Bought a Four Year-Old Prosine 1800, but . . .

[senormechanico]

I thought it would last more than a half hour before it died!

After running it for awhile on a 12 volt battery with a 100 watt light bulb, I was convinced it worked fine. After installing it in place of my residence's old modified sine inverter, I turned it on to compare my battery voltage readings with my fluke vs the readout on the inverter.
They were very close, both reading 13.28 vs 13.2 on the inverter. I tried the automatic and manual modes. Both worked fine.
I then took a break for lunch as I and had not yet gotten the ac output wiring hooked up.
Even though I had not put on any load after mounting it, when I turned it off to take the break, the internal fan came on for a minute or so. As I didn't think anything was wrong, I didn't look to see if there were any error messages on the screen.

The next time I turned it on, absolutely nothing from the inverter. No display other than a very faint set of black blocks where the LCD numbers and setup message should be.

I opened it up, no dirt, soot or any sign of corrosion etc. Circuit boards look like new. All screws are tight. Internal fuse is good.

Battery bank is floating at 13.2 on a separate grid supplied charger.
All wiring is clean, proper gauge, inside a heated house, no moisture etc.

Any ideas appreciated.

[Caribsailors]

Xancrap right?

I've had two chargers die in field, and terrible customer service for warranty. I'm sure it would be fine if you are on the main land, but they can't get their heads wrapped around, that people actually untie from the dock.

Just my experience, I don't want to jade your view.

Cheers

[savoir]

Xantrex Prosine is not a good product. I blew two of the Prosine 2000, both after roughly 6 months use. Never again.

Take a look at Victron for a boat. For travelling, a lot of RV types like Outback.

[CharlieJ]

Not to add to your woes but, IMO, you have purchased a very poorly designed dinghy anchor.

Charlie

[cuthbert]

Originally Posted by senormechanico

Any ideas appreciated.

In summary, it worked in testing not on the boat, worked in the boat with no output load, you switched it off and then switched it back on and it doesn't work?

First off, take it back to the initial test setup with the 12V battery and light load and confirm that it does not work.

Then are you completely sure that all internal "fuse" devices can be found and test OK? Because it is internally fused against an input battery voltage reversal and the balance of probability is that you inadvertantly did something to blow this input protection fuse, as it worked, you did some stuff, it stopped working. It could be coincidence and something failed during your install/testing phase, but don't go there first. Assume you did something (sorry to say it, but we can all do it) go back over what you did when testing the input side with a voltmeter and check everything you can.

If you are sure it was not you, and all is lost and you are looking at junking it or returning it for repair at a cost that is a sizeable part of buying new......be bold and try and locate the most likely fault by trial and error. The good news is that it seems totally dead and the control circuitry is not powering up which points to a failure on the DC input voltage path.

Best guess? Bad electrolytic bulk capacitor, failed short circuit on the DC input side, hence no display as well as no output. Difficult to test in situ, and you don't really want to be digging around inside with it live, so remove the PSU from the boat and from the input DC power and open the case, try and locate all the large capacitors with polarity markings on and inspect the casings and leads for minor discolouration.

When you are abolutely sure you know what the capacitors are and where they are located, physically locate the cap nearest to the DC input and snip one leg to remove it electrically from the circuit (note! A capacitor holds a charge and you may get zapped if it discharges into you so use caution and snips with insulating handles). After snipping one lead, close the case and seal it and reconnect 12v input and test again with your light load. There may be more than one so you will repeat the process for each.

If you get lucky and this does the job the light will come on and you need to replace that cap.

[senormechanico]

Thanks for the replies.

Although we purchased this inverter for the boat, we decided to use it in our home instead.

This is a backup power system for my land house, not the boat's "house".

I have 1100 aH worth of deep cycle batteries topped off by a 100 amp shore power charger which floats them at 13.2v. The location is in a window seat, dry and basically 70 degrees F.

The test setup was done in my garage with a lead acid 12 volt battery and a 100 watt incandescent lamp for a load.
It ran fine, although it sounded a little bit like the fan had a noisy bearing.

Then I moved it to the house's installation, mounted it, hooked it up (no reverse polarity goofs or anything like that) and tried it. Worked fine, although I had no load attached at this point. The display came on normally, with the backlight and startup splash message. I turned it off and tried the power save scenario where it "sleeps" until a load is applied.
That worked fine as well.
I went back and forth between the two operating modes a few times and it ran perfectly.

I took a break. A bit later my wife came home.
When I showed her my installation progress, I said all I needed to do was to hook up the AC output and I'd be completely done with the installation.
That's when I turned it on to show her and that's when it came up dead.

It's now on my antistatic workbench, naked to the world.
I've repaired several sketchy solder connections, checked all the diodes and output transistors for shorts, measured voltages (mostly the lack thereof) at all the test points I can find. There are absolutely no visible signs of distress, overheating, funny smells etc.

The fan, when hooked up to a 12 volt source has no bearing noise at all.
I now suspect what I previously heard from the inverter was the precursor of failure trying to show up. There also had been one or two very slight blips in the light output which I figured might have been a 12 volt hookup loose connection. (I was using jumper cables at the time).

In the "on" position, it draws 9.6 ma. The internal 225 amp fuse is good.

BTW, I have a 30 yr professional electronics repair background.

[senormechanico]

For those of you who would like to know "The Rest of the Story",
I purchased a dead Prosine 1800 for $75 for parts.
After some sleuthing, I used my dead one for parts and fixed the "parts" machine.
After fixing it but before installing, I swapped various plug in parts around to check them for proper operation to know if they were worth keeping as spares.
It's now in service and working fine, hopefully for a long time.

[Islander]

This might help someone if they have this problem with a Prosine.

I switched off mine and disconnected the batteries for the first time in several years since I bought it. When I reconnected everything I got a "Prosine Memory Error" message and nothing worked. I tried switching off etc. to no avail.

Eventually I went into "Installer mode" and did a reset to factory preferences and it came right back.

Cheers.

[delmarrey]

WTG

[senormechanico]

Islander,
I suppose it depends on the particular model, but I've never heard of that menu.
How do you get into 'installer mode'?

[Islander]

Set to Configure, press Escape and Data down for a few seconds. I have a Prosine 2.0.

Cheers.

[senormechanico]

Ah,
Must be a different control panel.
All this has is a switch and a readout, no extra buttons.
Thanks.

[The Vortex]

Hi- just to give my short experience, my $100 used Prosine 2000 is outside in a poorly constructed (dampish) shelter on a small BC island and works great. Think good thoughts! It even works for electronics.

[senormechanico]

Originally Posted by The Vortex

Hi- just to give my short experience, my $100 used Prosine 2000 is outside in a poorly constructed (dampish) shelter on a small BC island and works great. Think good thoughts! It even works for electronics.

It's probably had a bad life and knows what you paid for it.
It also knows that if it doesn't show its gratitude and dares to act up, it's going to be toast!

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, The Vortex.