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smgsolinas avatar image
smgsolinas asked

Limits of Power Assist

Hello Everyone,

I have been asked to setup a medium size boat with Air Conditioning and a Victron Quattro.

The main point is: What is the limit of Power Assist?

Can it sustain the inrush current of the Air Conditioner engine?

It takes 84 A for 200 milliseconds (at 50 Hz this is 10 AC cycles).

Then the consumption falls to 9.2 A. The engine is a 1 -phase 230 V AC.

I already know that the Quattro will keep up power for the first AC 30 cycles regardless of the output Voltage and then go into block.

Please any help will be very appreciated.

Best regards,

Sergio Solinas


MultiPlus Quattro Inverter Chargerpowerassist
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Adrian Sharp avatar image Adrian Sharp commented ·

Hi @smgsolinas, Happy new year! Have you already got the air conditioner? If not have you considered an inverter air conditioning system. The compressor is driven by its own variable frequency inverter, and thus it varies the speed and power of the compressor. Advantage is a very low starting current, and rather than frequent stop/start it just slows down to match cooling demand.

Electrocoolman.

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veikkop avatar image veikkop commented ·

Hi

First post to the Forum!

I am also interested about Sergios question, since i have an application where the inverter is not possible to install due to the pre manufactured device what i cannot alter.

I tried to find the limits of power-assist and the inrush peaks, but could not find it anywhere so any help would be appreciated.

BR. VP from Finland

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1 Answer
Paul B avatar image
Paul B answered ·

Hi more details are needed like the size of the inverter

The below advice is general and may not be what you are after

if you have a inrush of 84 amps then thats 19Kw at 230v, so the victron inverters will allow up to a 100% overload for inrush so the inverter would need to be around 10Kw to allow for a inrush of 19Kw


I am presuming that the inrush is double the run load or the compressor

Power assist is not used for these sorts of in rushes

Plus again depending on the inverter the input relays have set max current amounts

these are 16 amps 50 amps and 100 amps the max incoming current amounts depend on the inverter that you have purchased.

So if you have max pass through of 50 amps this unit will cut off if 84 amps was being pulled even for a short time.


Possible solution is to install a soft start unit to the air con,

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