Ulmo
Active Member
Oooh wee ... that is, uh, suboptimal. I am 100% all in favor of them doing this once or a handful of times, to prove it can be done, and measure its effectiveness, but to me, it seems like this is screaming for a design upgrade to get the bucks someplace good. As an iterative upgrade, I would say at least doing something that doesn't require a huge amount of conduit and cable; I assumed before that they'd just use a 6" nipple. I was sure wrong! And, it seems to me they should redesign the interior of the inverter cabinet to make certain that it does the following: 1: offer a clear path for the wires going into the buck, THROUGH the cabinet as a chase or in a chase in the cabinet, or in the very least, specifying a location to put a conduit in the cabinet (!); 2: a nipple to the buck at the top of the inverter, and 3: have the input from the buck be close to the top of the inverter so cables don't have to travel far then.
I can see why integrating a buck in the bottom of a cabinet would be bad: more heat to the inverters. But, if the electromagnetic fields created by bottom-mounted bucks are ok and the heating to inverters isn't excessive, then they can just wire to the buck from the ground conduits, then from there to the inverters as they already are. The design enhancement for that seems easy: another stand to put the buck into, upon which the cabinet would rest, but of course, that stand would cost money, and there would be a difficulty of lifting the inverter cabinet into place without crushing a worker (probably pretty easy if the stand allowed for easy alignment without excess pinch and crush points), and bad access to the inverter for work (that's the real show-stopper, and why I think bucks on bottoms are bad), and earthquake safety for an inverter riding a buck would be much worse. I wonder if there's a better way to mount bucks on or near switches.
Or, here's an idea: integrate bucking into inverting. I don't know the most efficient way to do it. Maybe this is it, and they just have to do some physical layout enhancement!
That's a good point: the above massive elbows might actually be cheaper than or similar cost to the racks, and not use much more or even less wire than the racks. Obviously, the vertical use of space was the benefit, and one I imagine Tesla will continue being interested in.
