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Hi,
I've blown the DC fuse on my phoenix inverter. The manual says to send it for repair but it's not very possible on an acceptable delay for me. I removed the cover to acess the fuse (i could see them though the side of the inverter) but the seemed glued there as pulling on them as no effect.
What's the correct way to remove thoses fuses?
Hi Francois,
That is a fuse of last resort to prevent a more catastrophic event, it is clearly listed in the manual as not replaceable.
The fuse for the 12/250 is 60A. That is 720W at 12V. That inverter will not draw that much power before overloading, so the way that fuse usually blows is if the unit is incorrectly connected in reverse polarity.
A reverse polarity connection will nearly always destroy the inverter as well as the fuse, the fuse is there so that it will fail in a safe way.
The inverter should be installed with an external, accessible and replaceable fuse that is appropriate to the wires connected. A replaceable external fuse or circuit breaker should be sized to go WELL before the non-replaceable internal fuse.
I will pass along your feedback that this SHOULD be a replaceable fuse, but it was a deliberate design decision.
Though I don't know the whole story, replacing the fuse may not bring the inverter back to life, or it may have other damage and no longer behave as intended.
Sorry, but for now, the advice is to get your inverter to a service centre.
Do you have a picture of this? it might be a soldered blade fuse?
Yes I realized it's soldered, Who in the world think it's a great idea to solder a fuse?
To change it I would have to remove to DC connector and remove the board to acess the soldering point.....
Its soldered, because when blown, other parts of the inverter are broken too. (As Guy said).
I’m sorry to hear its failed. Best way is really to go through warranty.
We’ll not change the design for the fuse to be field replaceble; as its not intended to be field replacable; and making it field replacable would be confusing.
Thanks for your answers. I've been told by my dealer that on your bigger inverter, the fuse is replacable?
I understand it's not supposed to happen but following murphy's law it will happen. In my case the inverter had been cable correctly but when changing battery the cable were plugged reversed. There's a DC breaker between the inverter and the battery but the fused tripped before. I will change the breaker for a fuse as they react faster in short circuit situations.
It's a pity because as it's install in an offgrid and remote location it takes me quite some time to go get, take it bake in town, pay for the shipping to send it for warranty, wait until it comes back and take the time to go back to the installation location. In the end, I will be >1 month without an inverter.
I choose Victron for the quality of the products and I really enjoy them but this causes me trouble. I would expect my offgrid products to be repearable on site. I work on a lot of remote projects where you have to take an airplane to reach the lake where the cabin are, this situation happening there would be a real pain in the ...
Best regards,
