Fault Finding Solar PV System - Electrician Life 

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Client reports circuit breaker tripping. Cory: immediately identifies circuit breaker is shagged. Jordan: Becomes preoccupied with the idea that the heavy duty 4mm cable has somehow developed an intermittent dead short without the RCD noticing. I know which one I’d rather pay £100 an hour for.

Mon-Fri and Sunday: working about 60 hours... Sat night: sitting with a beer watching work related videos on RU-vid😑 Can’t deny I love the videos though, keep up the good work!

Amazed watching this. My solar was put in about 10 years ago and the installation quality is in a totally different league to this!

the more i watch your videos, the more i become interested in the EV side of electrics and i am now considering doing an electricians course (full course not a 1 week course) to become a qualified electrician and specialise in the green energy side of things. keep up what you are doing and hope you inspire others to go in the same direction. credit to all electricians out there

I enjoy Cory being around✌🏼

Cory is a great balance to the team. Glad he’s on board

From a recently qualified a grade electrician from Australia , I am loving your educational and informative videos .. love your content and very interesting /beneficial for Me to watch. Keep up the good work boys love it 👌

I agree with him about the gloves. I got used to it doing large commercial jobs, so much that you feel bare and vulnerable without them 😂

Was warming up to Cory till he basicly said he liked Greta 🤣🤣 Great team work keep them coming !!

This new person brings a completely different and interesting dynamic.

I love solar edge for the fact that you can just log in to the web portal and it will tell you each panels production etc good systems if installed correctly

Remarkable honesty in these videos, really great example of working electricians 👏👏

That Cory chap sounds very professional and has he tried the vegan steak bake from Greggs, very nice

I have been in the game 30 years+ and you are always learning as will all know and Artisan you are far ahead of me in the Testing side of things and more. What surprised me was a little bit of contempt re-inserting the DNO fuse . No Mask Goggles , No Gloves i used to do the same as you so i do not wish to tell you how to suck eggs lol. It was only through looking at this video's recently where a Guy explained how much damage can be done by even a simple arc .I also have noted DNO sparks NEVER re-insert these without a FULL face mask. Always enjoy your vids and think your professionalism is reflected in your subs. I would be interested in your views and understand the installation was not under load conditions when fuse was re-inserted Having worked a lot on large sites where H&E have killed the Trade we are always walking on a tight line .

“Feeding electricity to the sun” its nice that the sun gets some energy in return !

Cory seems like a cool dude. I feel his pain with the errm hand issues. I can recommend O'Keefe's working hands cream. Works like a dream when I remember to use it.

Please don't stop making vids, very informative and beats the BBC.

A New title for the video, "Polishing a turd" :) Love watching and listening to your troubleshooting!

Great dynamics between yourself and Cory - excellent additional to the channel.

Super Job Cory! You found a solution that fixed it. Wow Great team work! THUMB UP!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cheer!

What I like about your videos is that you do things like all tradesmen. You even admit - 'What do we do' but of course you come up with the solution. II used to do electrics in my earlier day of house renovations but could never tackle what you guys have to do (and show on paper!) these days.

When the sparky says 1.5mm is good for 23 ish amps... You don't want your ring main fitted. I would assume that the cable run is also out of spec. But you really can't tell how far it is from The video. That house looks like it's old and had a few refits. And sadly I can say I've seen worse. Don't you test for DC leaks on the AC?

You are correct in that all TV is rubbish in the USA also ! Love your content !

There are quite a few situations were you do work live, such as industrial commercial, and medical premises. Ford's won't let you shut down a production line , so you can word dead , not will Tesco let you switch of there computers because they need a few extra sockets in there computers room . At the beginning of this year in stalled 5 hot air curtains in a yoga and gym club , that in use 7 days a week . 5 brand new circuits all connected to two live Hagar 3 phase boards . So when you work live make sure you don't work alone and make sure the person you work with know what to do in an emergency . It's on of the joys of being a sparky working on live circuits . You don't have to be mad to be a sparky but it helps

