[RE-wrenches] micro-inverters

August Goers august at luminalt.com
Thu Sep 15 08:38:29 PDT 2016 

Here’s a pic of an M210:



[image: burned enphase m210.jpg]





I guess a picture is worth a thousand words.



August



*From:* RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] *On
Behalf Of *frank -bz products
*Sent:* Wednesday, September 14, 2016 12:25 PM
*To:* RE-wrenches
*Subject:* Re: [RE-wrenches] micro-inverters



Re 190's.

Not much to learn from dissecting a swollen 190. Most of the time the
swelling is caused by electrolytic capacitors that have failed. Some very
high current capacitors actually have brackets to bolt them down to
minimize swelling.

Frank BZP.

BZ Products INC.

8801 Gravois Rd.

St.Louis MO 63123 USA

314-644-2490

www.bz-products.net

On 9/14/2016 1:58 PM, Benn Kilburn wrote:

You guys should really cut one of those swelled up ones and share the
photos with us :)


Benn Kilburn

SkyFire Energy Inc.

780-906-7807


On Sep 14, 2016, at 11:14 AM, Jerry Shafer <jerrysgarage01 at gmail.com> wrote:

The 190's had component issues which case them to balloon up
Jerry



On Sep 14, 2016 10:11 AM, "William Miller" <william at millersolar.com> wrote:

Colleagues:



We have M190s fail in beach installations. Some have had the cases swell up
like there is a tumor inside. I haven't cut them open to see what's inside
because they need to go back to manufacturer.



William


On Sep 14, 2016, at 9:32 AM, Jerry Shafer <jerrysgarage01 at gmail.com> wrote:

Mike
I also work near the ocean, its all around me here in Hawaii, we have had
the 190's fail but not to environmental conditions and very few issues with
215's. Do you have any pics of the damage as l have seen very little salt
issues.
Jerry



On Sep 13, 2016 9:11 PM, "Mike Nelson" <mdelectricsolar at gmail.com> wrote:

I've had so many Enphase failures it's kind of ridiculous. We install most
of our systems near the ocean so corrosion has played a big factor. The
newer micro inverters are holding a much better, 215 and 250's. I have
learned over the years that SMA makes the best product, and I mostly stick
with them. Sometimes micro inverters are requested or really fit the
installation particulars, so I still use them occasionally. I haven't yet
tried solar edge.

Michael D Nelson

MD Electric & Solar, Inc.

707-684-0064 mobile

707-884-1862 office

www.mdelectricsolar.com

Sent from my iPhone


On Sep 13, 2016, at 6:23 PM, Rebecca Lundberg <rebecca.lundberg at gmail.com>
wrote:

Esteemed wrenches,

I'm hoping the experience of this list can help give us a broader
perspective on the current market performance and as a secondary concern,
tech support (or lack thereof), from solar micro-inverter manufacturers.

Are others having much trouble with micro-inverters? We have had repeated
issues with several different brands on our systems in Minnesota:
- 8 Enphase systems with mostly M210 and M215, have had to repeatedly go
back to sites to replace units. The new replacement ones seem to be lasting
better (we sure hope they will). Enphase is harder to contact in recent
years, but we're happy they at least provide a predictable stipend. Are you
also having to replace a lot of this brand of product? Are the newer models
holding up better?

- We gave a new inverter busbar design concept a try (tenKsolar) and though
the micro-inverters were supposed to take turns and be 'redundant,' the
ones with APS micro-inverters needed 100% replacement and the ones with
Lead Solar micro-inverters have a problem where if one of them fails it
appears to send a signal to all the rest so the entire busbar stops working
-- in action it's far from redundant. When we purchased the tenKsolar Rais
Inverter Bus (RIB) the spec sheet didn't tell us what brand of
micro-inverter they would use as the OEM so we couldn't research the
viability of the product or company or warranty stipend (or lack there-of)
of the micro-inverter OEM. We assumed it was a tenKsolar product and they
would provide warranty replacements, service, and tech support, but our
experience has been far from that. When something goes wrong tenK says
'it's not our product that's failing' because they don't actually
manufacture the micro-inverter (it's an OEM), the micro-inverter company
says 'it's not our product' because tenKsolar has it wired and used in a
very unique manner specific to the tenKsolar product, so both manufacturers
are backing away from any responsibility. A 25-year warranty on the
inverter busbar is a great concept but if/when something goes wrong there
is no support and no apparent warranty at all except maybe they will send
us a new component that needs several hours of work to re-install, so
either the installer does the warranty work for free or the customer has a
very unexpected expense to get their system back up and running a year or
two after it was installed; we think both scenarios are unacceptable (from
our installer perspective :-), do any of you have experiences you can share
here?

I'm wondering if the climate in MN makes us an anomaly. Based on these
micro-inverter experiences we feel like the Rapid Shutdown rule has forced
us to use dc optimizers on residential applications whether we want to or
not -- is that pretty much what all of you are doing too?

Rebecca Lundberg

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