Up Owe Her?

[The Blind Wolf]

I have to say this, upower, really, that is I hope a old name and not a new one, otherwise they must have ate the wrong raw fish last night.  Geesh.  I litterly have to pronounce it as the title says I'm too southern to even try that tongue twisting word.

[Waterman]

I have two working and one dead one.  One they screwed up on though and put a PowerJack label on instead of the Upower. 😁

[Sid Genetry Solar]

Have a "15,000W" U-Power.  Used an ASL3 PJ transformer...which will overheat at 3kw on a good day.  Must be a really strong label I guess...

[The Blind Wolf]

*laughs* So I take it this was before Power Jack, and since they owed so many law suit for falsely claiming it can do this and such, they renamed to Power Jack.  Now I know. . .

[Sid Genetry Solar]

Kinda hard to sue a Chinese company, so...they can get away with stuff we at Genetry Solar couldn't.  Such is business.

[dochubert]

Actually, Upower is a recent renaming of powerjack's cheaper version inverters.  (I know! They're ALL cheap!  Probably why I buy them)

The powerjack name is lately reserved for their larger models, mostly.

As a rule of thumb, the powerjack models will generally have a transformer just big enough to run almost half of the rated power in watts.  The upower models, on the other hand, might have any size transformer, usually way too small.  Some have a moderate sized L1 and neutral transformer output wire and a tiny L2 wire. (Try balancing your load with that!)

 

[Sid Genetry Solar]

21 minutes ago, dochubert said:

Some have a moderate sized L1 and neutral transformer output wire and a tiny L2 wire. (Try balancing your load with that!)

I can confirm that this is the case with EVERY PJ transformer.  L2 will inevitably have half the number of strands as L1.  Certainly a curious implementation of split-phase...maybe they don't understand the U.S. split-phase concept.  It makes sense from an engineering standpoint to say that all the 120v loads "will only be on one phase"...problem is that U.S. houses aren't wired that way.

[dochubert]

Another interesting but screwy thing about Upower inverters is the way the transformer's output leads are wired through the control board.

L1 lead from transformer connects to the N input terminal  on the control board and the N lead (centertap) from transformer connects through the hall sensor to the L1 input terminal.

The output L1 terminal is then connected to the front panel neutral output  connection point and the output N terminal connected to the front panel L1 output connection point.  It works out in the end but why do it that way?  Like I said, screwy! (I left out fuses/breakers to keep it simpler)

I've seen 4 Upower inverters wired this way over the last year and a half so they must be doing it on purpose!

Now that I think about it, who told powerjack that fuses/breakers in parallel are additive or somehow better or safer?  Some newer models have 2-4 fuses wired in parallel. I haven't seen inside them, but some of powerjack's big box models have a whole swath of fuses on the front!   Putting multiple fuses in parallel just makes them completely worthless.  They will not trip at their 'rated' value and probably won't trip at anything except possibly a dead short.  Might not trip then either.  Screwy!

[Sid Genetry Solar]

1 hour ago, dochubert said:

Now that I think about it, who told powerjack that fuses/breakers in parallel are additive or somehow better or safer?

Wasn't me, that's for sure.  I can say that a swath of fuses is a lot cheaper than a properly rated breaker, though...

[Waterman]

On 2/16/2021 at 1:00 PM, Sid Genetry Solar said:

Have a "15,000W" U-Power.  Used an ASL3 PJ transformer...which will overheat at 3kw on a good day.  Must be a really strong label I guess...

And yet my 6K unit has run at 3K with no problem on an ASL-1 transformer. Now the fun part is that the fan can come on even when the unit isn't in use.

[Waterman]

On 2/16/2021 at 5:24 PM, dochubert said:

Actually, Upower is a recent renaming of powerjack's cheaper version inverters.  (I know! They're ALL cheap!  Probably why I buy them)

The powerjack name is lately reserved for their larger models, mostly.

As a rule of thumb, the powerjack models will generally have a transformer just big enough to run almost half of the rated power in watts.  The upower models, on the other hand, might have any size transformer, usually way too small.  Some have a moderate sized L1 and neutral transformer output wire and a tiny L2 wire. (Try balancing your load with that!)

 

I just went down and checked one of mine. While there are 4 wires coming out of mine, if you squeeze all of the wire sleeves, they are the same size inside. Two are tied together and go to the board. And two are separate. One going to the board and one to the fuses.

[Waterman]

On 2/17/2021 at 9:43 PM, Sid Genetry Solar said:

Wasn't me, that's for sure.  I can say that a swath of fuses is a lot cheaper than a properly rated breaker, though...

Ever look at some power panels in a home? It is common to see 4 breakers tied together from the factory to make one 240VAC breaker with two for each leg. Do I like them that way, heck no. I'd like to see all of them as a proper breaker where there is only one unit. Square-D is one of those companies.

[Sid Genetry Solar]

10 hours ago, Waterman said:

And yet my 6K unit has run at 3K with no problem on an ASL-1 transformer. Now the fun part is that the fan can come on even when the unit isn't in use.

You must have a lucky transformer; my AS-5 transformer in a 9KW PJ unit would overheat at 3kw and shut down.

