With the advancement of the national "dual carbon" target, photovoltaic and energy storage facilities are becoming increasingly common in industrial, commercial, and household scenarios, providing convenient and clean energy for our lives and production. However, while enjoying these conveniences, we cannot ignore the safety issues in the use of inverters, especially the potential risk of DC arcing. However, with AFCI technology as a security tool, we can use green energy more confidently.
What is AFCI?
AFCI， The Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter is an advanced circuit protection technology. It is specifically designed to identify arc fault characteristic signals in circuits and promptly cut off power before these faults may cause fires or circuit short circuits. The important role of AFCI is that it can withstand the arc that may occur during normal use, such as switch opening and closing, plug insertion and removal, while avoiding false tripping in circuits with irregular current waveforms such as rectifier circuits and electronic loads.
The importance of AFCI in inverters
In energy storage systems, inverters are responsible for converting direct current into alternating current, serving as a bridge between photovoltaic modules and the power grid. Due to the risk of arc faults in high voltage environments, the application of AFCI in inverters is particularly important. Arc faults may lead to serious safety accidents such as fires, and AFCI can timely identify and cut off potential arc faults, effectively prevent and reduce the risk of fires caused by arc faults, and ensure the safe and stable operation of the system. Brazil has mandated that inverters must be equipped with AFCI from December 2024 to enhance the safety of photovoltaic systems. With the development of artificial intelligence technology, AFCI technology has also undergone an intelligent upgrade. By integrating advanced algorithms, AI AFCI not only improves the accuracy of arc detection, but also enhances the recognition ability of abnormal situations in complex environments, thereby reducing false alarms and missed alarms, and improving the response speed and stability of the system.
As a global one-stop solution provider for smart energy, Oukai New Energy's household energy storage system integrates advanced AI technology to achieve precise detection and rapid response to electric arcs, greatly improving the safety of the system. Through AI algorithms, AFCI can distinguish between noise and arc features, effectively avoiding false positives and false negatives, while ensuring high detection accuracy and fast response capability in complex environments. Our energy storage inverter products, whether high or low voltage series, are equipped with AI AFCI function. They not only have fast response and intelligent shutdown of less than 500MS, but also AI arc hunting accurately detects without false alarms, with a detection range of up to 300 meters and a maximum adaptive current of 30A. These features make our inverters industry-leading in terms of safety and efficiency.
The application of AI AFCI technology not only enhances the safety performance of inverters, but also provides solid technical support for moving towards a zero carbon future. It is an important step for us to jointly move towards a safer and smarter energy future.