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How to repair inverter part 1

Learn this simply way of repairing an inverter.

How to repair inverter

Inverter repairs is not common and repairing a faulty inverter has not been an easy task for the local
electronic repairers. This has made the few of us who does professional repairs to charge more

especially when the inverter is a foreign made. I particularly do this to promote local inverter
manufacturers as well as my products and discourage others from buying inferior foreign inverters

which can even fail on same day. Lets start this first part of inverter repairs by knowing the types of
inverters we currently have on market.

TYPES OF INVERTER
On the commercial market, the types of inverters seen are square wave two stages inverters, square
wave single stage low frequency inverters, modified sine wave two stages inverters , modified sine
wave single stage low frequency inverters, pure sine two stages inverters, pure sine single stage low
frequency inverters.

TWO STAGES INVERTERS

Two stages inverters are inverters that first converts the input battery voltage to 300V - 310V DC
using high frequency. This is achieved by switching ferrite transformers at high frequency. The square
wave output of the ferrite transformer is then rectified using diode bridge rectifier and filtered using
400V electrolytic capacitors. This ends the first stage of the two stages inverter.
Before we go to the second stage, please know that the components in the second stage is powered
by a separate 15- 25V winding on the ferrite transformer used for the 310V switching.
The second stage of two stages inverters works by converting the 310V DC to 220V AC pure sine or
PWM or Square Wave using mosfet bridge or mosfet half bridge with an appropriate control drive
circuit.

SINGLE STAGE (LOW FREQUENCY CONVERTERS

This type of inverters consists of a driver stage (oscillator stage) and mosfet switches arranged in
either a push pull ( for center tap transformer inverters ) or H-bridge ( for inverters without center
tap transformers. This type has mosfets fixed on three different heat sinks.)

OSCILLATOR STAGES OF ALL CONVERTERS

Every inverter is made up of a control signal generation stage called the oscillator. The oscillator in
lay mans term can be explained as an electronic signal that goes on and off at a set frequency. For

inverters, the set frequency may be either 50 times in one second (50Hz) or 60 times in a second
(60Hz)

Currently, inverters on market uses either a pulse width modulation (PWM) IC for their oscillation
stage or a microcontroller with built in PWM.

COMMON INVERTER OSCILLIATOR ICS

commercial inverters and UPS are built around the following ICs.
SG3525 SG3524 TL494 CD40.. MICRO CONTROLLERS

Common Decision making ICs (OP AMPS) used in commercial inverters LM324 LM358 LM339 LM471
LM258 ETC.
FUNCTIONS OF THE OP AMPS IN INVERTERS

Every good inverter has a number of operational amplifiers (OP AMPS) configured or designed to
take simple decisions for the inverter. These decisions may include:

Battery Low

Battery Full

overload in some cases

high and low temperature

Fault.

In How to repair inverter part 2, I will tell you how these op amps can cause fault and how to remove
or solve the faults in few minutes.

Now that you have idea of the compositions of an inverter, lets start our troubleshooting and
repairs by reading INVERTER REPAIRS 2.

5 comments:
MUST, POWER STAR, FELICITY INVERTER REPAIRS

Today am going to show you how to repair all the inverter brands that uses the control boards
below.
MUST INVERTERS, FELICITY INVERTERS, KAMA POWER, POWER STAR, ETC. and some other
popular inverters uses the same control board but only branded with different names.

All inverters using this boards are low frequency, pure sine wave inverters. The above board is
connected to a heat-sink board called the power amplifier board built on the principle of H
bridge (full bridge) converter topology .

POWER INVERTER REPAIRS 3

MUST, POWER STAR, FELICITY INVERTER

FAULTS ON THESE INVERTERS

The inverter displays every fault with a unique code, these fault codes starts from 01 to 09.
Explanation of the error code is shown below;
INVERTER ERROR CODE O1 AND ERROR CODE 04

These errors means there is either a problem with your fan or your system temperature is very high.

Error 01 can also occur if the temperature sensing NTC shorts.

This fault usually occurs when the fan PWM clock pin fails (The middle pin of the 12V Fan).

Solution:

1. check NTC

2. Change fan

3. check the board for components in the circuit below;

ERROR 02 (overload)

Overload simply means given more load to the inverter than its designed for.
In case there is no such overloading and the system is saying overload then change the resistors in
the circuit below

ERROR CODE 3 AND ERROR 7 (OUTPUT SHORT)

This code means either your drive signal is not going through or output mosfets has failed.

solution
1. Check all mosfets for failure
2. Check all gate resistors for burnt and opening. (47 ohms each resistor)
3. check the drive circuit below
ERROR CODE 5

This error means your battery is below a set value and the batteries needs recharge.

ERROR CODE 08 AND ERROR CODE 09

check the battery sense circuit below and increase or reduce the related resistors.