[RE-wrenches] Canadian Solar / MC4 connectors in a marine environment

Chris Worcester chris at solarwindworks.com
Tue Jun 7 09:20:18 PDT 2016


Hi Kirk,

My go to for making up outdoor & questionable connections is to goop them up
with No Ox and have seen it working in the field for 15+ years now. A lot of
our pole mount discos and other boxes run the real chance of being buried in
the snow pack for months at a time.

 

Chris Worcester

Solar Wind Works

NABCEP Certified PV Installer

Office 530-582-4503

Cell 530-448-9692

Fax 530-582-4603

www.solarwindworks.com

chris at solarwindworks.com

 

From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On
Behalf Of Kirk Herander
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2016 2:28 PM
To: RE-wrenches
Subject: [RE-wrenches] Canadian Solar / MC4 connectors in a marine
environment

 

Hello,

 

I am debugging a Florida ocean-side 35 kw array using 4 year old Canadian
Solar panels, which I've never had a high opinion of, installed by others.

I've discovered several not-so-good problems, such as low insulation
resistance through the panels, ONLY when raining, early to mid-morning
condensation, or by using the last resort of spraying the panels with a
garden house and watching the SMA inverters shut down due to failing their
self "Riso" (that's the IRT) test creating a ground fault error.

That aside, what's just as interesting is that about 8 or 9 of the module
interconnections were basically oozing the aqua-blue copper tarnish. I've
never seen this in any installation before. Either the MC4s weren't crimped
and tightened at the factory well, or the connectors were seated poorly,
although that doesn't seem to be the case. BTW, I replaced all these dubious
MC4 connectors and the ground faults still occur when the panels are wet.

The bigger issue is the panel warranty, but is there anything on the market
which could seal these connections, perhaps a type of "clamshell" to provide
an extra layer of protection, which is removable if need be? There's always
glue-filled heat shrink, but ideally I don't want anything permanent
surrounding the connectors.

Has anyone ever seen what I'm describing in a marine environment?

 

Kirk Herander

Owner|Principal, VT Solar, LLC 

Celebrating our 25th Anniversary 1991-2016

www.vermontsolarnow.com

dba Vermont Solar Engineering

NABCEPTM  2003 Inaugural Certificant

VT RE Incentive Program Partner

802.863.1202

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20160607/8754c09d/attachment-0002.html>


More information about the RE-wrenches mailing list