Interesting. It’s evidently a long run from the inverter to the main meter cabinet, evidently with the ‘generation’ meter also mounted in it. My own place is much more compact by comparison, but with the gen meter and the relevant RCD and switchgear on the other side of the wall, which happens to be a front porch, with the standard meter box being on the other side of it’s wall. The inverter, which is an SMA “sunny boy” 1600TL product, is also inside the front porch, with the dc isolator next to it, and some ducting up to the roof attic for the panels. Alongside the dc isolator is a warning notice that the ac must be isolated first during daylight if required - not trying to break the dc current. If the inverter is working normally, it then shuts down into a fault mode - fed by dc only, with the relevant fault display. Occasionally that happens if there’s a mains power cut during daylight. Around 4:50 “a bit of a mess” is an accurate description! The other thing that’s a bit hairy in your presentation is the installation of private kit inside the meter box; in general, it’s owned by the utility supplier as far as the master fuse, and the DNO beyond. So in my case, the generation meter (which belongs to me) is not in the box - just a pair of cables into it from the inverter. I’ve had to have the utility firms meter replaced after it failed - most likely due to a local thunderstorm/lightning strike. Free power for a little while after that, until I noticed the fault and had to negotiate roughly how much I’d used! Incidentally, re ‘Smart’ meters (mentioned by others), recently I had a fair bit of correspondence with the utility supplier (SSE at that time) with their compatibility - or lack of - with solar PV. They did not want to install those at such sites then. I don’t think they know what to do about export when they are in use - the new ones should be able to measure output as well as import, but then one’s generation meter isn’t ‘smart’, so they can’t match the two together when handling ‘feed in tariff. At present, I’m on 50% deemed export, and they probably prefer to stick with that until the whole lot expires.

I’m a meter fitter (I know scum of the earth) but it’s good to see that electricians have to deal with poor solar installers

I am sure The inverter shuts down if it cannot detect a grid voltage. As the voltage from the inverter needs to be higher than the grid supply. Pleas e correct me if I’m wrong. The shut down is there to protect linesmen from shock if they are working on the lines down the road.

Great fault finding and resolution. Good improvements to a shoddy slapdash install too. Top marks.

Do your IR testing at 250V first. Some units don't like 500V and can be costly to repair. More often than not these very low readings are hidden equipments and not cable damage.

Never working on anything that's live? Sometimes you don't have that luxury, for example when working on the installation in a hospital. You can't go there switch circuits off where someones life support could be connected to. And for such a purpose these pliers are made for. The partially insulated which electricians normally use are only to protect ourself. The fully insulated are to prevent a power outage caused by short-circuit. And depending on the area where we use these also to protect ourself against the arc of a short-circuit, for example in a CAT IV area. This is used in addition to an insulated rubber mat where the electrician stands on (these are also rated 1kV, like the insulated tools), insulated gloves and eventually a face shield and arc resistant clothing. And of course only by an experienced electrician. 400V, 5kA arc. Video is slowed down, that happens in 1.2 seconds: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8MsiciK-9Ew.html BTW: Voltage testing is also considered as working on a live circuit...at least it is here in Germany.

That meter box was just lovely, it's just been thrown in! great job considering what you had to work with.🙂

2 guys at £100 an hour, well at least the customer got Laurel and Hardy for their money

I like the tool of the day! I see it earlier in the video and thought that is a bit of me!! Will definitely be purchasing!

Cody’s tool of the day is a great idea!

I think BigClive likes disassembling broken MCBs :)

Good, I picked up right in the beginning that the CB was faulty because of the sound and when you pushed it up to reset it did lower a bit. Regarding the "lockable enclosure", it would still not be acceptable to me here in SA because that specific enclosure would fall under what would be termed "suppliers" enclosure, therefor no consumer equipment would be allowed according to our regs. That would certainly save you the headache of in situations like these. I hate enclosures that look like a crow's nest with no space or order in them. Much appreciate your videos.

Remember working on a customers house who had one of the first solar systems fitted in the UK years ago planning had no idea of what it was . A German firm came over to fit it before all the feed in tariffs . they wired it so the old disc meter went backwards when the solar panels were producing electric. the owners soon learnt not to let the meter go back past the previous meter reading because the billing system assumed the meter had gone all the way around and a huge electric bill would appear So they would on very sunny days run lots of electric heaters outside to make sure the meter never went too far past the last previous meter reading and if it did they would make sure they had to use a small amount of electric to stop any investigation . Every time they came to change the meter they would runaway . the installation was covered in Achtung stickers and warning stickers of a electrocuted man . free electric was far better than feed in tariffs they had years of being hassled by energy provider but always refused to change the system .

Cory is a very good Electrician he should start up on his own

The subtitles for Greta are awesome! Grub grub thumb bag! 🤣🤣🤣

I like Cory already. You seem well suited together.

