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I am living in the north of Thailand outside of the big city. That means in the rainy season we have multiple times per week power outages. Originally, I had a solar system / battery (14kwh) setup and grid. The system is kind of separate as I have in the house everywhere for example 2 sets of plugs. One connected to the grid, the other to the solar.
Since in summer we have bad air quality from forrest fires, we needed more capacity to run aircon / airfilter combinations. Thus now we have 2 solar systems and still the grid. But we have various issues that now show up but might have been there before:
The solar installation guys in general know well what they are doing, but the original electrician wasn't very good (no color coding, neutral to other source than live wire, ...). There are basically no certified electricians for residential solutions in Thailand. The certified people are working for industries.
So, after looking at a lot of areas to improve, I think about the following:
1. change to a single ground
2. Test ground with an earth test meter (do this frequently as the ground is different during summer and rainy season, in summer the ground is cracked from dryness)
3. Ground all solar equipment to this single ground
4. Have a single bonding of ground
5. Check thickness of all cables
6. Re-arrange groups in breaker box to lights, power sockets, and separate group for airco, water heater and water pump
7. Have the neutral coming back to the breaker box one to one with breaker/live wire going out (also more easy to measure leaking)
8. Same for ground coming back to the breaker box one to one with breaker/live wire going out
9. Test with leakage clamp meter for leakage and find equipment that has too high level and fix or replace
10. Install per breaker an rcbo. For bathrooms and other areas with water use rcbo of 10mA, rest 30mA
11. Install a power surge protector on the incoming grid (solar already has it)
12. Install voltage Monitoring Relay
Would this be a good aproach? Do I miss something?
I will do a separate post on the setup of combining solar and grid.
Since in summer we have bad air quality from forrest fires, we needed more capacity to run aircon / airfilter combinations. Thus now we have 2 solar systems and still the grid. But we have various issues that now show up but might have been there before:
- Static (I think that is what it is) on steel water pipes
- ghost lights
- strange voltages on some of the grounds (can't remember where and how much)
- flickering of some lights wher running aircon and lights both on solar
- when the grid has a power cut, there is still some power because the aircons are still on (small light) but no cool air)
The solar installation guys in general know well what they are doing, but the original electrician wasn't very good (no color coding, neutral to other source than live wire, ...). There are basically no certified electricians for residential solutions in Thailand. The certified people are working for industries.
So, after looking at a lot of areas to improve, I think about the following:
1. change to a single ground
2. Test ground with an earth test meter (do this frequently as the ground is different during summer and rainy season, in summer the ground is cracked from dryness)
3. Ground all solar equipment to this single ground
4. Have a single bonding of ground
5. Check thickness of all cables
6. Re-arrange groups in breaker box to lights, power sockets, and separate group for airco, water heater and water pump
7. Have the neutral coming back to the breaker box one to one with breaker/live wire going out (also more easy to measure leaking)
8. Same for ground coming back to the breaker box one to one with breaker/live wire going out
9. Test with leakage clamp meter for leakage and find equipment that has too high level and fix or replace
10. Install per breaker an rcbo. For bathrooms and other areas with water use rcbo of 10mA, rest 30mA
11. Install a power surge protector on the incoming grid (solar already has it)
12. Install voltage Monitoring Relay
Would this be a good aproach? Do I miss something?
I will do a separate post on the setup of combining solar and grid.
