I've been out of the country until yesterday, and when I got home to my off grid house all the electric was working fine. However, this morning I checked the Xantrex display which shows what's up with my batteries, and the display was nutty. It looked like Russian. I turned the system off, then on again, same deal - nonsense. There was a thunder storm here a week ago, could a lightning strike have made the display go haywire? If so, how do I get it to return to normal? I'd like to know what my batteries are doing. Thanks.

Lightning strikes can hit pv arrays and do serious damage.You could measure the dc voltage and comfirm that the pv array is in tack.You are more than likely going to have to send inverter back to Xantrex for repairs.

What acwizard said- the garbled display on the inverter may be the LEAST of your problems with a lighting-damaged system. If the controls on the charger are compromized you could end up with more damage over time. It's time to check the whole system out- if you're lucky it's just an easily swappable subassembly of the inverter that's toast.

Hmmm this got me thinking. Lightning strikes are not an unusual event here. I wonder if I should get a UPS to plug my hot water heater into. It would protect its electronics and give me a little back up time in the event of a power outage - since the hwh has electronic ignition. Course I still wont be able to run the radiant pumps without electric, but at least we will have hot water.

A UPS isn't going to withstand a direct hit, but may be slightly protective. It takes a lot of UPS to keep even a gas fired tankless going for more than several hours though (the standby power on some of them is pretty signficant.)

Most mechanical systems with electronics are at least somewhat ruggedized to line noise, EMI and ESD issues in order to meet standard certification tests, but there's very little that can take huge lighting abuse.

When lighting strikes in my neighborhood I used to hear something arcing over somewhere in the upstairs, but never discovered the discharge point, yet I've never lost anything to lighting. I HAVE lost equipment due to branch-falling-on powerline breaking neutral and welding one phase, tangling the live phase wire the the neutral drop the house though (thought the house was going to go up in flames with 100s of amps coming in on the neutral, but only lost a DVD player, a zone relay on the heating system and one compact fluorescent light bulb.

My biggest problem is the hits on the telephone lines burning out the pots ports on my routers. The telephone co guys say no amount of surge protection will help.

Since the hwh is only on a 15 amp 110 circuit, I thought a UPs might help, but I guess it does have to run the blower in addition to lighting the propane.

-Rosalinda

It depends on the model- many gas/propane tankless heaters are burning a few tens of watts even in standby mode, whereas others are much lower. Peak power for blowers etc are all over 100W, but that's an intermittent load. Draining the battery when nothing is happening is typically the bigger worry.

I disagree on the telco lines. Surge protectors help, you just can't get 100%.

My HWH is a 50 gal tank Vertex- does that make a difference?

And the problem the telco said with the surge protectors (all their digital lines have surge protectors on them) is the lightning charge goes into the ground and comes back up through the lines. I would assume they know what they are talking about - cause I sure don't :o)

-Rosalinda

Telco is correct. When a lightning strike occurs it may be a single stroke or multiple.Each stroke may present a pulse having a rise time of approx 10 microseconds and a duration of 30-50 microseconds. The peak current is in the magnitude of 100,000 amperes with a voltage of 100,000,000 volts.A serious flash may constitute up to 10 such strokes.Proper protection requires a engineered internal and external system.The external system intercepts the energy and dissipates it into the ground via lightning rods , bonding cables and ground grids.The internal system must consist of equipotential loop conductors,bonding conductors to achieve an equalization of earth potential between all grounded metal objects within the building.Lightning creates induced electromagnetic fields and if not addressed will create serious damage to electronic devices.The utility company and telephone company has surge arrestors installed in their systems. Additional protection can be added by installing transient voltage surge suppressors. A lightning engineer would be necessary to determine the specification of such a device.

So if I digested this thread correctly -->

There is nothing you can do to protect you solar array from lightening unless you want to have a metal frame built around your house.

Has anyone heard of someone needing to replace the whole system after a T-storm?

Do you need separate insurance for this?

I wouldn't conclude that. There are various things you can do (grounded lightning rods for example) and they definitely help. So do surge suppressors. But nothing is 100%.