18 July 2014
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Our new Mastervolt Soladin 600 tie-in mains inverter arrived today and we have installed it in the loft with it connected via an isolation switch to the solar panel array and a fuse and electric meter to the mains circuit.
The unit was very easy to install but after checking our HF radios in the house we found that there was a very high level of RF interference across the HF radio spectrum with harmonics well over 30Mhz which disappear when the inverter is disconnected.
We used a 3m length of wire to act as an antenna and connected this to our Rigol Spectrum Analyser and checked various frequency spreads for extra background noise when the inverter was running and isolated from the mains.
The peak of the interference appears to be around 9.5Mhz with many harmonics across the entire HF spectrum. This is producing over a 9+ signal of background hum on my Yaesu FTDX3000 transceiver and also on our Icom scanner. Turning the inverter off completely removes the background noise.
We are now going to have to try to fix this major interference problem with this inverter or replace it with one which has better screening against RFI.
The video below shows the noise and results from the spectrum analyser and noise on the HF radio.
Wolfgang Hahn, DC1XH
Brian, thank you very much for your publication.
I will spread your URL to the colleagues in the EMC-c'tee of the DARC as well as to
some IARU-colleagues.
The "solar season" is opened, and it is essential to inform and to warn the radio amateurs accordingly.
vy 73 de DC1XH
Wolfgang