Well, this is new. Years ago, Heart Interface Corporation made a really nice line of renewable energy and vehicle ac inverters and inverter charger units. At some point, the company became Trace Engineering, which was then bought out by Xantrex, who promptly worked hard to make most of the better products and engineering go away in favor of nasty Chinese rubbish. 😛
Well, Heart Akerson is still around today in Costa Rica, and his new company, Heart Transverter, has a pretty fun product going.
Basically, it’s one green 2KW box of switching converters, software defined and highly programmable, with two dc input/output busses, one +50VDC output, one ac input, and one ac output… and it does… anything you want it to, including serving as a grid tie inverter, pv controller, charge control ….
A companion unit can be used for sophisticated load monitoring and control of six circuits.
It is designed and manufactured in Costa Rica, which is pretty amazing in itself.
The brains of the system are on a small remote control unit about the size of a sandwich, with a usb interface for programming.
Believe me, I’m most curious and intrigued. I didn’t get to see it running today, sadly. I’d love to see this in action.
I should add that the Heart Transverter logo is pretty cool. Yeah, I have a little obsession with how neat the old Heart Interface logo was 😛
where is there listing? Seems as they have had plenty of time. Must be a pile of crap not to get a UL listing
If you took a look at the product and understood what it is capable of, then you would understand that you could not really UL list it without tying both of its arms behind its back and one leg up and cram it in a box. There aren’t even standards developed yet that allow its demand response capabilities to accurately determine need/surplus in the utility without only using voltage and frequency. UL 1741 is causing the renewable integration into utilities to be pushed back because the utilities need the same spinning reserve, in case the renewables kick out due to ul 1741 regs. This box can mitigate both issues while providing battery backup.
We are getting ready to install one of these on Maui. They have an ETL listing for UL 1741 and are on the Hawaii TOV list
mahalo,
Franklin Russell WH6DSF
Sweet! I hope you enjoy it.
Is this listed to IEEE 1547.1 or 1547.1a
I’m not sure, honestly.
I am not sure that I am at the right place but I am trying to connect with a brilliant electronics designer that made the Hart invertor who lives (or lived in Tambor and has a son name Forest.
My name is Ronnie and I live in the mountains of Heredia (Costa Rica) and my number (an WhatsApp is 8623-7777.
Long Story Short (vesion) I am working on a invertor design that is polyphase ferrite core Vmos driven power supply to drive a Hydrogen fuel cell
and I need someone who can help me getit right! Thanks!
You’re looking for Heart Akerson, I believe. I think I may have an email address for him way back in my files.