It takes a minimum of 3 mins for the inverter to kick in after supply has been switch on check out G98/G99 standards, and MCS, if you want a bit of advice on solar drop me a PM, sometimes the DC disconnect isolators are built in to inverter, what size is the system if it’s more than 16 amp it requires DNO approval so should only be on a 16 amp mcb unless there’s DNO approval (G99) ( what is max out put of inverter )

I have been retired for a while now. I love the site banter. Watching this reminded me what it was like. Keep it up. Would love to see the gloves when the are printed haha.

You walked by the DC isolator lads, on the inverter box look at the lower left sticker, HUmmm! Makes me wonder.

8 have waited for an electrician for 6.months now. Wish there were more around.

The total installation needs to be rewired and installed correctly. The customer is lucky you took on such a lash up !

Great work from you two. As questioned, this deffinitely looks like the unfamous Balkans standard install, which tends to work until it doesn`t - 50 minutes to 50 years, no promises made :)

If you pull the main fuse then the solar inverter will shuts off. One of the basic safety features of all grid-tied and hybrid inverters need to be approved for connecting to the power grid.

send the faulty switch to bigclivedotcom for autopsy

Love the 'Allo 'Allo 'pull zee main fuse' impression!

Great video. Nightmare of a space issue there especially if customer decides to upgrade to smart. One thing I'm curious about is why go straight in at 500v and not 250v?

Interesting to watch two eyes working on a job. I wonder if it's a help or too many cooks. Some may 'think' faster but that may confuse the other in the process. I think it works if one eye details the job they will do, and the other eye reviews what they intend to do, as a waterfall.

I always use 250v first when doing insulation resistance testing then when I’m sure nothing is connected use 500v

At 18.05, yes the system should be off but you don't know if the system has been wired correctly and maybe still live when turned off. A friend of mine was shocked when he checked a large electric motor in a factory, all he did was put his hand on the motor. The company electrician had wired power to earth, yes he did chase the electrician through the factory to tell him what he thought. As for the fully insulated tool, a good idea.

I enjoy your video even as a layman it teachs me alot about how electricity works in the uk! keep up the good work.!!Btw where are you based incase us viewers want to hire you for a job???

You need 2 DC isolators, one for each solar string. 😉

Genuine Top Guys! 👌 Quality as always

It's a solaredge with panel optimisers. With any fault fro the iverter the panel will switch to 1V output. No DC isolatoer needed. Also an unplugged string will only generate 1Volt per panel.

I've got a similar unit in my shed. Had a faulty MCB, totally over sensitive.

Didn't you need to change the MCB 6A with an RCBO 6A (or an Combination of one RCCB and one MCB)? The Original Installation was through the RCCB to both of the MCB. Now you have one RCBO and one MCB without RCCB protection. Please let me know whether that is correct. Thanks. BTW: I like your channel. Greetings from Austria (The Country without the kangaroo's).

Is it normal to run cable outside the house, especially under the door with foot traffic? Wouldn't that be dangerous?

You can't polish a turd but you can roll it in glitter. I'm a sparkie and had to go round after my solar installer tightening compression glands which were all left loose. Is it that they forget, is it the apprentice or do they just not know? That un-glanded SWA is unforgivable.

I Love nerding out with these Electric guys..great video!!

What would be amazing for Solar fault finding panel side would be a DC volt stick/pen wish it was a thing! I’m a solar PV installer and it would save so much time lifting each panel and looking for un connected panels

Why is my Australian grid voltage varying so much. I think it is causing the error 102 on my growatt inverter. I put my max min fluke meter on a socket and voltage jumps around and maximum was 247. Should be 230v. Is the grid most likely at fault? Tried two different inverters of same model. House nearby gets random warning 103 error. Very suspicious that all the solar on grid has caused unstable voltages..

3:43 The boiler flue is mounted upside down; the eccentric inner tube must stand up

never stand in front of the inverter whilst its generating or even when the dc voltage is ramping up. best chance of the inverter components blowing in your face. the modbuss meter needs to be fused down also to below 3amps. and the over all install is shocking. where is MCS when installers are install this sort of bodgery. makes my blood boil.

What about that lovely massive Wristwatch tho? What model is that? Great tips, thanks.

