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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.
I have two working and one dead one. One they screwed up on though and put a PowerJack label on instead of the Upower. 😁
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...
*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. . .
Kinda hard to sue a Chinese company, so...they can get away with stuff we at Genetry Solar couldn't. Such is business.
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!)
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.
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!
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...
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.
Actually, Upower is a recent renaming of powerjack's cheaper version inverters. (I know! They're ALL cheap! Probably why I buy them)
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.
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.
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...
are they using aluminum wire on the transformer?
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 😉