Perils Of All In One Inverters
For long, I debated with likes of MORNINGSTAR Corp on their design philosophy of separating each of the off grid components into smaller functional blocks. Their solar charge controllers, which is their core product, is just that – a controller (period). No frills attached. It is however possible to add additional accessories to achieve your desired result from the system.
Sometimes this became so frustrating (especially given that we are based in Dubai and getting anything shipped from US is always a challenge) that we would fall back upon systems that offered ALL-IN-ONE solutions.
Remember, we are not living in a perfect work. This applied to everything including solar components, that are so much prone to failures. Now, the more components you pack in ONE big juggernaut, the possibility of failures compounds and the end result is a product that has much higher risk of failure. Now, bring in the systems with cascaded inverters.
Our system where we have 4 units of 30KW hybrid all in one system was a major challenge due to above mentioned issues. It became more complicated due to the fact that the DC side used almost 400VDC system voltage from LiFePO4 battery bank. Not only there were hardware concerns, the firmware and communication between the inverter bank and the BMS made things even more challenging. What could have gotten commissioned in a week, took us more than 3 months and 1 fried inverter to get the system started.
Thankfully the system is running fine and functioning as expected. However this has left us with more questions than answers.