[RE-wrenches] Dual Channel Inverters

[Jason Szumlanski]

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 <taharvey at 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
> taharvey at heliocentric.org
>
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