Inherited a solar problem

Nothing , IT'S your Trailer !!!

I deleted MY points .
I CANNOT have a conversation with DIY while we have a OP who is in a NEC /UL and a school (KIDS) with comments that are not true !
Licence , Teach , Design ,
IBEW since 70's
NABCEP 2002
And I wright some questions !!

 

Update: After chasing this around for a bit, I finally got my answers. The system provides 24 KWH(full sun May to September) which is fed to the grid, and offsets our usage charge for any period it is making power at a 1:1 rate. Since the building draws more than 24KWH even on weekends and holidays, there was never any provision to sell power, only trade. There is an automatic transfer switch that cuts the solar power to the grid anytime there is a grid power failure that must be manually reset by the power company. The initial thoughts were that 5 schools so equipped would offset the energy usage for one, thus the 5 we have and the 5 more scheduled to be built. We have "Smart inverters" that will match cycles before flowing power, much like an emergency generator will sync before transfer. Estimated payback for the 2.4 million dollar system is 20 years, excluding any repair expense. The initial focus was on the monthly energy savings rather than ROI.
Now I move on to the Ice Banking system that isn't making ice and is just functioning as an ordinary chiller system. How anyone could justify spending this kind of money with no one onboard to maintain it is beyond my feeble comprehension.

 

And they think they are saving money.

 

Low on refrigerant?

 

Two 400 ton Trane chillers with air cooled condensers, system has been hacked to run during the day because of faulty loop valves and un-programmed VSD's. They make chilled water and keep the building cool, but no one can get the system to make ice at night during low demand rate time. The walk through today revealed 3 loops, one for the chilled water to the building, one for chilled water through the chillers, and one for making ice in 12 above ground tanks. This one is really broken and will take some time and $$$ to get straightened out. Control valve actuators are $900 each and I need 4 just to get started.

 

Any schematics or Op Manuals?

 

enphase grid tie are set to disconnect on no grid & resysnc in . POWER company has no override or link that I have ever seen .
This design was done in arlington WA , where Im AT NOW.

Sloth

 

Screw machines running on VSD's. Building is a loop and uses a decoupler to tie to the chiller loop, and the chiller loop can switch between a straight chilled water loop or to the ice bank loop via 3 way valves. I see the intent and it's a proven idea to get off peak demand, but they allowed it to be installed with no training for any of the staff back in 2008, and it worked until it didn't. Then no one had a clue how to fix it.

 

Their guy tells me that they have to verify integrity before allowing the system back on the grid, so the manual reset point. I'm used to much smaller scale with single grid-tie inverters, not 100 inverters that sync themselves.