I have been testing my PIP4048 for a couple of weeks now as a dedicated Inverter to run my Imiev charger at my offgrid house. It's connected to my 16 cell 400ah calb lifepo4 bank. I have it wired to a single 15A GPO.
Ok so the good and the bad news.
The good news is it handles the steady 2200w load aspect of the I Miev charger without breaking a sweat.
The bad news is it went crazy on me while charging the Imiev yesterday and it did it again today and I got it on video though haven't finished uploading it yet. (will post a link to the video soon)
So what is (going crazy)..... Well As most would know the Imiev charger when first turned on spends about 5 seconds doing a preliminary hand shake - safety check and same other Communication between the EVSE and charger to tell it what rate to charge at. If that checks out ok it slowly ramps up the load (soft start) over the next 5 seconds or so before leveling off at a steady 2200w (9.2A) as it's setpoint for the stock EVSE.
Every now and then, perhaps two or three times Over A full charge the charger will stop for a short period of time lowering the load to nothing (I guess just to check cell voltages balance) before ramping back up again to full output and continuing to charge.
I came out to check on the PIP4048 just as the charger went into a (stop and check) Period. I was eeing a stable 230v - 50hz from the pip and about 5w load. Then as soon as the charger went to slowly ramp back up again the PIP went crazy. The AC output voltage of the pip was bouncing up and down ( 210v - 257v and everything inbetween) It was showing a DC load swinging from (10A - 75A) and the output load was showing (500w - 3300w) Yikes!
I shut it down and Plugged the Imiev EVSE Into my Selectronic Inverter And it just ramped up and started charging at a steady 2200w with a stable 240v AC as expected
So I unplugged the charger from the Selectronic and tried it again in the PIP4048. Again it went crazy as soon as the charger tried to ramp up to max output. (Strange that it handled the ramp up the first time no problem. It has charged the car a few times before this and didn't play up on ramp up) So I switched it off again.
The only difference I had between the selectronics and the PIP4048 was a small 10m 15A extension cord on the PIP4048. So just to eliminate that I pulled the car up closer and plugged the EVSE directly into the 15A GPO. This time the PIP4048 ramped up as normal and started charging.
Could it be that 10m extension cord or just a coincidence. I don't think the extension cord had anything to do with it. In fact I would say I'm sure it wasn't. By this time I had to go pick up my wife from Lansborough train station so that was all the charging I did for the day.
The next day - Sunday 10:00am. I just plugged the Imiev back in. Evse directly to the 15a GPO of the PIP4048. It ramped up as usual and stabilized at 2200w. I checked on it several times over the day as I was working in the area. It charged the car for several hrs from 40% SOC.
The few times the charger paused and ramped back up again the PIP4048 had no trouble and it was business as usual.
Then the trouble started again. This time as the charger was ramping down near the end of charge it went crazy again and repeated the crazy stuff mentioned above
So now I'm back charging with the trusty old Selectronic's as I have charged the car a good 100 times from the Selectronics without issue.
Would be nice to work out what's going on with the PIP4048.
I was thinking a few things. Could it be the PIP4048's output is making the charger or evse signal to the charge do crazy things. Or just the PIP itself going crazy. Either way the PIP is to blame some how.
I seem to remember talk of how a variable output / speed heat gun Making the PIP4048 do something similar?
I know my Selectronics hates my variable heat gun/ paint stripper and that's about the only load I have found that it plays havvoc with it. Though it has no issue at all with the Imiev charger.
Again the strange thing is the PIP had intermittent issues with the Imiev charger ramp up.
Kurt