[RE-wrenches] Dual Channel Inverters

[Troy Harvey]

> 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
taharvey at heliocentric.org
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