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We have solar panels and mains power. Last night was very windy; we heard quite a few bangs from outside and thought it might be the wires getting knocked together. Woke up this morning and we have power to everything except the lights and our stove. We have a smart meter and it has no pulse light. What do you think could be the problem. Is it a main fuse coming into house before the meter?

Mazura
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phil
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2 Answers2

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It sounds like the winds knocked one leg of your service down in a way that kept your inverter from powering up the dead leg -- most inverters are line-interactive, and won't feed into a dead or partially dead system to avoid desynchronization problems (i.e. feeding AC of the wrong frequency to some devices may make them work improperly due to internal timing motors) and dangerous backfeeding of the utility mains. Contact your utility!

ThreePhaseEel
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Not sure about the wind issue. However, checking connections at box for corrosion and having power company check voltage are good places to start.

Something similar happened to me. Very odd to have partial outage in house and no breakers tripped. Called power company to check voltage. In the meantime, I decided to shut off power at meter, yank breaker panel and inspect inside for any obvious cause. As I pulled the panel it just happened to have caught one of the breakers and popped it off the neutral bar. I noticed a tiny bit of whitish oxidation on the bar itself. Flipped all the breakers up off the neutral bar and back on. Set them all to on position, restored power to the meter, everything in the house was working just fine and has ever since. In my experience with dc automotive systems or ac building wiring, oxidized or dirty connections are a common cause of open circuits.

Phredd
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