[RE-wrenches] Enphase

[Kirk Herander]

Get out of there dude, my brother lives in Tampa I told him to do the same
thing.

On Mon, Sep 26, 2022 at 7:30 PM Jason Szumlanski via RE-wrenches <
re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:

> I should probably write this in 48 hours after Hurricane Ian passes by
> here. But I'll give you a couple of personal opinions.
>
> Complicated? No. It's pretty dead simple since there is no DC aspect to
> consider. But there are a lot of little things, I'll call them quirks, to
> learn and understand to make commissioning easier. A strong background in
> the Enphase ecosystem makes it all pretty intuitive. I'm not sure how
> someone new to Enphase in general would see it.
>
> From an installer perspective, you're taken out of the loop on quite a
> bit. You become pretty reliant on customer support for some things that
> don't work out of the box sometimes. There are pros and cons to this. There
> is a lot of remote diagnostics, resetting, updating, etc. And
> communications can be absolutely infuriating. The WiFi radio in the data
> monitor is embarrassingly weak. They didn't learn that lesson, and the
> comms between the gateway and batteries is also extremely poor, which means
> proximity and line of sight are of paramount importance.
>
> Batteries seem to fail updates and require resets initially, but once
> everything is up and running it seems reliable, except, again, the wireless
> communications aspect which sometimes results in frustration. But all
> things considered, once it's all set up it seems reliable, but time will
> tell.
>
> Back to Hurricanes. The 40 kWh limit is pretty pathetic for our market
> where people can easily consume 100 kWH per day in September. The bulk of
> that is air conditioning, which is also the #1 or #2 thing people want to
> back up in the first place. A 40 kWh whole house solution, realistically,
> is really a partial home backup when so many sacrifices are required. There
> is also a serious limit on the ability to support the surge requirements of
> central air conditioning. A soft start kit is virtually required, even with
> a maxed out 40 kWh system.
>
> I hope to have nothing additional to report after Hurricane Ian. But if
> some systems go off-grid for any significant amount of time I will
> certainly learn a lot and share the results.
>
> Jason Szumlanski
> Florida Solar Design Group
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 26, 2022, 7:04 PM Drake Chamberlin via RE-wrenches <
> re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello All,
>>
>> Looking into the Enphase Ensemble system, I'm not sure that is a
>> direction I want to take. It seems that they are extremely complicated
>> and require a 30 hour training course to commission.
>>
>> Once installed, are they reliable? Do they require on going tweaks and
>> firmware upgrades?
>>
>> Will the IQ8 micro inverters taper charge with phase shift? I am
>> considering the possibility of AC coupling some to a pair of Radians.
>>
>> What is the most reliable and economically feasible way to provide
>> backup power today?
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Drake
>>
>> Drake Chamberlin
>> Media & Communication Action Project
>> https://m-cap.org/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
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*Kirk Herander / **kirkh at vermont.solar <kirkh at vermont.solar>*

*Owner|Principal, VT Solar, LLC*

*Celebrating our 31st Anniversary 1991-2022!!*

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dba Vermont Solar Engineering

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