Solar Breaker Recombiner for Reliable Grid-Tied Performance

Eaton has claimed one of the industry's first 1000Vdc solar breaker recombiners to be tested and certified by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) to meet UL 1741 standards. The certification indicates safe and reliable operation in stand-alone and grid-tied distributed energy applications. For enhanced application flexibility and equipment reliability, Power Xpert® Solar DC breaker recombiners can be customized with Eaton’s broad range of PVGard™ solar circuit breakers.

“Eaton continues to expand its portfolio of solar balance of system solutions to provide customers with best-in-class technology for their system requirements,” said Brad Anderson, product manager at Eaton. “The new dc breaker recombiners are designed to provide reliable performance in high-voltage systems and feature integrated, flexible circuit protection configurations to provide a compact solution for enhancing the safety and performance of solar applications.”

Eaton’s Power Xpert Solar DC breaker recombiners boxes are designed to simplify the consolidation of incoming power from multiple combiner boxes into one main buss or feed that can be distributed to a solar inverter – minimizing labor and material costs through reductions in required wiring, while also preventing voltage and power losses to maintain PV system efficiency.

A 1000Vdc rating provides reliable performance for high voltage PV installations and the flexible design can be configured for grounded, ungrounded or bi-polar systems. The solution also supports all inverter designs with current inputs up to 600A and outputs up to 4000A. Additionally, outputs can be selected in three configurations: single lineup output (pull section), output per structure, or individualized outputs per breaker input.

Providing integrated protection for wiring between PV modules, combiners and inverters, Eaton’s PVGard circuit protection solutions are UL 489B listed and offer both 100 percent and 80 percent rated breakers for design flexibility and cost saving opportunities. By providing a single device for combined disconnect and overcurrent protection, Eaton’s PVGard circuit protection solutions also meet National Electric Code (NEC) requirements.