What excellent young chaps you are. Do you cover Leicestershire?

what codes can you see i can just see loads of 1

I was under the impression that the DC isolator is the important one, as you can’t safely work on the inverter without first isolating the DC, while the AC side is rather simple to isolate even without an dedicated isolator

Yeah I would have started by taking all that PV system out of that box and putting in a new external meter box specifically for it. New mains meters won't fit and if there's an electrical problem on line in all the PV system is lost with it

Hahaha what great people - Happy days! :D

Meter fitter is going to have fun fitting a smart meter in with all that crap

Nice install, nice to see the competent schemes work. As for the gloves, the people who insist on electricians wearing gloves are numpties who don't have a clue and are pen pushers, you try putting an RJ 45 end on wearing gloves, or even getting the end of some insulation tape, you may as well wear boxing gloves. If an electrician can't work live I don't know who can, we do live testing, again the health and safety fairy's, be like saying to a soldier you can use a gun but don't use live ammunition, the country has gone mad.

DC isolator isn't a requirement. The toggle switch on the solar edge is fine as a functional isolator due to the optimisers only putting out 1V per panel when disconnected from the inverter. But saying that its always good practice to install a DC isolator.

Got an issue with my system. Flipped the circuit breaker back on and it lit up inside for a second, a green cand won't stay on, so I've just left it.

I have reached out to 3 solar panel installers. Quotations received. Now they want me to sign an E sign contract. But, showing great reluctance they are to a site visit prior to signing the contract. (If I sign, they will want stage one of payment). As I am new to this, I sense I’m walking into troubled waters. Any advice for me?

Leaving exposed conductive parts on the end of that flex feeding the CT is dangerous in a box like this, even if it does require a tool to access, consumers need to check their meter and you can't expect them to realise these exposed parts are 230V. If you opened this box and saw single insulated tails, you would code it. All the supply equipment is double insulated. All of the solar gear should have been mounted in a separate box, with the CT inside an enclosure tp maintain double insulation. Plus you took that cable off an RCD...

I' am watching you video from nepal

Cory when I was a lad I was told to pizz on me hands to toughen them up 🤔😳 but I do wood not sparks

Distinctive and good work......... Follow you from Iraq

Voltage drop on a long feed is a real problem. I always check the cable type and size and the length vs stats

Glad you spotted the missing DC isolator... Should be one per string since they are geographically separated... these PV installs were a complete wild west....

needs a bigger box I would also check the DC rating on the solar power, over amps will cause tripping.. looking at the solar panels I would think 24/48/96 vdc. i would also recommend to the owner for load balances they want to consider a couple of battery banks direct to power is typically not recommended.. I would also tell the owners of the home the wrong box was used for installation

Full re-wire. Warranty on the solar edge was voided by you boys opening it.

I'm on the market for a clamp on tester that does EVERYTHING! LO-Z, HZ, Temp, AC/DC Amps and volts. Is there one that can do Amp testing with the clamp and the leads? also, I've heard that Klein really only works well in the 0-40 celsius range. And Fluke is like really $$$$

You don't need that second isolator in the meter box. The isolator at the inverter can be locked off, and anyway all G59/60/98/99 inverters will cut out within milliseconds of a grid failure, only coming back on if they have at least 20 seconds of smooth AC power with no spikes.

Some people say, Cory has started drinking Bud light in the last few months.

@27:43 How come it's better loose than cabled tied just because it's DC?

Not the best idea doing a 500V IR test L > N with that generation meter downstream! PV electrical side is fairly niche. If you need any advice/guidance in the future please message me.

W = V x I (neglecting power factor) so 230 x 0.9 = 207W

What a mess that was. Sterling work guys. It's always a right headache undoing and redoing what a butcher has slashed in. The installation inside was bloody awful.

What a pile feeces, rip the lot out of the DNO meter box and supply a seperate one enclosure and redo all connections.

I installed these kinds of inverters quite easy to install and trouble shoot

Good stuff I have 6 mcbs maximum on my current Wylex consumer unit. Looking to replace it with a new 18 edition dual RCD etc. Is it a good idea to install the new one with say 12 mcbs even though I only need to use 6 mcb now but will be doing an extension next year and might need an electric shower etc. Thank you shower

No DC isolator is needed only SPD DC would be ok. SPD should be of type A. Measure DC voltage to see if all optimisers feed voltage. Disconnect meter and see if PV works without solaredge smart meter and than go for troubleshooting of SE meter connection focusing on dip switches on meter. That is what I would do after 1/3 of a video.

You are right you need 2 dc isolator

Oh how I wish you where in Bristol !

You are right, it's more entertaining than the rubbish that is on T.V. even here in New Zealand.