15000W LF, 48volt to 240 volt, what wattage?

I've seen the ones with the solid heatsinks, and thought why on earth would any idiot do that!!?? Thankfully I've never received one like that.

I  never know what is inside of my 12v  8kw  powerjack from ebay .   The inverter with the solid block heat sink  still works good after 2 years  but  it get hot after 2 hours and  auto shut down .     I  do not think PJ  has any real engineer but buy parts from YiYen  and put something  together  that  works good enough for ebay .   The spare parts I buy thru ebay messages  do not  come from  PJ  but is ship  from unknown  city in China .   What an idiot would do that ?  I  happen to see  PJ  has parts and inverter  made in Russia  for them  but  forget the  website .   Is Russia  labor cheaper ?  

Two. 🙂  I got it at a very good price indeed.

Oh the garage, I'm bricking up behind the door lol.

Yah, a lot of Chinese-designed stuff is simply thrown together for absolute minimum cost and sold with any sort of labeling that gets people to buy it.  Power Jack's #1 seller is their "8,000W 12v" unit...simply because of their marketing.  It works for sales, or they wouldn't do it...

Just had someone get a "256GB 4-way USB FLASH drive."  We've had fake sized-drives before--so I ran a handy Linux/Mac tool ("F3" - Fight Flash Fraud) which identified the actual size as basically 32GB.

But I've bought a lot of stuff from AliExpress that does the job well for a ridiculously cheap price.  Win some / lose some I guess.

U-Powers are literally rebranded Power Jack inverters with nothing except the sticker on the label changed to (usually) double the Power Jack rating.

I've heard of these, and seen photos a time or 2--but never actually looked at one myself. 

It might stand a half a chance at functioning EXCEPT for the fact that the PJ FETs are driven so poorly that they get far hotter than necessary.  Case in point: the GS 12kw prototype running at full bore (~300A through the FETs)...barely break room temperature with a fan on 'em.  Mathematically, they should be dissipating ~65W from a FET resistance standpoint; any significant amount higher is a result of driving/switching losses.

I don't like the "double row solid block" design not only for the lack of heatsinking ability, but also because they put the caps across the end of the heatsinks--putting them farther away from the FETs AND blocking the airflow to boot.

This is not the case.  PJ has in-house engineers and employees (I've seen photos of their test benches and assembly lines).  They wind their own transformers (I've have photos of the winding machine they have).  They make their own inverter chassis with a CNC laser cutter (it's broken down before, I heard about it), and have a partially automated bending machine to shape the cut pieces.  They cut and tap the screw holes in the chassis themselves.  All inverter assembly is done in-house by PJ.  (They outsource manufacturing of the PCBs, though they do hand-solder through-hole components.)

Power Jack's manufacturing facilities are based in Guangxi, China.  Parts you buy from PJ will either ship from China (where Power Jack is located), or one of their warehouses.

Dunno where you saw this, but it is not true.  All of their parts are locally sourced from Chinese manufacturers and markets.  And they assemble their inverters themselves, in their own factory.

5 hours ago, Paul said:

I agree with <a contenteditable="false" data-ipshover="" data-ipshover-target="/profile/110-bear/?do=hovercard" data-mentionid="110" href="/profile/110-bear/" rel="">@Bear with the apparent apocalypse looming it is wise to start building a reliable off-grid power system amongst other things, but what happens when your expensive Sunny breaks and you can't contact the manufacturer, or they don't have spares? Or someone breaks into the garage and steals it for their own use... In my case I have spare batteries and a spare PJ inverter sitting in the house some distance from the garage so could reinstate power pretty quick in a post-apocolyptic world :).

If everything does come apart at the seams, even just a severe depression, how easily do you think you will be able to get parts out of China for the PJ to replace a failed board?  The best strategy would be to have a spare inverter or spare boards at hand already.

I have made the observation elsehwere about Victron et al's quality vs elcheapo Chinese or better quality but still less expensive Taiwanese stuff.  For the price of one Victron you could buy two MPP Solar (this assumes no need to start high current loads of course) devices, and put one in the cupboard so that when the inevitable happens you can do a quick switcheroo and be back in business.  That could be modified to have the Victron or other premium device as the main, with a cheaper unit as the backup.  You get the best of both worlds then.  A very reliable device that will gracefully handle any abuse you throw at it but should it fail for some reason (even an external one such as lightning damage) you can put the backup to work.

Of course for people that also have access to GS inverters, the GS could be used instead of the Victron etc.

Good luck with the SMA Sunny. It will certainly do what it says on the tin but how many times the price of a PJ/upower of equal capability? (use a 10kW or 15kW PJ/Upower for comparison as this number of chinese watts would equate to the sustained 4.4kW rating of the Sunny).

I  can get  three  PJ 15kw  running 4000 watts as I do now  and probably last  10 years for the price of one SMA Sunny .   I like Paul idea .  

Words to live by....

I literally do.  I have several powerjacks and a few sets of spare parts.  That said, it's too bad how far powerjack's quality level has fallen in recent times.  Obviously, they were never top quality, but the price made up for it, and parts were always available. 

