SWEA 250 Watt Grid Tie Inverter

[G8GMU]

Has anyone any information about the SWEA 250 Watt grid tie inverte?
Is it G83 certified or legal for UK use?

How is the start point voltage adjusted by means of a computer, or has the CPU got to be changed for  nominal 36 Volt or 24 Volt input

Cheers

G8GMU

[merkland]

Have just purchased one despite Ivan's objection but not got it connected up yet. Mine is for a 200w 24v wind turbine, you have to provide the specification for your turbine and SWEA then tailor the CPU to suit.
As far as your question  "Is it G83 certified or legal for UK use?" have you heard the story of Nelson putting the telescope to his blind eye then saying 'what signal I see no signal'!!!!!!!!!!

merkland.

[northern installer]

or ,as we say round here  'I see no ships...only  ****ing hardships' 

[Ivan]

We had terrible trouble with them. It looked a promising inverter, but we ended up with all of them back with one failure or another. My biggest concern was the one that burst into flames, and nearly burnt a house down. The manufacturer denied all responsibility despite having asked us to supply the customer and approved his particular application.

[Rob in Halstock]

I have 2 of these inverters myself and they are wonderfull !.... Very well made and ideal for the enthusiast who wants flexiability. You can adjust the power curve yourself very easily with a simple COM lead to your PC. No speacial software requierd just Windows Hyperterminal.

They also have very very low internal power draw. When in standby mode IE when the turbine is producing below 20v, they only draw 0.4w of power from the turbine, not the grid. If the turbine voltage falls below about 10v they shut down totaly and draw no power at all !!.

Cant rate these inverters highley enough and the customer Service from both Marcel and Mari at SWEA is seccond to none !.

Has anyone any information about the SWEA 250 Watt grid tie inverte?
Is it G83 certified or legal for UK use?

How is the start point voltage adjusted by means of a computer, or has the CPU got to be changed for  nominal 36 Volt or 24 Volt input

Cheers

G8GMU

[Ivan]

Shame Navitron didn't receive the same excellent support that you have. We have a box full of burnt-out SWEA inverters, and they refused to replace them under warranty, despite being only a few weeks old. We were the unfortunate guinea pigs for their development, which very luckily didn't end in tragedy

[Rob in Halstock]

Shame Navitron didn't receive the same excellent support that you have. We have a box full of burnt-out SWEA inverters, and they refused to replace them under warranty, despite being only a few weeks old. We were the unfortunate guinea pigs for their development, which very luckily didn't end in tragedy

I am sorry to hear about the difficulty you had. I guess every company has teething problems with new products in the begining. I would be interested to know exactly what problems you had and under what circumstances they occured. To date I have had no issues at all !. But if I have an idea of what has gone wrong for other users, I can try to avoid those same situations.

I must say though that I have always found Marcel and Mari both to be very freindly people and always willing to go that extra mile to help. Marcel even made a up a speacial dump load controller for me recently because I wanted it to cut in at a lower voltage. He made it up without me even asking him to do so..... Didnt charge me at all. However I didnt need it in the end because I just decided to add another inverter instead. That way I can leave the current dump load voltage settings alone.

[Ivan]

In all of the inverters, the dump load resistor overheated and melted the unit. I explained to them that I thought it was too small for braking turbines under heavy wind. They knew better, until we had demonstrated otherwise. One unit caught fire, setting fire to nearby furnishings. Very luckily spotted by the customer who just happened to be walking through the room at the time. The worst bit was that he had been speaking directly to them and they had advised him on the setup for his particular application.

Because we had 10 or 15units which had failed (all through the same problem), despite it happening within a few months of purchase, they refused to replace them. I was extremely disappointed in how they treated us, despite the fact that we introduced them to the UK market and introduced them to our wind turbine partners in China.

[Rob in Halstock]

In all of the inverters, the dump load resistor overheated and melted the unit. I explained to them that I thought it was too small for braking turbines under heavy wind. They knew better, until we had demonstrated otherwise. One unit caught fire, setting fire to nearby furnishings. Very luckily spotted by the customer who just happened to be walking through the room at the time. The worst bit was that he had been speaking directly to them and they had advised him on the setup for his particular application.

