Much of the infrastructure on Landlady’s property has proven problematic, and much of it is simply aging. There have been numerous issues over the years as equipment installed by contractors who either didn’t know or didn’t care how to do things right failed in its duty. In this case, I think the inverter just got old.
But an inverter that can’t be trusted to stay running, that won’t restart until it maybe mysteriously ‘heals’ hours or days later, is not an inverter you want around.
But big inverters are expensive. Not Bugatti expensive, but expensive enough to ruin your whole month.
BUT we just happen to live in an area where solar power systems are ubiquitous, and big inverters are not considered exotic equipment. And I was able to make contact with the guy just down the road who…
You get the idea. Landlady will not be paying full retail. 🙂
That sounds like a thermal overload cutoff. Unless you’ve always had problems with it shutting down in warm weather, it probably is dying and needs replacement, but you can probably help it limp along for a while with more ventilation. little battry powered fan might work wonders.
The capacitors and fans are about the only thing that age in inverters. You might look into replacing the caps if the fans still spin. Way less than even a discounted new inverter.
Sometimes you can sniff around a circuit board and find the bad component, resistor with a hole in it, that sort of thing. I fixed an early compact fluorescent bulb that way once. Outside of that, they are hard to fix without a schematic, even if you have an o-scope.
People tend to want to run electronics without cooling for some reason. Would they drive a car with no fluid in the radiator? But they will put their laptops with the cooling slots on the bottom, on a rug floor. Combine that with the fact many companies spec components on the cheap side, and now you know why solid state systems do not last forever, even though they should.