Repairing Solar PV systems

[SolarCity]

In that case we have been very unlucky. The manufacturers have all suggested as much. It has been a right pain to sort them - one of them was in York and another two of them were in Swindon.

 

[moggy1968]

As margins start being squeezed these are the sort of things that are going to really put the industry under strain. Can you afford to drive 200 miles and take a day out to change a faulty isolator?

 

[Eco Deal]

I drove 4 hours to scotland yesterday to swap a solar edge power box (30 mins max) and drove back another 4 hours ... £200 in fuel!!!

mmmmm !!!

 

[JD6400]

On one job we swapped 1 power stage set last year and it has just had another 2 about a fortnight ago on a Fronius cl 36 which is fed from a east facing thin film array and has been spitting out random fault codes periodically since it went in , yet the other cl 36 sat next it fed from a west facing array has been 100% spot on since it went in .
And a ig 20 with total failure , yet again Fronius as i would not touch anything else when we were installing .

I can not fault Fronius on their warranty , they have stood both without question , and even reimbursed us around £120+vat for our trouble on the first cl 36 power stage set , and when you bear in mind our yard and that array is only about a 8 mile journey away from their main Head Quarters in Milton Keynes i thought that was quite reasonable !

 

[Worcester]

I drove 4 hours to scotland yesterday to swap a solar edge power box (30 mins max) and drove back another 4 hours ... £200 in fuel!!!

mmmmm !!!

Time for an installers network - there's probably enough of us here that respect each other - to carry out other's maintainance ...

 

[Gary K]

I drove 4 hours to scotland yesterday to swap a solar edge power box (30 mins max) and drove back another 4 hours ... £200 in fuel!!!

mmmmm !!!

Bloody hell what do you drive -a tank, thats about 20mpg

 

[PengEF]

Not an installer but notice some of you having problems with monitoring. I have a solar edge system but wanted something to monitor household usage as well. Decided eventually on the eco-eye Pv monitor. It does both house and PV (the PV being a little redundant with solar edge) but it needs it to calculate net usage. The solar edge dashboard updates every 15 mins and if I watch the eco-eye PV reading at the 15 min mark the solar edge dashboard updates it is impressively accurate. The range is also very good. There is nowhere in our house the display doesn't work and the transmitter unit is in the garage near several metal objects and behind several solid breeze block walls that my normal wifi has trouble with.

However there is another feature of the eco-eye that should allow me to upload readings to my PC. This part of the thing appears to be the biggest pile of dung going. Still if you want a visual monitor of how things are doing that is very responsive it's fantastically impressive just don't get it for the data logging.

BTW if anyone has any experience with a Brultech ECM-1240 system I would appreciate any feedback you could give on them.

 

[access_renew]

Thanks everyone - some very interesting comments here which will be of use to us.

Regarding the suggestion of an installers network - I like that idea!