diverting the inverter entirely) - and the problem goes away.

Not being an engineer - wondering if anyone has bright ideas how to solve - or is it just some weird interference - and - I need to ditch stove for gas equivalent (to stop stove people pointing at solar people and visa versa) ?
Click to expand...
And does it get hot when there is no solar at night to dump the CT-measured excess into?
 
rh1 said:
Can you switch your power source straight from muni/eskom, i.e. bypass the inverter and see if you have the same issue?
Click to expand...
Yep - I did exactly that a few times this weekend. Confirmed - if no inverter is in the loop, then it the controler / stove top doesn't heat up.
 
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Don't know how the sunsynk changes its output when pushing to grid (i'm not the electrical engineer :) )

Can always connect to critical load and see if it changes behaviour ie that it is doing a normal output not pushing against eskom
 
leon.davibe said:
I

Have heard from somebody in the solar game that the way/freq switch rate the sunsynk does to generate the pure sine wave can cause interference with some sensitive devices

The CT coil doesn't do anything funny ie the power flowing through the wire the coil surrounds just causes it to generate power how much power it generates is what the sunsynk uses to determine how much power is being pulled from grid

So the problem has nothing to do with the coil but the inverter imo

Edit have seen on other forums that some say firmware update made their problems less

So would check that firmware is latest
Click to expand...
Harmonics from the IGBTs.
 
Present us a picture of this stove.
Also show the area that heats up.

You have to use a clamp meter and a decent multimeter.
This will speed up fault finding.
 
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