MC Solar & Electrical Pty Ltd Incompetent Technically And Otherwise And Lied About Everything Eagle Farm Queensland

I thought I'd comment on the install of a solar array in Brisbane that MC had done wrong.

Things kind of went a differing direction when Mark Cavanagh the owner, Shane Telfer, and Stiofain (Stephen) Cullain finished up the work to get the inverter working.

Prior days work had Shane and another employee name Mark putting up roof racks for the solar panels and that was fairly efficient, but as with the next day they would have been better served to walk on the ground floor to back of building and lift panels and racks etc up to a person on the roof. Too many up and downs on the ladders IMHO.

I have spent some time researching how the inverter and panels are made, looking at MC's web site that Mark has set up, read his blogs, and downloaded and read most of the Fronius PDF manuals as well as researched the semiconductor modules used to convert the DC into AC from the solar panels.

I discussed some things earlier in the week when Shane and the other person was here and overall one observation and thing I don't like is, the lies.

Foxtel and all others including DishTV etc, will drop out and not work when you get rain storms. No point to lie to me about it I've owned them. They fail in the rain as you'd expect. This will be worse with a metal roof that you have. Why? Various reasons related to multipath distortion, fact that the metal conducts and reflects and that the rain bounces off it. Simple and complex....

I talked to Stiofan about some things, and he lied to me telling me that the mains wiring is 25mm and that they pull 16mm for the primary AC feeds for the 3 phase to the loads in the building. That is false.

He pointed to a large piece of orange insulation jacket stripped from another bundle of wires. That does not help. This is sleight of hand.

I asked about the service feed and the fact that this is 3 phase power with three conductors from the pole of equal size and one ground conductor of same size. I explain that this makes no sense since you are adding currents from the 3 phases and ALL return on the ONE ground wire that is NOT fault protected with a breaker or fuse.

He explained the problem wrong and offered answers related to Delta VS "Y" configurations, 3 phase loads which you have ZERO of. There are NO 3 phase motors at your location. And in effect proved to me he does not know what he is doing.

A three phase load MIGHT exhibit symmetry at all times on all 3 phases and with that flow current back out the other two phases and only some on the ground phase. You can't decide to require that and in this circumstance since all the loads are single phase, they can all be on 2 phases and go far over the ampacity of the ground leg.

And overall their wire diameter is too small and they don't know how to measure or size it based on need and demand.

The other problems for MC Electrical beyond not understanding basic AC power practices and theory or state of the art and then being dishonest about it all are:

1) They don't know what type of loads you are using here, that matters. They should have checked.

2) They don't know that you have 3 phase power and their excuse that this is all 3 phase power does not work.

3) They would need to know and VERIFY that there are three distinct phases offset at the proper phase angles and they are all 120 degrees apart. This would be done BEFORE you tossed the inverter onto the grid being this is what the inverter does. Not doing that is a disaster.

I continued the dialog with the owner Mark present who overall was evasive, passive, and seemed to avoid me and the whole problem of installing in total. He does not know how to solve this either.

This proves to me that his choices in what size of wire to run all may be wrong, in order to avoid a fire this matters, and he does not know how single or 3 phase AC power works. I do..... A problem.

Looking at Mark's blog and web site I find many errors, problems in logic and flaws in foundations in electrical science as well as inconsistent and contradictory statements. Proves incompetence.

The other dialogs and lies and questions made to me prove they know they have warts and try to cover them for some reason. As I spent more time with them it became clear that they know they have a problem, that they are weak technically and don't know how to solve them or what is right, and likely they know that I am right.

They prefer not to admit that. For some reason.

I take exception to Stiofain (Stephen) Cullain's work being his technique. Problems that I have with it are:

1) Drilling in live panel with the meter using a hole saw and sending conductive metal chips all over inside that cabinet. And as you can still see leaving them there as they sit there now. That is NOT good...

2) Use of cheap plastic wall anchors to hold up things like the inverter which I all but put up there myself being I am stronger than he is. That thing is HEAVY.... plastic anchors are not apropos.

3) He has a habit of stringing wires through the not assembled pieces of PVC conduit then glues them up getting glue all over the insulation. It has a high vapor pressure and volatile solvent content and should not be in contact with the wires which get hot and carry high currents. This is hackish at best.

4) I mentioned that your AirCon units are marked wrong and are oversized, you don't need 11,000BTU/Hour since that is overkill. They disagreed with me. I am right. You need about 1/2 of that amount.

5) They overall did no serious load testing for the system, as in put it through its paces with high current loads. Seems lax to me.

The owner Mark C later talked to other employees who did not think I heard them and they essentially said to Mark's questions, he saw the whole install which is true. I see all the wiring, the sizes and how it is wired and what was done.

Mark as they cleaned up was too worried about getting all the stray bits of small insulation so I did not see them and then muttered to me when I walked out back to leave, I suppose that does not help? I said no, I see it all already.

They are wrong.