[RE-wrenches] Sunpower Performance Warranty Claim

Jason Szumlanski jason at floridasolardesigngroup.com
Tue Nov 22 14:17:11 PST 2022


This is why I have an article on my website to explain to prospective
clients why module warranties are mostly useless.

The cost to evaluate most potential problems is prohibitive.  Now if you
have a major manufacturer failure and every module is obviously bad, that
could be grounds for a warranty claim, but for a single module or two, or a
minor deficiency in production - it just will never be worth it. And later
in the life of a system, even a major issue might not be worth
investigating. I can count the successful module warranty claims I have
done in my career on a single hand.

Modules warranties are mostly marketing nonsense, unfortunately, IMO.

Jason Szumlanski
Principal Solar Designer | Florida Solar Design Group
NABCEP Certified Solar Professional (PVIP)
Florida State Certified Solar Contractor CVC56956


On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 1:50 PM Scot Arey via RE-wrenches <
re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:

> I agree that the time to process warranty the module to a manufacturer’s
> desires is cost-prohibitive. Of all the component’s we use, this warranty
> almost seems the least valuable for this very reason. We stopped one case
> for this very reason as I didn’t want to do a PhD dissertation for a single
> module.
>
>
>
> Was surprised by one manufacturer who advised us to read that bypass
> diodes were not an warranty defect even though the module was making half
> power.
>
>
>
> Good luck, look forward to hearing how your case goes.
>
>
>
> Scot Arey
>
> Solar CenTex
>
>
>
> *From:* RE-wrenches <re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org> *On
> Behalf Of *Daniel Young via RE-wrenches
> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 22, 2022 12:34 PM
> *To:* RE-wrenches <re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org>
> *Cc:* Daniel Young <danny at sesre.com>
> *Subject:* [RE-wrenches] Sunpower Performance Warranty Claim
>
>
>
> Hello Wrenches,
>
>
>
> Any experience successfully submitting a performance warranty claim with
> SunPower on their solar modules? Right now, in order to Provide what they
> are asking for, we will likely spend more time/money testing to their
> satisfaction than it would cost for us to likely buy new modules and just
> replace the array.
>
>
>
> Anybody have a similar experience? Or suggestions on how to deal with
> Sunpower?
>
>
>
> Don’t want to bog this down with all the details but suffice to say we I-V
> traced the array at the string level as a sanity check (7-10 % lower than
> anticipated performance), and a random selection of individual modules as
> well and we are seeing roughly 8% lower performance than expected given the
> array age and listed performance warranty. (STC corrected I-V trace is 8%
> lower than it should be for an 8 year old solar module from SunPower)
>
>
>
> With Regards,
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> Danny Young
>
> NABCEP PV Installation Professional #031508-90
>
> Engineering Team Lead
> Solar Energy Solutions
>
> Lexington | Louisville | Bloomington | Cincinnati | Evansville |
> Indianapolis
>
> 513-448-5176 (mobile)
>
> 877-312-7456 (Main Office)
>
> danny at sesre.com
>
>
> _________________________
>
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