Electrical Cables and New Voltage Sensor

Last week, while Andres was still in Chania, we noticed that it was difficult to keep changing between PV Power and Grid Power (in case we wanted to carry out some tests in the late afternoon when the PV Power was too low).


Basically, the two sources were equipped with different kinds of cables: the PV cables were bare, while the grid power cables had copper ring endings. 

We asked the electrician who had connected the PVs to help us find an easy solution for this and what he did was that he cut the copper ring endings off and put the bare cables in both the power sources. This week I learnt of a switch which can be installed between the two power sources and with easier way interchange between PV and grid power source. However, I need to speak to Sander (technician from TU Delft) about this to confirm that this will not lead to a loss in calibration.

An unfortunate incident which happened when the electrician was here is that in his effort to fix the cable he accidentally broke the sensor for the Voltage measurement. It took us two days to find where we can get supply of new resistors of the same type, and a tool to connect them. Consequently, for 2 days I was recording the voltage manually (on paper) after every 10 minutes.

My friend, Charalampos who studies Electronics here in the TUC helped me by making a new circuit.

The Soldering-Iron with Charalampos

Charalampos in Action!

There is still a small deviation in the voltage readings we measure and those shown by the multimeter in the fusebox (coming from PVs). A Professor from the Electronics Engineering department is interested to see the facility and is coming tomorrow together with all the people from the laboratory. Hope they can give some good advice about it.