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Project 3, Peewee grid tie inverter
This one of my first attempts in making a grid tie inverter. The very first attempt may have worked, but I did not test it. First let me explain the layout on the bread board below. At the top of the picture is a small circuit board with an aluminum bar heat sink on it. This is a DC voltage regulator. The black alligator clips are connected to a 6.3 volt AC transformer. This circuit changes the AC to DC and can deliver 1.2 - 4.5 volts DC at 3 amps and is here to emulate a solar panel power. This circuit board will be removed from the project at some point. A green and black wire connects the top circuit board to the circuit board near the middle of the bread board. To the left are two potentiometers that are tied together with a shaft. To the right is the output transformer that will feed the grid tie system. For now I am using a light bulb for the test load. As with the voltage regulator above, the two bulbs will be removed from the project at some point, leaving just the pots, one small circuit board, and output transformer. If everything works out the two pots can be reduced in size and placed on the circuit board as a chip or small adjustment pot. I will then have a Peewee inverter. The clear bulb is placed in series with the 110 volts AC as a fuse to protect from short circuits. (If the inverter gets out of phase you can have more that 200 volts AC across the clear bulb.) I can adjust the wattage of this bulb from 10 watts to 200 watts as needed. When everything is working I will jumper the clear bulb and at that point current will be feeding energy back into the grid. The larger frosted bulb on the right is a 3 watt CFL bulb used as a load for the inverter. There are two bulbs laying off to one side. One is a 5 watt the other is a 7 watt and will be used for a test for heavier loads later in the project. On the very first test I encountered over heating of the voltage regulator behind the aluminum bar heat sink. I removed the voltage regulator and replaced it with a 3 amp adjustable regulator and added the aluminum bar heat sink. In the next major test I used a 7 watt bulb. The bulb did not light up. However when I unscrewed the bulb so that there was no load, the voltage went up to about 120 volts AC. (no load) I replaced the 7 watt bulb with a 5 watt Christmas tree bulb. The filament glowed red. next was the 3 watt CFL bulb that you see in the picture. It lit up but not at full brilliance. and the two driver transistors were getting very hot to touch. ( Near the green wire off of xformer). I also had the two pot adjustments full on. Further tests indicated the sync transformer was being loaded down to heavy. (the blue square just above frosted 3 watt bulb) The secondary winding is 3 volts AC and was being pulled to about 1 volt AC with the two pots turned full on. So I needed to do two things. 1.-Add heat sinks to the driver transistors. 2. - Add two more transistors to the driver circuit or get a bigger sync transformer.
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