Any hope of repairing my inverter?

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harrisonpatm

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Jan 5, 2022
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Had a very nearby lightning strike last night at around 2am, within the same square block. Very scary. Anyway, panels and charge controllers seem fine, but it looks like my inverter got fried. It's a CNS power or something like that, 1500w, been running it 24/7 for the past year or so.

When connected to battery, they's a spark still. And the screen in the front has a backlight that turns on. But no data, AC output is around 1-2vac.

I realize a lightning strike is a rather extreme event, and I've already ordered a replacement. But should I hold out hope for this one being repairable? I wouldn't know where to start to diagnose, so I thought I'd ask on the offchance that someone might be able to help. Thanks for looking.
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Aside from looking for blown capacitors or blown components. You probably won't find any externally visible damage. Usually a lightning blast will pretty much fry the logic circuitry as well as some other components. So even if you replace the blown capacitors or other components the logic circuit is probably toast as well
 
Agree with @Korishan.

I follow a channel called "Going Off Grid" and they guy loves cheap inverters and has repaired many of them but it's always just mosfets that are blown.

When my AIMS became erratic I found a place that would replace capacitors and dumb components and they fixed it. But if it's a control chip - that's a different level.
 
I was worried about that. It's what's most likely, anyway: since it wasn't a direct strike, it probably acted as an EM pulse. I'm probably lucky that all that got fried was a "cheap" inverter, and not my controllers, batteries, BMSs, or the panels themselves. Thanks anyway.
 
Yeah, pretty scary when one of those spicy light sticks posts up right up outside. I had a cable modem get nailed from inductive discharge. The cable wire that runs along the eave of the house was enough to pick up the EM pulse and send it straight into my modem. The modem would power up just fine and I could communicate with it from within the LAN, but the gateway chip to the outside got nailed.
They are only meant to handle about 5V, 12V max in some cases. Lightning strike near by could induce 100's of volts, even at microamp levels, is enough to kill electronics.
 
We hear the stories all the time; my in-laws who live in a rural area have had their landline killed twice on two occasions by nearby lightning strikes. When asking the repair rep how they can prevent it from happening a third time, the basic answer was, "you can't, lightning is crazy powerful and affects electronics incredibly unpredictably."
 
you can help mitigate it, though. One is to use isolators, but not every device can use one of those or not feasible in reality. Another is to put jump-gap devices in that are well grounded. And another is a Lightning Arrestor. Might not stop equipment from getting blasted, but might minimize the damage

Isolator is basically a 1:1 transformer
Jump-Gap is device that has a screw that is a set distance from the wire. When a high enough voltage is applied, a spark will jump to the screw and go to ground. Seen a lot on electric fence installations.
Lightning Arrestor is a strange device. It resists sudden changes in voltages and will blow itself apart if the change is too high. Most commonly seen in surge protectors and well pump installations (pump casings make excellent ground rods & attract lightning like moths to a flame)
 
I have Midnite lightning arrestors out at my array combiner boxes on my incoming PV wires... one arrestor for each pair of wires coming into the house. And of course the arrays are grounded. But don't know to what extent any of this will help. I've never experienced a lightning strike at my home(s) that I know of.

In my youth - in the Midwest - folks would install a lightning rod -> ground at a high point of their roof to try to direct lightning away from other stuff such as the TV antenna. I wonder if lightning rods are an effective option?

However - I have had equipment destroyed by power company power issues on more than 1 occasion. The worst was a expensive HP printer in San Jose, CA about 20yrs ago - just poof, dead printer in a power brown-out on/off situation!. This is why I started using UPS APCs for all my 'computer' type equipment.
 
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Well damn. In case anybody is curious. I found out where the lightning struck, and damn I was luckier than I thought.

We have a couple of clotheslines in our backyard. They're looped around two large tall trees, which are close enough together that their upper branches intermingle. The clotheslines are PVC-wrapped wire... y'all see where this is going, right?
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I am far from a lightning expert. But if I had to guess, I would say that there was a decent amount of electrical buildup on those two trees, if not a full-on lightning strike. It tried to make its way from the top branches into the ground. Before it got there though, it found this nice convenient conductor connecting the two trees, and poof. Vaporized wire.

So yeah, at first I was a bit annoyed that the storm knocked out my inverter. Now that I know that it hit 15 feet away from my bedroom window, I'm feeling rather pleased that all that happened was a dead inverter!
 
Hahah yeah, when they get that close, it's a sigh of relief when they only take out a single device.

