Guru
Joined: 31/12/2016
Location: AustraliaPosts: 1217
| Posted: 03:17am 15 Oct 2017 |
Well, no insurance for this. Most of the time insurance isn't worth the paper its printed on IMO, probably cost more than the inverter was worth?
It was one hell of a bang, the buttons on the front of the inverter flew out I thought all the fets would be cratered, but no however I'm sure some are shorted, some other parts are shorted and its beyond repair.
As it turns out all the power from the strike came through the neutral wire after jumping from the active at the meter, it went to ground in many places and I could see the Earth Rods took some of the power but the ground was just to dry.
This particular incident wont happen again, The power line has now been cut and removed and the meters have been removed by energex. (the same crew that removed the fuses) I will remove the power pole soon, Bugger the grid.
Here is the irony of it, back in AUG 22 2016 we wanted AGL to disconnect and remove the wire and the meters as we don't use the grid anyway the answer was to pay about $800 or more and a wasted truck visit fee, what ever that meant, All up about the price of the inverter.
HI Glenn
Had a good chat with Energex about some other things they have seen with solar systems, holes burnt through the roof (Potentially Burning down the house) was one of them (improper grounding) and stuffed GTI's, I wont have any solar panels on the roof of the house partly for this reason, also I don't need any more Bird sh*t going in to the water tank.
All the solar panels here are on manual tracking towers, Its likely they will be hit too at some stage and most likely go to ground, I always disconnect the solar when the storm approaches.
There is a lessen in this for us with off grid inverters, perhaps some MOV's fitted to the L N in a small enclosure (with a decent earth wire to ground) between inverter output breaker and the main box with RCB and MCB's. Just thinking about it, cant see anything stopping a big hit.
Aaron