Monday, April 5, 2010

Catching Up: Inverter & Wiring Installation

The Tigo folks, in particular Daniel and Stuart, have gone above and beyond in helping to figure out why there did not seem to be any communication between the MMU and the gateway. We spent a bit of time on the phone with the cover off of the gateway box, prodding and poking and looking at LEDs to see if we could figure out what might be wrong.

Meanwhile, Vince Landvatter and his brother, both master electricians, came by and we got the inverter mounted, the high-voltage DC wiring run, the AC feed to the service panel installed, the AC disconnect mounted, and the heavy-duty Tigo MMU box set up.

The inverter, a Fronius IG Plus 5.0, is mounted inside our garage, thus keeping it out of the elements and in a more moderate climate. Our outdoor temperatures range from just above 0°F to 110°F over the year. Also, the most convenient locations outdoors would be in full sun, which is something I wanted to avoid. This indoor location is just around the corner from the service panel.

Once the electricians got the Fronius mounted, I popped it open (the bottom part that is), pulled off the cover panel, removed the insulating sheets, and pulled the slugs Fronius had pre-installed in the fuse holders. DON'T FORGET TO DO THIS BEFORE THE DC FEEDS FROM THE MODULE SERIES ARE HOOKED UP!

The outdoor installation includes the main service panel, the AC disconnect, a place for the Tigo MMU, and, very importantly, signage.

The small box in the middle is the AC disconnect. It must be located very near (i.e. adjacent to) the main service panel so that a utility technician can pull the disconnect should maintenance work be required in the area. In this case, the AC disconnect is redundant (but required by the utility for safety) since the Fronius will automatically shut down the AC feed should it discover no AC on the utility side of things.

The beige box in the right is where the Tigo MMU goes. The flexible conduit coming out of the bottom of that box and snaking upwards is for the gateway cable. The flexible conduit coming out of the bottom of the Tigo box and snaking to the left is for the ethernet cable.

The beige box just below the AC disconnect is the network interface box. Formerly used by the telephone company, I had the foresight when building the house to pull four Cat 5e ethernet cables from the utility room. This was very convenient for use by the Tigo MMU to connect to the Internet and Tigo's monitoring web site.

The electricians got everything wired up so all we need now is for Rocky Mountain Power to come and inspect things. Well, almost ready...

One last thing to do: check the module series voltages at the inverter. And it's a good thing I did! And it's a good thing I pulled the fuse slugs earlier! Because one of the module series had been wired in reverse. A quick trip to the j-box on the roof and everything was back on track.

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