As far as the lightning rods (now that I'm home to reply) these are the kinds you probably want instead of the solid rods:
Lightning Dissipator
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Basically what it does is help to draw out the static build up in the first place. Whereas a lighting rod otoh is designed to attract lightning to that location. It's strange how these two devices are similar, but yet work fundamentally different ways.
But you don't install just one and call it done, tho. They have to be arranged in a sort of grid to protect the area. They are used a lot on high mast antennas like cell and radio, even power poles. Tho not quite shaped like the image above
 
Great post, for a few reasons. I'm glad nothing else was damaged! 30+ years ago, when I was in high school, my parents' home was hit by lightning -- basically right next to the house where the power mains come in at the meter. It vaporized some azaleas and left a nice 3' round crater in the flower bed. It was odd which devices were affected. The (old tube style) television was toast, and the microwave was completely non-responsive, etc. On the other hand, the ovens / fridge / freezer were all fine. Of course, they were old-school Sub-zero units -- not a lot of digital control boards like we have now, but simple and reliable analog machines. The home computer (a cutting-edge 486, I think -- ha!) was on a surge protector and survived.

What I found most interesting was the breaker boxes. The house has two large panels, both located in a central pantry. The circuit breakers tripped so hard that the panel doors were blown open and most of the plastic "switches" from the breakers were broken and laying on the floor. The electrician who came to do the repairs and replacements said he had never seen anything like it. The house wiring is all real copper (no aluminum or copper-clad stuff), and fortunately was not damaged.

My wife and I are currently considering a new home build on a significant hilltop on our property, and one of the topics we keep revisiting is whether / how to do lightning rods to avoid similar issues. They are not common in this area, so most homebuilders just look at you with a blank stare when you bring up the topic. I don't have time to build my own house or act as my own general contractor, but some days it feels like I'm not going to have much of a choice if I want anything done correctly!!

Cheers, John
 
DG98 said:
What I found most interesting was the breaker boxes. The house has two large panels, both located in a central pantry. The circuit breakers tripped so hard that the panel doors were blown open and most of the plastic "switches" from the breakers were broken and laying on the floor. The electrician who came to do the repairs and replacements said he had never seen anything like it. The house wiring is all real copper (no aluminum or copper-clad stuff), and fortunately was not damaged.
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Woah! New anxiety unlocked, thanks!
 
DG98 said:
My wife and I are currently considering a new home build on a significant hilltop on our property, and one of the topics we keep revisiting is whether / how to do lightning rods to avoid similar issues. They are not common in this area, so most homebuilders just look at you with a blank stare when you bring up the topic. I don't have time to build my own house or act as my own general contractor, but some days it feels like I'm not going to have much of a choice if I want anything done correctly!!

Cheers, John
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Agree it's interesting! When I was young (long time ago / a child) I understood lightning rods to basically be a metal antenna sticking up higher than the roof about 10ft? and a wire from that to a grounding rod along side the house. The idea was to accept the lightning strike and redirect it to the ground. Part of this was to have one higher than the TV antenna - so it wouldn't be the lightening rod. And you're right - it was sort of like some people did it and most others just blew it off or didn't repair them when blown over in a storm etc.... and eventually it just dropped from my awareness as I've aged.

To this day - it seems like an OK idea but not sure. For example, does lightning actually strike a rod if it's the highest point above the roof? and there's a vein of thought that multiple grounding rods are not good so I guess today you'd tie one into the house ground? and is that a good idea to direct lightning into the house ground wires without an EMP/Surge device?

Anyway - interesting to me as I remember that lightning rods were a big topic as a kid but don't seem to exist today.
 
OffGridInTheCity said:
does lightning actually strike a rod if it's the highest point above the roof?
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A lightning "rod" is designed to redirect, yeah. And no, you shouldn't have a lot of them but maybe one on either end of the home. These were also mounted on the wind vane if ppl had them, as those were also the highest point on the peaks.

OffGridInTheCity said:
I guess today you'd tie one into the house ground?
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NO! I would never ever do that. Lightning rods, or Static discharge devices should always have their own sources to ground. Electricity acts really weirdly when it gets into the 10's of thousands of volts. You don't want any kind of residual if you can help it. Now if you have grounding on metal roofs, these are usually not tied to your electrical ground as well. Metal eaves around the edge of the roof for example.

Now, if you mean to tie these rods to the ground rod "outside" the house, this might be ok, but even then I'd be very leery about the idea of such. If I put a lightning rod in, it gets its own ground rod as well.

You could say that even the power lines are tied to electrical ground as well, and that may be true. But those have grounding on *every* pole. So it's not anywhere near the same level possible resistance. Lightning can discharge very rapidly on those poles. Maybe the exception would be one hitting your pole that has the transformer on it. At that point, yeah, that's a bit too close. But again, there's 2 rods before your home by that point. Or at least, there should be. One on the pole, and one for the meter. Then there should be one for your panel in the home.
 
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