I have stated and still feel that I won't be buying any more powerjack inverters.  "They just don't make 'em like they used to"  These days you never know what you'll get in a powerjack/upower box.  As things currently stand, when I need to buy a new inverter, it will likely be a Genetry.  Higher priced than pj of course, but you are actually getting something more for those extra bucks spent.  A power rating you don't have to cut in half.  A transformer wound to be balanced between phases.  A control board redesigned to eliminate many of powerjack's shortcomings.  Last and probably more important than the rest;  after sale support from Sid via this forum.

When the world we are used to falls apart, we will probably all be on our own.  (I had a whole paragraph written here that I just deleted because it was too "Doom and Gloom")Happy New Year!

Well I got the beast, I just have to unbox it.

This thing is so damn complex, the instruction manual is very hard to understand; translated in to English, badly. Constant repetition about 3 phase and  linking inverters. 

The bad part is the inverter doesn't use lifepo4 batteries, so I will have to use an external charger and mppt controller. But how do I turn the inverters charger off? No one's letting on. SMA do not reply, once they just sent a link to the manual that I have already quoted from. 

This might prove to be a expensive mistake. 

Just when we might've thought we were actually getting away from Chinese-produced stuff, a "well known brand name" ends up being simply rebadged Chinese stuff....

'Fraid I'm not any help, I'm not aware that I've even set eyes on an SMA inverter--and if I did, I didn't know what it was.

'Fraid I'm not any help, I'm not aware that I've even set eyes on an SMA inverter

Do  you have google  in UK ?  

I had the idea that it was translated in to English from German from Chinese. Really it has that feel.

Yes we have Google uk, I think I'll use their translator on this manual 🙂   

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Ah well, at least the outer casing looks pretty compared to the average chinese inverter 🙂

Hopefully the design and components will still be to the same european spec that they were before, and simply produced in China. So in theory it should still be 'better' than the average chinese designed+built inverter. But not a lot of use if the manual is in ChinGerEng, it doesn't support LiFePO4 batteries like you expected (was this mentioned in the spec before you bought it?) and they ignore technical support emails!

It's all out of the box now, and all of the instruction manuals are in German LOL! Not a word in English.

I downloaded the pdf manual before buying it, and I knew it didn't immediately support lifepo4.

There are software updates but not of any use.

They ignore almost all emails.

Here's some pics of the beast.

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<img class="ipsImage ipsImage_thumbnailed" data-fileid="1011" data-ratio="51.99" width="352" alt="COIL-TAG.JPG.7ab1558ebb7843645a58a64004be2865.JPG" data-src="/monthly_2022_01/COIL-TAG.JPG.7ab1558ebb7843645a58a64004be2865.JPG" src="/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

<img class="ipsImage ipsImage_thumbnailed" data-fileid="1008" data-ratio="59.00" width="361" alt="COIL-TAG2.JPG.fe6a347a1a90d32eab36b0194b00c2a4.JPG" data-src="/monthly_2022_01/COIL-TAG2.JPG.fe6a347a1a90d32eab36b0194b00c2a4.JPG" src="/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

<img class="ipsImage ipsImage_thumbnailed" data-fileid="1009" data-ratio="52.65" width="697" alt="RELAYS.JPG.10ee525551b65a97acf92ad2add0811a.JPG" data-src="/monthly_2022_01/RELAYS.JPG.10ee525551b65a97acf92ad2add0811a.JPG" src="/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

<img class="ipsImage ipsImage_thumbnailed" data-fileid="1010" data-ratio="66.78" width="605" alt="AC.JPG.3437a96f8341ae9afd324598e7ddbdae.JPG" data-src="/monthly_2022_01/AC.JPG.3437a96f8341ae9afd324598e7ddbdae.JPG" src="/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

Sorry if I'm hijacking your forum a bit here 🙂

Looks like a very nicely built unit. I'm suprised at the transformer rating though - only 1650VA (1.65kW max depending on the power factor of the load). I guess thats the continuous rating. But I vaguely remember you saying it could do 4.4kW for 20mins. That seems optimistic for a 1650VA rated transformer, unless I'm getting confused with another thread. How does the size/weight of the transformer compare to the PJ/Upower you had before?

1 hour ago, Bear said:

I downloaded the pdf manual before buying it, and I knew it didn't immediately support lifepo4.

I don't understand what's so difficult about LiFePo4.  Basically, you just need to be able to disable temperature compensation, and specify custom float/bulk voltages.  That's really about it.

Also, interestingly, the nameplate on the tranny shows a 26v primary rating.  I find that quite interesting, assuming this is a 48v inverter.  Quite low, I would think.

Very interesting to see their FET drive board--but also considering this appears to be a <2kw inverter, I suppose 4 FETs/block is enough.  (2kw / 48v = a paltry 42A.)  Lots of very tiny caps, with SMT FETs.  Heatsink is that itty bitty aluminum block mounted to the bottom of the PCB...

It wasn't until I saw the label that it was only a 3.3 and not a 4.4, that's just it's model number. Doh.

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