[RE-wrenches] Warranty replacements

[Mark Richardson]

Rebecca,
Do your best to research the products before you install them and offer better products with few possible points of failure.
Most customers who understand that this is a decades-long investment will have no problem paying for premium products up front.
You, on the other hand, will save both money and headaches by not doing warranty replacement work for free.

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Mark Richardson
Production Manager
CELL: 518-965-4148

From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Rebecca Lundberg
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2014 4:40 PM
To: re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org
Subject: [RE-wrenches] Warranty replacements

We are starting to see a fairly steady stream of various solar electronics needing replacement under warranty, including micro-inverters, AC modules (microinverter failing), and even modules with an integrated DC electronic component failing to work from the get go. I work with residential customers and care about doing right by them, and of course they expect that their warrantied part will be replaced at no cost to them, they have already invested a lot in their solar project. Sometimes the manufacturer has a stipend which at least offsets the cost of gas but does not cover time to travel to the site and do the replacement, but I have recently come across several manufacturers who do not give any stipend at all and I am surprised at that. Replacing a module in the middle of a pitched roof is no small feat, and getting to micro inverters on a steep pitch is always a challenge. As the code requires more safety features down to the module level, I suspect we will see more and more of this, and the electronics are no longer at ground level and easily accessible. What ideas do you have about how to deal with this? Must we have an O and M contract with every customer given current product choices?

A similar question relates to a particular module having issues with delamination and failed diodes. We have been called out to several sites where this has caused the inverter to sense a fault, and testing showed the module leaking voltage to ground. Who is responsible for getting the inverter up and running when it clearly stems from the module? I suspect the module manufacturer's warranty legally exempts them from responsibility, but again it is reasonable for the customer to expect a warrantied system to be up and running.

Thoughts from the field?

Sincerely,
Rebecca Lundberg


--
Rebecca Lundberg
NABCEP Certified Solar PV Installer ®
Owner/President
Powerfully Green®
763.438.1976 | Rebecca.Lundberg at PowerfullyGreen.com<mailto:Rebecca.Lundberg at PowerfullyGreen.com>

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