Jason, I'm one of the many installers who still won't touch a micro yet. It's not so much that there were failures early on, it's how companies like Enphase HANDLED them. My understanding is that you basically got a replacement inverter and got stuffed for your time and travel. That may have changed a bit by now but I'm betting that the reimbursement is still pretty pitiful. It's the same with most central inverter failures during warranty with the exception of Fronius. There are failures to be sure, BUT Fronius' compensation for my time and travel is better than any other manufacturer I've heard about. You won't make much money occasionally replacing their failures, but you won't get hosed either. And that, fellow Wrenches, is why I use Fronius almost exclusively. Any equipment manu who wants my biz needs to make me whole if/when their product bites it during the warranty period. It's bad enough when a product that I recommend to my clients goes belly up. Even though it is the product's fault, that reflects directly back on ME not the manu. If they won't at least compensate me fairly to fix their screw ups, they can just bugger off.
Bob-O On May 7, 2013, at 11:26 AM, Jason Szumlanski wrote: I suspect that the early failure rate on the M215 is tiny next to the M190. Most of the M190's that did have failure problems early on failed very soon after installation in my experience. After the initial "duds" died, the failures on most M190 systems dropped off. I'm not seeing a linear failure rate you describe. It's been months since we've gone back to an M190 installation. Maybe Enphase would be willing to share the M215 failure rate as a percentage of the M190 failure rate to quantify this for us. I don't even want to think of how many "30 year solutions" we have replaced from Fronius, Motech, and other manufacturers, sometimes multiple times per site. Jason Szumlanski Fafco Solar On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 12:53 PM, Troy Harvey <tahar...@heliocentric.org> wrote: > Hi Troy, > > The Sharp Sunvista JH-3500U stopped being produced in 2005ish. Fronius and > Kaco may have products with 3 MPPT inputs. > > Sorry to hear about your trouble with microinverters. I'm guessing those > were older units. Our current line of products has had extremely low failure > rates. Perhaps you should try Enphase microinverters again. Nick, We have had problems with *all* 175 and 190 installs. We got tired of ripping apart the arrays every year to replace 1 or 2 inverters. We saw we had a linear failure rate on all the arrays, with replacements needed every year. Enphase was not responsive to doing a full replacement on the arrays where we were have continuous failures of the old inverters, even though it is clear they will all eventually die at a rate of 2 per year, every year. It was become phenomenally expensive to take apart an array to get out 1 or 2 inverters, and then rebuild that array, and repeat it every year. Until microinverters have proven a track record of being 30 year solutions (& no electrolytic capacitors), the idea of having per-panel monitoring is totally flawed because you are monitoring a module that has a 5 or 6-sigma reliability, with an inverter that has a 1 or 2-sigma reliability. thanks, Troy Harvey --------------------- Principal Engineer Heliocentric 801-453-9434 tahar...@heliocentric.org _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
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