hi all. searched forum but didn't find anything on this:

i am installing solar electricity in my house, an 8kWh grid-tie system. there will be a large inverter inside, wired to the main panel through dual leg 30A breakers.

my question is this, has anyone any experience with having large inverters in their homes and what effect they can have on absorption of insteon power line control packets?

any thoughts, and especially first hand experience, would be appreciated.


thanks all.

I've had a 5kw system (SunPower) for almost 3 years now and haven't noticed any problems. But I only have about 18 devices.

Richard

I have installed Hundreds of systems with powerline carrier, x10, smarthome, insteon, and UPB.
Filtering solar is very tricky and is difficult at best when it is on your property. If it is your next door neighbor, it is fruitless on smarthome, insteon and x-10 ( I have not verified this on UPB as of yet )
Yes the inverters will cause all sorts of havoc on the powerline.
During the evening it will not be noticed.
During the day when the solar is working especially 9am to 3pm I say good luck.
I have been successful at filtering out 8 systems that were on the property.
Next door or on the same transformer fed by the utility is fruitless.
it would be time to move to a 100% radio type system and not a powerline system.

Harold at X10parts

hmm, conflicting info, but helpful nonetheless. thanks for the replies guys. i'll report my findings when the system goes in. i'm researching hi current filters for inline install at the panel on this as well.. see what i find.

thx

I expect that the "troubles" will be inversely proportional to the quality of the inverter; it's my understanding that all inverters start by creating a 60 cylcle square wave (on/off), and then use various capacitors and filters to "round the edges" enough to make it look "close enough" to the true sine wave you get from the utility to be useful. But the flatter the top and more sudden the change in voltage of the resulting power, the more noise all the inductive loads (motors, electronics power supplies, and CFLs) being fed by that power will generate... whether it's your inverter or somebody elses being fed back to the same transformer.

true enough. this is a sunny boy 8000us, pretty good one i think. very clean sine wave, high q components, german.

but my concern is more the black hole for signals that it might be... i do assume there are high current diodes in there to keep current from going back to the panels.. that may solve the issue right there.

i'm gonna install and see what happens. the old trial and error method.


thanks for the thoughts!

wanted to update in case anyone is interested in this thread:

the pv system is up and running for some weeks now. there has been no noticeable change in the powerline control system whatsoever, everything still works just fine with the inverter. so. there you have it. very pleased.

the system makes about 50kWh a day, my electric bill should be close to zero, until the tesla comes home.. lol. but i've moved to time-of-use metering to ameliorate some of that hurt.. running my house/life on the sun has been a lifelong dream, started with the family vacation home in maine, installed that system myself, 4kW, about 10 years ago, still going super strong. and now the year round house has an 8.4kW system, grid-tie only, and so far it has been spectacular. i look forward to more and more of the world going this way as the costs come down. it's the way it ought to be. all of life on this planet is owed to the photons from the sun, so why on earth would we not be able to drive our cars and cool our homes on them???

hasten the day.

sorry for the enthusing so early in the am.

Very cool. I definitely look forward to the day when I can afford to install at my house. Among other things, though, my electrical coop will have to come to their senses.

Great info -- I'm glad your power inverter didn't introduce any HA problems.

I'd love to have a grid-tie setup. But since I'm able to get electrical at 9¢ / kWh, I'm afraid the breakeven point would take forever and likely longer than I'll be in the house. We just need a good breakthrough or two in solar panel efficiency or production costs...

yeah, it's still pretty pricey for a good system. i only jumped now because the federal incentives are really drying up and don't look to come back anytime soon... i definitely couldn't afford it without the incentive. i got in on the tail end, already the price per watt subsidy was half what it was in the beginning rounds of the monies...

but, as you say, the production cost will keep falling, efficiency will climb bit by bit...

As a point of info, I've also not had trouble with Insteon on my outback VFX inverter.

It did not work with my pervious cheap/square wave inverter.

-Chris