DIY Newbie... why is my invertor screaming 😱

[321pink]

I have set up a very basic mini solar system at home. 1 panel, basic inverter and leisure battery. Been using the system for over a year. My invertor is now screaming as soon as I turn it on, nothing is connected to draw from it, the battery has charge. (Tried changing it to a different one also) When I turn it on, the fan is instantly coming on and makes a large draw, goes up and down for a few seconds then stabilises ok but still screams. Any suggestions greatly appreciated please

 

[wytco0]

What sort of inverter and battery do you have? without knowing any details my instinctive response is that either your inverter or battery is f*cked, panels don't fail very often, Lead acid batteries don't like deep discharge and if you have been cycling it a lot it may have reached end of life.

 

[321pink]

What sort of inverter and battery do you have? without knowing any details my instinctive response is that either your inverter or battery is f*cked, panels don't fail very often, Lead acid batteries don't like deep discharge and if you have been cycling it a lot it may have reached end of life.

Its just a cheap invertor off amazon, xuyuan. Was purchased for an off grid system to run lights at a equine yard but I never installed it. The battery is a standard leisure battery, tried it on a car battery also but same outcome. I'm now charging a yuasa leisure battery to see if that'll get it working but I'm thinking the inverter fan maybe damaged as it doesn't normally kick in instantly, only when they're is a large draw.
I did forget to turn the system off when I was away for the night so it run out of battery and was probably screaming about 15hrs before I returned to turn it off, maybe this ******** the inverter fan? It was working fine before this

 

[michael8554]

Dried-out bearings on the fan would scream.
If the inverter is really "off-grid" with no mains reference, then shouldn't the Battery Management System (BMS) have shut the inverter off when the battery "ran out" ?

 

[321pink]

Dried-out bearings on the fan would scream.
If the inverter is really "off-grid" with no mains reference, then shouldn't the Battery Management System (BMS) have shut the inverter off when the battery "ran out" ?

I don't have a BMS, I shall look into this though. Thank you

 

[johnb2713]

Dried-out bearings on the fan would scream.

They would but I suspect this may be not the case from the OPs comments.

If the inverter is really "off-grid" with no mains reference, then shouldn't the Battery Management System (BMS) have shut the inverter off when the battery "ran out" ?

Most decent inverters would have low voltage cut off, unlikely to have a BMS as such. This sounds like a real cheap and nasty inverter most likely with MSW output. Probably best to replace it with a half decent one, if it’s only for lighting, just get an MPPT controller to charge the battery and use 12v lighting.

 

[Chewbacca]

Dried-out bearings on the fan would scream.
If the inverter is really "off-grid" with no mains reference, then shouldn't the Battery Management System (BMS) have shut the inverter off when the battery "ran out" ?

Or just dust build up on the fan blades .

 

[bladerunnerpv]

Or just dust build up on the fan blades .

I had a very noisy PC once due to this problem on a graphics card, not quite screaming, but fan going full pelt continuously. Taking the cover off the gfx card and clearing out all the dust resolved it.