[RE-wrenches] sol ark reliability question

Jeff Clearwater jeffc at villagepowerdesign.com
Thu Sep 29 21:09:14 PDT 2022


I have a dozen Sol-Arks In the field and all systems have been giving solid performance . The MCU board upgrade is standard and super well supported and easy and usually done in a preventative context. I consider that a small price to pay for all the Sol-Ark can do and the overall performance and what the feature set provides. As others have mentioned best tech support around. The Time of Use features are brilliant as are the robust MPPTs and the programmability in general allows me to optimize hybrid systems like no other inverter I know. For us it has replaced the venerable Sunny Island as our go-to for large off-grid systems.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 29, 2022, at 11:50 PM, pieter offgridenterprises.org via RE-wrenches <re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> We have dozens of Solark based installs and have had excellent results. All of our system have multiple parallel Solark inverters and have operated with out issues. On the rare occasion that we had commissioning questions our experience with Solark technical support has been outstanding, they have by far the best technical support in the industry. Although Solark helped design the system in question I suspect that there must be some finer points that were not shared with Solark, a load side wiring problem or perhaps an installation error that is causing the repeated failures. I suggest that your friend gets a fresh set of eyes on the system and look for that oversite we have all made and just can’t seem to see it on our own.
> Pieter Huebner
> Off Grid Enterprises
>  
> From: RE-wrenches <re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org> On Behalf Of Jerry Shafer via RE-wrenches
> Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2022 10:25 AM
> To: RE-wrenches <re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org>
> Cc: Jerry Shafer <jerrysgarage01 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] sol ark reliability question
>  
> Wrenches
> Solark issues, I have them living off grid, 3 phase and grid tied back up, both AC and DC coupled with only one intermittent comms issue, does not seem to have any more issues than OB and less than Schnieder, all are connected to Fortress 18.5's or Blue Planet BMS interface seems hardy, 
> Would be good to know what issues he is having to accurately help
> Jerry
>  
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2022 at 7:01 AM jay via RE-wrenches <re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I’ve got a question about how many folks are having issues with sol-ark products?
> 
> the reason i ask is that i’ve got a friend, a good competent installer ( well versed in OB, Schneider, magnum)  who’s had continuing nightmares with them.
> 
> he’s got 2 systems each on is a stacked pair of 12kw units, both offgrid.
> 
> each system was designed by sol-ark, meaning the design was approved by them for the loads/solar etc.
> 
> He’s been through 7 MCU swaps. 
> He’s been through a field call required because the over the air firmware update caused the inverters to go into 50hz and for some reason that isn’t fixable via the web.
> He had an inverter that didn’t work correctly out of the box.  They charged him $2500 deposit for a replacement.
> 
> Then they charged him $1500 to fix the inverter he sent back under warranty.  Thats right $1500 to fix a warranty which they agreed was a warranty issue.
> Hes not going to pay but this $1500 has been going on a while.  
> 
> The inverter they sent to replace the broken one had a older MCU firmware so wouldn’t stack and it took tech support way to long to figure that out then they had to send him a new MCU…...
> 
> And the list goes on.
> 
> But Im asking, is this poor guy just an anomaly or will anyone else chime in about issues?,
> 
> Because at this point I have no desire to install one given his experiences
> 
> Jay
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