Hi. I have a small farm in which I have various pumps, biggest one for now is 4.5Kw. I also have a house nearby and I'm considering getting a solar system given the provoked .....Erm, sorry I mean the current energy crisis... :) Anyway, all the pumps are 3 phase, the house is single phase. My initial thoughts were to get 3 Multipluses 3000 48 and set them in 3 phase, but then I remembered that I'd have to be very carefull because of a water heater and oven in the house, that together surely surpass the MP's 2400W rating. Now I found about 2 companies that sell transformers to the industry and they have 3phase to 1 phase converter tranformers and also vice versa!! For 5Kw those things weight more than 50Kgs !! But they cost about 2/3 of a single new MP.
The other option , which I'm pending to right now, is to get a single higher wattage MP (i.e. the 8000 48 version or even the 10000, although that is probably overkill and has too much losses for my taste, was thinking of minimizing the battery size for now) and put a single to 3 phase converter transformer in the circuit for the pumps.
Question is, which one would be preferable ? I know using transformers to make the conversion, one way or another, is going to incur in losses, does anyone have any experience with this ? The companies do provide a datasheet but they don't include the efficiency and why should I trust them for that anyway, the efficiencies for transformers are probably known in general.... Here is a link with an example: https://www.torytrans.com/en/transformers/phase-converter/single-to-three-phase-converter-transformers-ip23
Going with a single MP would be better in terms of future maintenance / repairs / replacement (although this shouldn't be a factor with Victron, given the higher quality, but eventually anything can die), given that if I have 3 MP wired for 3 phase and one of them goes wrong, I'd have to find a replacement with exactly the same model, whereas with a single bigger one I could borrow one / have a spare / more easily...
One advantage however if I go the path of 3MP wired in 3 phase is if one inverter malfunctions I would
still have the other two to feed the single phase circuits in the house, and could even wire it in parallel with the other one.
Decisions ....
But yeah, I'd like to know the potential transformer losses of the phase converter transformers and if anyone has any experience with this...
Also, another option would be 3 MPs wired for 3 phase and a separate MP for the house, no transformer losses then, although it's more expensive... In this case I could also go with smaller MPs for the 3 phase wiring...
What do you guys suggest ?
Thanks a lot!