Gotta love those miniature thermal switches that aren't rated for multi-amp loads OR DC voltage...running several amps of DC fans...

The older transformers with the insulated wire coming out pretty well hide the internal winding antics.  The newer in-house wound transformers (where the aluminum transformer wire goes all the way to a crimp terminal that goes to the control board) pretty consistently have one AC output phase with half the strands of the other.  Of course, this is larger transformers; they can't use less than 1 strand of wire for smaller transformers, so maybe a moot point...

[pilgrimvalley]

are they using aluminum wire on the transformer?

[Sid Genetry Solar]

I believe all PJ ASL-series transformers were wound in-house with aluminum wire.  The older AS-series transformers were made by another company, and use copper wire.  No, the older transformers aren't collectible by any means 😉

[pilgrimvalley]

i have a 6000 watt one 24-volt LF PSW split phase. runnning it off of a 2P8S LifePO4 battery. 272Ah Lishen cells wired 2P8S so 544Ah battery. i notice the led 34 inch blinks but other things seem to run ok. it says it has P/N: LF ASL1-PSW 

then it says I/P: 0-115V/230AC

then it says 0/P: 0-18VAC

could not read more through the slot.

the booklet says U-POWER but it looks like the powerjack books but no girls on it.

[pilgrimvalley]

use copper looking wire? Stainless steel case with absolutely no name on it. what size wire can i use on L1 L2 and neutral? will it do 3000 watts?

 i am going to wire it into a SquareD QO panel with SquareD QO breakers.

i have been using it for about 2 months just using the 2 outlets with powerstrips. low power so far but have used the heat shrink gun an solder iron etc heat lamp up to 1500 to 1700 watts. continuous use of maybe only 450 watts without any issues other than the led light does not always like it.

Edited February 24, 2021 by pilgrimvalley

[Sid Genetry Solar]

10 minutes ago, pilgrimvalley said:

ASL1-PSW

ASL1 🤨.  Gotta love U-Power's double rating of an already double or triple-rated PJ transformer.  Definitely won't do 3kw continuous.  Consider yourself extremely fortunate to get 2kw continuous output.

Let's see...18vAC * 1.414 (square root of 2) = 25.452v minimum required at no load for a pure sine output @ 230vAC output.  If you have it adjusted for 240vAC output, the ratio scales to 26.55vDC absolute minimum required for a pure sine output...

 

7 minutes ago, pilgrimvalley said:

continuous use of maybe only 450 watts without any issues other than the led light does not always like it.

LED light doesn't like it...yup, that's the CPU regulator going into an oscillation, as it has no "zero" spot--it is either increasing or decreasing the output power.  Which forces an oscillation, visible in picky lights.  Shouldn't hurt anything, though.

[pilgrimvalley]

using only 120 volt things right now. 

there may be more on the label on the wire attached to the transformer. i am only looking at that label through the ventilation slot. i did not open it up.

so you think only 2000 watts out of a 6000 watt 24-volt inverter. that is not very much.

Edited February 24, 2021 by pilgrimvalley
add information

[pilgrimvalley]

the 24volt battery is LIFEPO4 and i have never seen it actually get less than 26.8Volts or so as the SBSM0 keeps it higher and i turn down the loads when it gets to 30 percent capacity on the battery.

i plan to maybe do a 4P8S LiFePO4 battery in the future using the LIshen 272Ah cells so it would be a 1088AHh battery.

thanks for any information.

[Sid Genetry Solar]

It's a U-Power rebranded PJ (or just a straight PJ)...you will be doing well to get 2kw continuous.  The inverter is yet another hyperlabeled product, that's just what you expect from a PJ.  Genetry Solar inverters are sold for the true continuous output rating--they may look quite expensive to start with, but if you compare them to what you'd need to buy to get the same continuous output from the PJ lineup, the price is actually right about the same.

[Sid Genetry Solar]

Sean actually reviewed a 12v 6000w PJ inverter.  You can see his conclusions here:

 

[pilgrimvalley]

i watched it, it was a 12 volt inverter, i think he had 2700 2800 watts. is it the same transformer? just some less amps with 24 volt inverter....correct so it should run cooler? ASL1 in the 24-Volt 6000 watt LF PSW Split Phase is not the same transformer as his review.

i understand an outlet is only good for 1750 watts or less maybe only 1500 watts or less.

my question is what size wire would be good from the output terminals on the L1 and L2 ,N  to the SquareD QO breaker panel?

the SquareD panel is rated for 100 amps but 3000/120=25 amps if it only does 3000 watts.

any ideas?

[Sid Genetry Solar]

Being a split-phase inverter (guessing from the one photo), you'll actually only have 12.5A max at 3kw 240v.  A single run of 10AWG wire should be plenty.

Believe it or not, the low-side winding of a PJ transformer is generally not the issue: it's the high side winding--which will be the same between your inverter and the one Sean tested.  With this in mind, battery voltage is sorta irrelevant for comparison purposes.

Yes, Sean had 2700-2800W out...but the inverter overheated and shut down with that load, it could not sustain it continuously.

[pilgrimvalley]

lots of 10 awg pv wire to test it out.