Converter In-Rush Thermistors etc, UPDATE -4

Salvo wrote:
You did A already and it failed. I would go with B. That part can handle a lot more energy.

Regarding the breakers tripping, it's still not clear what actually happened. Converter was on and you added extra loads to gen? How much time delay when resetting breaker? Was the converter tapering at that time, or outputting 100A? Was the converter functional after resetting breaker? Then weeks later the converter did not turn on?

BTW, I'm in the process of running some tests on my spare Parallax converter.

Sal

I was running the 100amper at 100a (103a actually as normal) on the Honda. I added some Vector chargers which got me more of a charging rate, but when I added too many amps worth of Vectors, the Honda popped its breaker.

At that point I had to run around and restart the Honda, and restart the Vectors (but at a lower amps worth in hopes that it would not pop the Honda this time.) So the poor old 100amper got a restart with the 100a right off and not much time afterwards.

I did not note the time it took me to restart the 100amper but it was only a few minutes. The 100amper continued ok for a couple hours to finish that recharge. I did not see any smoke but wasn't looking.

Previous occasions of thermistor failure were in the same circumstances, with what we are now calling a hot restart. One time it was starting the Honda and plugging in the 100amper right away and the Honda motor quit. Wasn't warmed up. (should wait a couple minutes) Restarted and that was a hot restart for the 100amper.

Apparently once the converter is running, the thermistor doesn't matter anymore so if it got broken but not badly enough to shut down the start-up, the charger will keep running ok.

After the thermistor overheats, the black (or green, whatever) material on it gets cracks in it and it sort of crumbles in pieces after it is cold again if you touch it.

Depending on how bad it was, the converter can do another normal restart or else if too awful, it won't run at all next time.

The last set of tests I just did with half a thermistor showed it started and ran ok with four minutes between restarts. But there was that one time (ISTR third out of six) it got that red spot that went out right away while the charger kept on charging. It did a couple more restarts after that with no more red spots. Later, where that red spot was, more pieces fell off when I knocked it trying to measure the ohms with the meter probes down in there at its legs.