New Interesting installation [RE-wrenches]

[William Korthof]

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We've placed over 100 of the 2500 "big boys" and 3 "baby boys" in the field.
Plus several dozen brand X inverters. The "send back" rate on a certain
well known brand X model is now around 1.5 returns per 1 customer inverter.
However, with a different well known line of brand X inverters (w/ battery),
the return rate remains at zero.

SMA seems to fall in the middle... we've seen a send back rate of up to
20%, which seems to have remained very consistent over the last year.
One nice thing about the SMA failures is that they almost always become
apparent within hours of startup, and stop decisively (no fading operation
like the brand X model S_ units...). FYI, I did see one DOA 2500U unit;
complete with a smoking circuit board (bad resistor?!!). [Smoking inverter:
it must not have been destined for California ;-/  ...We definitely don't like
any failure rate...and we now carry at least one "spare" to most job sites
to be ready... but SMA service and durability (on the units that pass infant
mortality) seems to be excellent.

/wk


At 12:20 AM 4/19/03 +0000, you wrote:

>I would very much like to hear from the group as to the field experience 
>w/Sunny Boy inverters and reliability. We have somewhere around 50 2.5 kW 
>SMA's out there now and are finding that a good 10% of them end up getting 
>boxed up and returned and about that same amount can be repaired in the 
>field w/various tricks and EPROMS. Therefore we are seeing about 20% call 
>backs. I'm not including in these numbers one larger project w/12 "Boys" 
>on it that had a lot of site generated power quality issues, that one is 
>understandable and working great now thanks to the super customer service 
>and support from John and Kent.
>
>SMA is claiming a 1-2% failure rate and that most of those are 
>installation problems. Are we just a bunch of bozos that can't get 3 wires 
>in and out correctly?!
>
>Even though these numbers are high and hard to live with, it is still 
>better than any other inverter I've used.
>
>So, Wrenches what are your experiences? Just the numbers/precentages 
>please, I prefer not to open a long string discussing individual problems.
>
>thanks,
>
>-jeff
>
>
> From the Solar, Wind and Hydro powered office of Jeff Oldham
>
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