[RE-wrenches] Enphase

Jason Szumlanski jason at floridasolardesigngroup.com
Mon Sep 26 17:56:42 PDT 2022


I only leave for Cat 5. Haha.

In all seriousness, I feel some level of obligation to be here as an
"essential worker" in situations like this.

I'm 2 hours south of Tampa, we will get wet, but the winds shouldn't be
anything close to Irma 5 years ago.

I have confidence in the Enphase systems despite the "limited" capacity. I
installed a soft start for a client this morning to be sure. We shall see.

Jason




On Mon, Sep 26, 2022, 8:04 PM Kirk Herander via RE-wrenches <
re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:

> 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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>
> *Kirk Herander / **kirkh at vermont.solar <kirkh at vermont.solar>*
>
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