SMA Solar Technology Circuit Board Assembly at SMA's German Factory

The making of SMA inverters circuit boards at their factory in Germany

ABOUT SMA
Energy that Changes

SMA Solar Technology AG is a global leader in the development, production and sales of PV inverters and, as an energy management group, offers innovative key technologies for future power supply structures. SMA is represented in all important photovoltaics markets in 19 countries on four continents. The company has a staff of over 5,500 and reached a sales volume of EUR 1.7 billion in 2011.

Inverters are the heart of every PV plant
Technologically, the inverter is the most important component of a PV plant. It converts the direct current generated in the photovoltaic cells into alternating current compliant with the grid requirements -- for self-consumption or feed-in to the power distribution grid. As an intelligent system manager, it also monitors both the PV array and the power distribution grid. SMA inverters already perform important grid management functions, which are becoming increasingly important as electricity production from renewable sources grows. SMA has been developing leading technological solutions and pioneering trends in this area for years and is driving future-oriented topics. For instance, these include intelligent energy management at a household level, grid integration of solar power and connecting storage facilities for more effective use of renewable energy.

For all Performance Classes and Plant Sizes
SMA has an extensive range of products, which offers the right inverters for all module types and plant sizes; for small residential systems as well as large scale plants, grid-connected installations as well as stand-alone and backup systems all over the world. Plant monitoring and visualization products as well as energy management solutions complete the portfolio.In addition to this, SMA customers worldwide benefit from comprehensive services: from support in installation and commissioning of PV plants to quick and uncomplicated device replacement service in Germany and worldwide, and the free SMA Service Line for technical questions. The company also provides training for plant planners, installers, electrically qualified persons and anybody interested in solar power in seminars as part of the SMA Solar Academy.

SMA has received numerous awards for its product solutions and exceptional corporate culture. In 2011 and 2012, the company achieved first place in the German "Great Place to Work®" competition in the category for companies with over 5,000 employees.

DIY ESS - First 5 Arduino Leonardo boards received - First one flashed & ready to ship

5 Arduino Leonardo boards have arrived from Evola.fr website faster than I thought and one of them is already flashed with the DIY ESS program, from the Mac this time

Communication between the Mac and the Arduino Board set up

Choose the first USBModem Port

Program loaded on the board


Now testing the program :

Program log displayed in the Series Monitor of the Arduino IDE:

Working well,

It is now ready to ship !

Go Motorboard 2000X at the park / Broken throttle spring

Last sunday, after charging my Go Motorboard 2000X, I took it to the park for the kids who enjoyeda lot and taking turns withfriends who were discovering it (parents too since it was the first time I brought it there)

After an hour or so, my son came to me saying that the throttle was loose, and for the first time, I realized that the spring might have broke or detach itself, so they continued with two fingers on it, one for accelarting, the other one for pushing it back to stop acceleration

Once home, I opened the throttle assembly to try fix this spring

This is what it looks like inside: a PCB and a big potentiometer

These LEDs are showing the state of charge

Bottom line: the spring was broken in two, and after trying for a little hour extending it, I could not make this work; So a quick fix was to put a thick rubber band externally that will do the exact same thing ...

Go Motorboard 2000X next to the ESS (One day I will convert it to LiFePO4 ... with small cells)

After some testing and curling, it works fine !

Opening up the Tyco Kilovac EV200AAANA Economizer box

Saturday morning I decided to open up the Economizer box attached to the Tyco Kilovac EV200AAANA to see what this PWM circuit is made of; So I started by unscrewing the voltmeter and then the contactor
from the control board after taking the battery cables off its terminals


After that it was easy to remove this side box/cover

voilà

and here is the Tyco Economizer: it is actuelly a small PCB with 3307 reference number printed on it: KILOVAC 3-70-3209

and there are quite a few components soldered onto it !

Relays and Electronics arrived

Some more Relays and Electronics arrived yesterday, I can now start playing with all that and hopefully will be posting some more soon

I was never really interested in electronics before I really started to work on this project, so I have to buy the starter's kit (bread bord, wires, resistors, capacitors, LEDs, potentiometer, switches, buttons, mini servo,) :-)

This is how I would set up my 6 5V / 220V relays to activate the Grid Tie Inverters

PS: For those of you who might wonder what this pieces of wood are: They come from Japanese Fishcakes, very usefull :-)

LiFePO4 ESS update - 24V relay & Arduino board

My 12V automotive relay for the charger line is not really the right component to carry 24V @ 10A and is heating up a lot, got stuck few times, so I decided to buy a 24V one, and it arrived 

More important, following my work on getting color codes from Wattson, I ordered an received an Arduino Leonardo card and 3 high voltage relays

This board will read the voltages from green, blue, red Wattson LEDs as inputs, and using a program, trigger signals on the outputs to activate relays, switching ON & OFF my Grid Tie Inveters

Nice packaging

It is smaller than I tought

Welding cables onto Wattson PCB to read Color Codes

It was not trivial because of the tiny dots I had to weld the wires to and because of the risk of damaging the PCB / components on the other side by overheating the area, but I managed to do it : Welding tiny cables onto Wattson PCB to be able to read the voltage of each color LED

Before, heating up the soldering iron

I easily put some solder on the 3 dots diagonaly placed on the board (left) and on tested soldering the ground wire (right)

Done, and I was releaved that Wattson still displays everything correctly after that step

It's easier with a good LED light to see the fine details

Now testing color mode: it works too

and I can read voltages :-) (blue & red LED here)

With green now (switched on sevral Grid Tie Inverters for that)

I had to drill a little hole in the back panel of Wattson to fit the cable

I am using a old USB mouse cable, that provides a standard plug with 5 contacts and I need 4 here (ground, blue, green, red), so I put a red label onto the USB cable next to the plug warning that this is not a normal USB plug and should NOT be plugged into a computer for example (that would be bad...)

Reading voltages of blue and red LEDs

The USB plug plugged into a USB outlet and voltmeters leads attached to screw terminals

Voltages are going up and down, because Wattson "glows", it is not a solid color, butI realized that colors are more or less intense dpending on the energy level of the usage and the generation, so I can read the corresponding voltages and deduct what is going on ...

Water heater is on, all red now (very intense = 4.53V here) and blue is 0V