Because we had 10 or 15units which had failed (all through the same problem), despite it happening within a few months of purchase, they refused to replace them. I was extremely disappointed in how they treated us, despite the fact that we introduced them to the UK market and introduced them to our wind turbine partners in China.

I think the units you had must have been very old......?. All the inverters they make now have external dump loads. Whilst SWEA do offer one, you have the option to use whatever dumpload you desire. The dump load they offer has 2 x 100w resistors encased inside an aluminum heatsink. The idea is that the inverters are still operating when the dump load kicks in, so it is not necesary for the dump load to take the full power of the turbine. 1Kw turbines requier two of these dump load units connected in paralell. However just incase there is a grid failure and the inverters shut off whilst the turbine is operating in high wind. The system will automaticaly apply the dump load followed after a few secconds by a short circuit..

I am told that this is OK for small turbines, but NOT for turbines in exess of 1Kw as there is a possibility of damage to the turbine windings. Larger turbines requier a significantly larger dump load and cannot be short circuited under any circumstances.

I have tested the system during high winds and it would apear to work as expected.

[Ivan]

Yes, we were the guinea pigs unfortunately.

It was the ethics and morals of the company I particularly objected to. They simply ran from the problem, redesigned their inverter and went elsewhere for their business. Not a good way to treat a distributor who has purchased units at near retail price (I think we got £10 knocked off), tested them at our expense, identified the faults and provided detailed feedback.

We still have the inverters in a box somewhere. Mari wasn't interested in replacing them for us, as they needed redesigning, rather than repairing.

[Rob in Halstock]

Yes, we were the guinea pigs unfortunately.

It was the ethics and morals of the company I particularly objected to. They simply ran from the problem, redesigned their inverter and went elsewhere for their business. Not a good way to treat a distributor who has purchased units at near retail price (I think we got £10 knocked off), tested them at our expense, identified the faults and provided detailed feedback.

We still have the inverters in a box somewhere. Mari wasn't interested in replacing them for us, as they needed redesigning, rather than repairing.

I am sorry to hear about your bad experience. Im sure similar stories exist for many early purchacers of a new product. However the current inverters they sell apear to be relaible and of good quality. My only objection is that I feel the cut in point for the dump load should be able to be manualy adjusted over a wide range. Instead they have it fixed at either 40vdc or 55vdc, this causes a problem if you have a 24v turbine which rarley ever reaches 55v unless you disconnect the incoming feed. One reason I have decided to change my existing turbine and replace it with a 48v version.

[Ivan]

I agree, it's not abnormal for small scale manufacturers to go through teething problems. It's the way they deal with them that really says something about the company ethics and the morals of the people behind the company. Unfortunately, they failed to deal with the problems they created, and I suspect if anything went badly wrong in the future (eg batch of bad components) they'd deal with their customers in the same way.

[Rob in Halstock]

I agree, it's not abnormal for small scale manufacturers to go through teething problems. It's the way they deal with them that really says something about the company ethics and the morals of the people behind the company. Unfortunately, they failed to deal with the problems they created, and I suspect if anything went badly wrong in the future (eg batch of bad components) they'd deal with their customers in the same way.

Well so far Mari has been very helpfull toward me. He sent out new ROM chips within a day when my first order came through with wrong chips installed. The company also gave its full approval of a modification I had to do to the output connection in order to comply with BS7671. When I complained about the dump load voltage setting, Mari went and built a new dump load PCB with a custom voltage setting. However he was a little quick off the mark with that one as I had already resolved the problem another way before he told me what he had done. I think it may have a lot to do with the way some people deal with foriegn companies. Often confusions can easily come about , through differences in language. I think its important to be understanding of this and be clear about what it is you need from them and how you think they can help.

Im sorry to hear about you bad experiences. However all in all SWEA have been very helpfull with my purchaces and I have nothing but praises for them. Even when things have not gone exactly to plan, they have always done their best to help and resolve an issue.

[Ivan]

Maybe Mari behaves differently when he is dealing directly with end-users, but he failed 100% to sort out the mass of problems we had with his products when distributing in the UK. I guess he just stuck his head in the sand when things went wrong in a big way. It's a warning in case they ever have serious problems in the future.

Anyway, enough free advertising for them. Thread locked.