Evolution of the E-Panel Hi, my name is Robin Gudgel. I’m the mechanical design engineer responsible for the designs of the products shown above. I will attempt to explain a brief history of Renewable energy (RE) breaker boxes, why they are so different, and how it all relates and has evolved into the newest entry into the RE industry; the E-Panel. The AC section Why can’t we just go to Home Depot for the required over current protection and disconnect? For the AC section you can (sort of).
connected home, there is only one source of AC power that gets distributed to many different circuits in the home. In a Renewable Energy home and some grid connected homes, there can be numerous AC sources, the grid, a back up AC generator and an inverter. This means that up to three different circuits exist for the AC source. They cannot simply be connected all together. In addition to the AC source, there are sometimes separate load circuits.
(AIC) for inverter breakers. 25,000 amp interrupt is an industry standard. AC breakers are not suitable for DC operation due to interrupt rating and the lack of arc suppression. AC breakers tend to weld themselves in the closed position when subjected to high DC fault currents. A little History The first commercially available circuit breaker boxes made for the RE industry came in around 1989 from Photron. These boxes used paralleled breakers for added current capacity on the inverter circuit.
DC load circuits. I figured that if you had a modern, efficient and reliable inverter, why would you need so many DC circuits? That notion was somewhat naïve on my part since I had actually never yet seen a real off-grid installation. Another aspect of the Ananda box was its high cost. It used a nice class T pull-out fuse for inverter current protection and breakers for all other circuits.
box included a 60 or 120 amp charge controller as well as DC over current protection and disconnects. The inverter breaker was an option, but a 500 amp shunt was standard. These boxes did not incorporate any AC circuitry. The Heliotrope units were ETL listed and a good value. Sam Dawson (owner of Heliotrope) was forced to close the doors of Heliotrope after a fire ravaged the factory, but I hear he is still involved in solar swimming pool equipment.
year or so later after having created the Trace C-40 solar charge controller, there were finally enough Trace components to build a standardized system. Enter the 400 pound gorilla, the Trace Power Panel. There was a fair amount of risk in developing the Power Panel. The industry certainly needed something that was standard, but we worried that professional installers would feel like they were being cut out of some value added income.
time I rented a building in June 2001, the FX inverter mechanical design was virtually done. It would still be another 18 months before it worked well enough electrically to ship. The OutBack PSAC and PSDC were designed during that first six months of solitude in my home office. I had the chance to start with a clean slate and therefore was able to address some industry shortcomings that needed attention. The first thing to address was to allow ample room for wiring.
While the PS2 system enjoys great acceptance in North America, it is virtually non existent in Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. There are a couple of reasons for this. It is physically too large for European homes. It uses breakers not available outside of North America, it is expensive and it looks too American. MidNite Solar, Inc.
wire it up and especially get feedback from the people that will be using it. It took four different prototype runs to get all the features right. A big thanks goes out to all the industry people that helped in the development phase. The E-Panel is now ETL listed for the US and Canada and will commence shipping in November 2005. Following right behind the introduction of the E panel will be a version to work with Magnum Energy inverters too, “The MagNite”.
E-Panel (OutBack)
Features: 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 Small size compared to existing products Pre-wired to save time, money and mistakes White powder coated aluminum or gray powder coated steel Easily expands to accommodate up to four inverters with no interconnecting conduit Six slots per unit for 13mm wide Din Rail mount breakers; PV, Wind, Hydro and AC distribution or three 19mm wide breakers 500 amp 50mv shunt for battery status monitoring systems Pre-wired 50 amp 240VAC inverter AC bypass switch (120
