[RFI] pleasant surprise today from Solar Edge

Tim Tom 73guddx at gmail.com
Thu Sep 24 23:57:46 EDT 2020


James:

Your antenna is about 150 feet further away compared to the distance between my neighbors solar panels and my antenna. It’s about twice the distance so in theory the noise would be 1/4th as strong (inverse square law) all things being equal.

Could you please tell us the strength of the noise before and after the suppression was installed? It would also be helpful to know what type of antenna you have — gain, height above ground etc.

Tony -K2MO



> On Sep 24, 2020, at 9:44 PM, WW3S <ww3s at zoominternet.net> wrote:
> 
> hes directly across the street from me, all the lots in the subdivision are 80x180 ft, his array is on his  rear roof, and my antennas are in my back yard, so 260-285 ft, something like that....
> 
> 
> ------ Original Message ------
> From: "Tony" <73guddx at gmail.com>
> To: "Rfi List" <rfi at contesting.com>
> Sent: 9/24/2020 12:52:38 AM
> Subject: Re: [RFI] pleasant surprise today from Solar Edge
> 
>> James:
>> 
>> Solar Edge used the same suppression techniques on my neighbors installation and it only reduced the noise from S-9 +15 db to S-9 which is still very high.
>> 
>> I suspect that the suppression would be more effective on installations that emit lower-levels of RFI so it would be interesting to know how strong the noise was prior to the suppression being installed and what the results were afterward.
>> 
>> The distance from your antenna to the solar panels is another factor so it would be helpful to know that as well.
>> 
>> Congratulations.
>> 
>> Tony -K2MO
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 9/23/2020 9:29 PM, WW3S wrote:
>>> My neighbor across the street had a 21 panel Solar Edge array installed in May 2019, 6.5 kw I believe. I had the 18kc noise spikes, and the 200kc spaced optimizer noise. After working with Paul at the ARRL, who contacted the Solar Edge technical team on my behalf, Solar Edge committed to fixing the problem. They were supposed to come out in the spring, but of course current events prevented that. A visit was scheduled for early September, but the local crew needed to cancel. So I was suprised to see their van at the neighbors bright and early this morning. While the panels were disconnected, I took so more sdr sample screenshots, of course no noise.  The engineer from Solar Edge appeared, and we had a brief chat about the course of action they were going to take. replace all 21 optimizers, twist all the DC wiring, and install ferrites on all the leads in to the optimizers. I had to leave for an appt this afternoon, and they were gone when I got back, but......it appears to be successful !!! The 200kc optimizer noise certainly is gone, no notice of it at all on the sdr, and the other noise seems gone as well. I only had a short time to check, but it certainly seems to have knocked most, if not all, of the noise down.....(insert emoji for jumping on soapbox) No matter how you feel about the ARRL, they are really the only game in town as far as supporting the amateur radio community with regards to RFI and spectrum defense. If you can spare a few bucks, send it to them. If you are not a member, think about joining.
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