Industry’s First Integrated AFCI Solution
The National Electric Code 2011 sets new requirements for newly installed photovoltaic plants above 80V DC installed on buildings. Such PV plants must be equipped with an automatic electric arc detector and circuit interrupter.
Automatic electric arc detectors provide supplementary protection against fires that may arise as a result of electric arcing, the causes of which range from mechanical damage to the conductor to an increase in resistance of the contact.
Third party solutions for AFCI exist, however SMA America LLC offers most of its inverters with a pre-installed, UL listed AFCI functionality (specify when ordering).
SMA’s new Sunny Boy Sunny Boy 3000-US, 3800-US, 4000-US and Sunny Boy 5000-US, 6000-US, 7000-US, 8000-US meet NEC 2011 requirements for detecting serial arc faults, interrupting affected circuits, signaling faults and requiring manual restarts of PV systems. SMA has also received UL certification for its AFCI transformerless inverters, the Sunny Boy 8000TL-US, 9000TL-US, 10000TL-US.
For a technical description of AFCI, see our the article in the Resource Center
For a press release on the UL listed SMA inverters with AFCI, click here.
I have a 2007 SB3000US, do you offer an arc fault upgrade for my existing inverter?
Our new AFCI solution received a lot of attention at SPI. There is one important take away from this new AFCI:
SMA is the ONLY inverter company that currently provides a Code compliant solution for those areas that have or will adopt the 2011 Code.
Visit our corporate website and click on the Solar Academy tab to find a training session on this new SMA feature.