Inverter Tale

I turned on my Xantrex inverter/charger yesterday (Freedom SW 2012) and heard this weird vibrating noise. Turned it off and tried again with the same result. The inverter would not operate although the charger section was fine. It was late and I decided to deal with it in the morning.

In the morning I noticed a red light on the remote panel indicating a fault; error code F17---"welded relay." That sounded pretty bad. I called my electronics friend and he said he would stop by before the Labor Day weekend. As we have plans for the weekend I was developing angst along with some heartburn.

I decided to call Xantrex. To my surprise a tech got on the call immediately, stepped me through some button pushes on the remote panel. There is a "hidden menu" that he had me access thru a combination of button holds and that led me to a choice of "Restore Factory Defaults." Viola, it it is working perfectly now.

The tech said that there must have been a power spike that "confused" the software. He went on to say that most problems that they see are software related and easily fixable. Perhaps the sale of Xantrex to Schneider Electric was a good thing. I must say I was more than surprised at the result.

Wow that turned out differently than I thought it would when I saw "Xantrex" in the thread title! I can't say I've had a really good track record with their products. Especially their battery chargers. I'm glad your tale has a happy ending.