Xantrex's Short Lived XW Series

[Gil_J]

Xantrex is launching a new Freedom series, the "X", in July. A Schneider employee (Schneider owns Xantrex) told me this will replace the current XW series. The XW series sure didn't seem to last long. The new Freedom X will be modular in design and have an integrated AGS function, or so I'm told. The XW series seemed like a pretty good product, but it did have some quirks that needed to be addressed as they would confuse most user. The biggest one was it would report an alarm if the generator was started from anywhere except the AGS module. Worse yet, if the generator was manually started from any start location the AGS function would not go back to autostart mode unless your remembered to go back and set it.

[travelite]

I think modular design is the future. Imagine a cabinet with a number of slots each accommodating a 1kW inverter module. Five boards, five kW. This gives you redundancy and scalability. With the increased deployment of renewable energy, modular inverters have become a hot topic in the research world. The focus has been on algorithms which enable the modules to truly share the load. The challenge is to minimize current flow between the modules. Voltage droop seems to be the preferred approach so far.

[TheGadgetGuru]

Gil, you hit that nail on the head! The XW is confusing and I've needed to make detailed checklists for various tasks to make sure I'm not screwing something up. It seems the problem is that the default programs in the XW are hard coded on an eProm and custom settings are required to work with specific coaches.

This brings up a questions: Can the Freedom X replace an existing XW and if so, what are the costs of the unit and installation? Yeah, I'm sitting down for this answer.

[Gil_J]

Andy,

There's no need to throw good stuff away. There's also no guarantee Scheider/Xantrex will fix the user interface and AGS nuisances any with the new offering. But, it you are curious, you can figure about $4-5K each for the units. The biggest problem with product change outs is whether the new product will fit in the same space. Finding more space can be a major obstacle, sometimes not economical to overcome.

Here's another strange thing about the XW series. In this case, two XW series inverter/chargers are connected to a common battery bank, which is pretty common. Wouldn't it be great it the common user could just glance at the gauges rather than the numbers? One gauge is clearly incorrect. One shows the remaining battery capacity at about 60% while the other shows full. It's a common battery bank so this data is incorrect. This error is due to the present load on the inverter. The one pulling 90+ amps is the one suggesting the battery capacity is far lower than the other that has almost no load. They seem to have forgotten to take the voltage drop under load into consideration.

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[TheGadgetGuru]

If this is confusing to you, imagine what it's like for the rest of us who have little to any clue about these things!

[Joe Camper]

Magnum and Outback

[Gil_J]

Magnum is probably the most popular unit in all Class A RVs. Their 4KW hybrid unit comes the closest as being a direct replacement for the Trace 4KW units.

Outbacks are modular and growing popular in Prevost conversions.

Victron Quattro may be the best available, but has limited US support.

Xantrex appears to be trying to be the come back kid. From a marketing petspective, I would have dropped the Xantrex badge in favor of the Schneider badge.

All just my observations or opinion,