Victron Phoenix Multiplus Compact 12 / 2000 / 80 inverter / charger.

[Kibi]

Over the past few years I have been searching for a good quality inverter as part of my quest to eventually go off grid, which, I might add, is a very long road.
I have about 480Ah worth of batteries which I found in a dumpster several years ago. They were out of a large APC UPS. I last gave them a maintenance charge about 2 years ago and today they measure 12.5v at the terminals, so I reckon they are in good nick.
There are loads of pure sinewave inverters about on the net, but most of them are high frequency ones sold under dubious brand names. I was after a good quality low frequency (50Hz) pure sinewave inverter.
So finally, this Victron showed up on ebay the other day for an extremely reasonable price. I used to work with Victron UPS's back in Africa many years ago, so I am familiar with the brand and the quality. This particular inverter came out of an old ambulance.



This particular model is a 12V, 2KVA inverter with a 80A battery charger. The charger is a bonus because this means I can actually have a system that runs on batteries during the daytime and charges at night when the electricity is much cheaper. I cannot afford solar panels just yet, but this inverter is just one of the pieces of the puzzle. 2KVA is not massive, but it's more than ample for my current needs. A maximum of six of these inverters can be tied together in parallel, split phase, or three phase as and when needs arise.
Another bonus with this buy is that the welding cables were included in the sale along with a staunch 350A Anderson / Forklift connector, this saves a bucketload of money. The cables are 2/0AWG (about 65mm² in english) which is good for about 250A IRC. This inverter is a baby so it only needs about 160A at full chat.







Right then, let's get the lid off.

This the bottom compartment where all the cables enter and the 230V in and out terminals are located. The battery and UTP cables proceed into the main compartment.



Here you can see the termination of the battery cables inside the main compartment.



Over current protection on the DC side is provided buy a 250A not-so-little Littelfuse MEGA



The current then goes through a busbar with a crude HF filter on it and then on to the MOSFETs.





There are twelve Fairchild FDP8896 MOSFET's (six on the top heatsink and six below) driving each half wave into the transformer.







Here are the leads for the primary windings (in inverter mode) for the transformer.







The secondary of the transformer then feeds into a nice filter arrangement.



and a pair of CT's



and a front panel circuit breaker.



The control PCB,



with terminals for battery temperature sensing, remote alarm contacts and remote switching contacts for a generator etc. The RJ45 connector on the left is the RS-485 port for configuring the parameters of the inverter.



There is an impressive suite parameters that can be configured on this inverter. This model is aimed at the marine market, so things like maximum shore power can be configured. Should the inverter supply the excess power or not if appliances exceed the maximum shore power.
You can set the threshold of the power saving feature of which you have two choices, modified sinewave or hunt mode. Hunt mode puts out pure sinewave for a few seconds at a time and measures the load. If the load is above your pre-determined threshold, the inverter switches on.
There are many more parameters available for configuration.

That's all I have for now. I'll do a separate thread detailing the commissioning of this unit.

[tom66]

I'm not a fan of the "Sancon" capacitors, but other than that, it looks like a half-decent unit. Nice teardown.

[SeanB]

I have a reel of that power cable, it makes a good if somewhat heavy stool.

I do agree with the capacitors, at this current level I would prefer something that does not use the component leads as a fusible link.

[Kibi]

I too was a bit disappointed about that brand of capacitor being used in a reputable brand. Oh well, they seem OK and swapping them out looks a bit of a nightmare access wise.

[SeanB]

Do like I did and add more across the battery terminals.

[PedroDaGr8]

Speaking of bad caps,it might be a trick of the light but  it looks like the one closest to the camera (100uF 25V) is starting to show signs of bulging.

[T4P]

That's really starting to bulge ...
I see dust all over 

[Kibi]

The little blue capacitors look fine from my end, perhaps a trick of the light. However, that PCB is easy to remove, so might be well worth refreshing all (eight) little electrolytic capacitors on that board. They are just jellybean stock items anyway.
The Sancons will have to do for now, their PCB looks a nightmare to remove. Besides, they aren't showing any signs of bulging at this stage.
A set of Dubiliers or Panasonics would be nice, but it's too much of a mission right now.

[bleach3333]

i wonder why it doesn't have an power inductor to filter out the SPWM waveform to pure sinewave?