[RFI] Solar Panel RFI in Kings Park - Update October 4th 2018

[Gary Smith]

They fill the optimizer with foam, the noise goes away and so do the 
techs from the solar panel company.

Meanwhile, time comes and goes and the foam looses its tenacity and the 
noise comes back.

Torroids are your friend not Chinese (betcha it is made there) synthetic 
foam rubber.

Gary...wa6fgi


On 10/6/2018 1:38 PM, Tony Brock-Fisher via RFI wrote:
> /'They determined the noise to be one and the same'. /
>
> This is a HUGE win. Now you have them concentrated on fixing the 
> offending location, instead of spending their time spinning their 
> wheels, looking for other causes!
>
> I agree, the idea of 'RF absorbing foam' sounds like snake oil. But if 
> you got them to put large solid chokes on, then let them go on 
> thinking the RF foam fixed it...
>
> Also, improving the ground system  may not help and may actually hurt, 
> if they increase the coupling of noise into the ground. It is 
> important that the ground rails do not provide a 'sneak path' around 
> any ferrites installed on cables with ground, such as at the 
> connection from the roof to the home run. Specifically, in figure 3 of 
> my article, you must make sure that the bare ground conductor passing 
> thru the chokes does not make accidental contact to the rails before 
> it has exited the last choke in the string (the left hand one in 
> figure 3).
>
> -Tony, K1KP
>
>
> On 10/6/2018 4:04 PM, Tom Thompson wrote:
>> It won't.  If you put a transmitter inside a screen room with an 
>> external antenna, it will radiate.
>>
>> Tom   W0IVJ
>>
>> On 10/6/2018 1:59 PM, Tony wrote:
>>> All:
>>>
>>> The RF Engineers from Solar Edger came out to my home this week to 
>>> assess the noise emanating from my neighbors solar panel system.
>>>
>>> They plugged into my antennas to view the spectral noise on my 
>>> receiver which they then compared to the spectral noise that 
>>> appeared on their portable setup near the solar panels. They 
>>> determined the noise to be one and the same.
>>>
>>> The next course of action is to improve the ground system and 
>>> install RF absorbing foam to each optimizer. I also convinced them 
>>> to replace the snap-on ferrites located at each optimizer, with 
>>> larger ones so they can loop several turns of cable around each core.
>>>
>>> They originally said they would just go with the RF foam which is 
>>> puzzling: I don't understand how encasing a noisy device with this 
>>> stuff could suppress RFI when the device is attached to long runs of 
>>> cable that act like antennas. Can anyone explain how that would work?
>>>
>>> Tony -K2MO
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
>
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