Guru
Joined: 21/06/2018
Location: AustraliaPosts: 1205
| Posted: 09:12am 21 Jul 2024 |
Hi Aaron, I did speak from some personal experience re the transformers giving the electronics a better chance of survival in electrical storm conditions. I also said above that for a direct lightning strike all bets are off.
I designed and manufactured a robust rail crossing charger for a Rail authority in SA who shall remain nameless and the same unit is also used in Tasmania, there were well over 400 sites installed in total, in use to this day.
Prior to this they had a brief experience with offline switch mode chargers that failed regularly and these were not direct lightning strikes, even a strike near to the supply wiring could induce enough energy to take them out. During the use period of these chargers, if there was electrical activity at Port Augusta or similar open and remote location it was almost a given that the charger would fail often with no charred or other evidence of lightning strike but dead FETs and fuse & no go.
Galvanic isolation provided by the mains transformer design reduced these failures to essentially zero. From my experience I would not hesitate to isolate the mains with a transformer if that was determined to be the likely cause of killing my inverters. I also totally agree that being offline will definitely remove the mains as being the culprit. :)
Edited 2024-07-21 19:26 by wiseguy